Pure reasoning

The budding mathematician writing in her journal (spelling dictated by dad).

This always happens after a visit with someone who has accomplished children. You know, a six year old who reads at fifth grade level, a kid who is writing computer programs in second grade. This time, it was the cousins' twin children who, at age seven, were doing division and multiplication with ease. This was early was last year. Nadia was barely five. So, of course, on the way to preschool I decided to quiz her own mathematical ability.

I started off real easy: Nadia, if you have four cookies and there are four children, how many cookies does each child get? One.
If there are two children, and each one has two cookies, how many cookies do they have together? Four.
How about if there are three children, and each has two apples, how many apples all together? Six.
Wow, I was beaming with maternal pride. I decided to go for something harder. I had meant to ask how many apples would each of two children get if there were four apples. But what came out of my mouth was:
What if there were two apples and four children, how many apples would each child get? Nadia was unfazed. A half, she promptly replied.
At this point, it was clear to me she was ready for a challenge. So I asked:
What if there was only one apple, and four children. How many would each child get? They would get little triangles, mama.
I was laughing so hard, I had to pull over.
Nadia is now six and a half, and has a full year of homeschooling under her belt. During her "kindergarten" year, she has enjoyed some of the math books I purchased, as long as I let her color and decorate the pictures. This was OK with me. So some days, we would spend and hour on one page, because she was busy drawing bows and polka dots on the little girls in the illustrations, and on other days, when she was feeling less artistic, we would breeze through fifteen pages in as many minutes.
She seems to have an intuitive understanding of arithmetic, and absolutely no patience for mathematical symbols. She has stopped using her fingers to add and subtract, and will get the right answer nearly every time, provided I remind her what the little cross symbol or the little dash mean. She's not sure if thirteen or thirty come after 29, has not mastered counting by fives or tens, and can only tell me what time it is by reciting the symbols on the digital clock in the exact order. But she does know, without anyone having consciously "taught her" how many half-hours there are in two hours, and that if you try to divide five apples among two children, you will end up with halves, unless mom gets one. What if mom is not around? Well, then who will cut the apple in half for the children?
Go figure!
She has been.

Comments

[Andrea]

HA! Smart kid. :D
Also, I love her journal.