Taran has been really into numbers lately. Throughout the day he'll hold up some fingers and ask how many there are, or ask "what's 3 + 4?", "what's 5 + 5 + 5 + 5?", "what's one dresser + one dresser?". Or he'll ask questions like "is 5 a big number?" and I'll say something like, "that depends. If you were talking about elephants in your bedroom, than five would be a huge number, but if you were talking about m & m's in your hand, I suppose you'd think it was pretty small". (He's really into m & m's thanks to Halloween).
Today in the midst of some such sequence of questions, he asked "What's two?", and in the vein of all the addition we'd just been doing, I replied, well, you have to add another number to it to get a new number. With hardly a beat, he shot back (almost snidely), "well, what's 2 + 0?". Hmmm. I stand corrected. I guess teaching him about zero wasn't too esoteric of a concept after all.
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| Taran: 1, Mama: 0 |
a genius! and an adorable one at that! I remember my first foray into numbers and it was really magical. How special that Taran has two parents who are mathematicians and can guide him through some of the mysteries.
ReplyDeleteYay! A comment. Thanks Mom. I remember you talking to me about your experience with the magic of mathematics. At what stage do we teach that out of children? :(
ReplyDeleteI laughed out loud. What a smarty pants he is! Though I think he must be smarter than me because honestly I didn't really get what you meant by, "you have to add another number to it to get a new number"... to me two is 1+1. What you said was 2+X=Y. Does that answer, "What is 2?" Have I lost all of my math cognition? Oh Damn. LOL! I love this post!
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