I’ve been out of town for a few days. I’m in Motown at my sisters’. I’ve been chief baby-holder for the last few days. Her youngest, Gwen, is only about 2 weeks old. Jack will be 3 in August and Megan will be 6 later in August. This morning my sister got a rare opportunity to go to the grocery store alone. For the most part I kept everything under control. I even got the three to pose for some pictures.
Right now I’m in the basement with Megan while Jack is napping. Megan is playing some computer games right now. I always find it interesting to see the educational software that they have for her. She’s currently playing a game that uses tan-grams. She just went back to the one where she sorts toys. She had to get 361 “Carbles” sorted. They come in packages of 100, 10 or 1. So she got 3 hundreds, 6 ten packs and a single. She just finished kindergarten. I don’t know what grade you learn places. But I sit here wondering how my students would perform if they had this kind of practice when they were 5 or 6. “This order has 509 WingSprings so far. Can you add some toys to the bowls to reach a total of 984?” That’s a hard level problem. There was also subtraction with 3 digits. Now we’re onto sorting animals – no legs – spotted – no legs and spotted.
One cool thing is that before I came down here, she was picking the easy ones to do. We tried the medium level problems and then the hard problems. We had our round of high five’s after she got them right. Now she’s picking the hard problems and has the confidence to do them. If only all kids could have opportunities like this. I can’t help but think about my students that can’t add, subtract, multiply and divide. This one is already ahead of them and she’s only five.
