Ty Does Math
Last year, I was talking to a four-year-old boy about how school was going.
“We do math,” he said.
“Oh, yea? Do you like math?”
“Yes, but it’s really hard sometimes. Like, we do this thing called ‘addition.’ Do you know about that?”
“Yes, I know a little bit.”
“Isn’t it hard?”
I smiled. “Sometimes it can be, yes.”
Well, I’m not teaching my kids written addition just yet, but Ty and I were adding plastic rings. There were 40 rings, ten of each color: red, blue, green, and yellow. I just piled them to one side, then I put down two blue rings in front of Ty.
“Two”
“Two,” he repeated. By the way, he knows how to count.
“Plus one,” I said as I put down one green ring, “equals…”
“Three!”
“Yes!”
And we tried several other combinations of adding two digits under five, which he got all correct. ALL. After about 15 minutes, he became interested in making chains with these plastic rings. That’s fine. No pressure. Just introducing the terms “plus” and “equals.”
I’m interested in incorporating more mathematics in our homeschool. We have shapes and counting, but that’s as far as we’ve gotten. Maybe we can do some patterns projects for our autumn crafts. There’s a great book series by Stuart J. Murphy called MathStart (published by HarperCollins). Sorting, probability, opposites, capacity, comparing sizes and weights, directions, et cetera are addressed in the form of picture books. Awesome stuff. We’ve already borrowed Leaping Lizards from our public library. Ty counts by 5s and 10s, with some help. But he totally gets the idea.
