"I'm Cool, You're Not!"
A week or two ago Jason asked, "What is 10 minus 100?"
"Minus 90," I said.
"No, it's zero," he said. "If you have 10 and you take away 100, then you take away all 10 and you have zero. Ha Ha! I'm cool, you're not!"
He is always asking about numbers and seems to be pretty good at math. A few weeks ago he surprised me by asking for my dad's age and then my age and almost immediately working out the difference (68 - 41 = 27). I was pretty impressed because that is pretty good for a 6 year old.
"Minus 90," I said.
"No, it's zero," he said. "If you have 10 and you take away 100, then you take away all 10 and you have zero. Ha Ha! I'm cool, you're not!"
He is always asking about numbers and seems to be pretty good at math. A few weeks ago he surprised me by asking for my dad's age and then my age and almost immediately working out the difference (68 - 41 = 27). I was pretty impressed because that is pretty good for a 6 year old.
Comments
carra: For now he can play with the Natural numbers. Eventually it will dawn on him that there are negative numbers. He already knows that zero times anything is 0 One day, I will have to sit him down and explain that zero times infinity is not defined.
MOI: unless there is a genuine mental impediment, I don't believe people are slow. I accept that different people like different things and they have different strengths and are pretty much equally capable of learning. Sometimes, we just write them off instead of working with them. I know a lot of patience and work has gone into getting Jason to read (in French - never mind English or Spanish for the moment). He is very, very fidgety, his limbs are constantly moving. However, sitting down with him and getting him to read (along with the bribery of Yu-Gi-Oh cards), he has improved greatly.