Virginia Warren

This is what it lookeds like at my house today:

Lydia, 8, runs into the kitchen. "How long will the popsicles take?"
Me: "Three hours, maybe?"
Lydia opens the freezer to see the popsicles. "You made four popsicles." Thinks. "So, one for each."
Me: "Oh, no, they're for you guys." meaning, for Lydia and her sister.
Lydia: "So, two for each." Runs out.

Virginia

<emstrength@...>

This morning my 7 year old came into the bedroom and said, "Four 5s is 20.  I know that because 10 plus 10 is 20."   Her Sunday morning musings. 



--- In [email protected], <vafnord@...> wrote:

This is what it lookeds like at my house today:

Lydia, 8, runs into the kitchen. "How long will the popsicles take?"
Me: "Three hours, maybe?"
Lydia opens the freezer to see the popsicles. "You made four popsicles." Thinks. "So, one for each."
Me: "Oh, no, they're for you guys." meaning, for Lydia and her sister.
Lydia: "So, two for each." Runs out.

Virginia

Tiffani

My 12 yo son comes to me and says "I can do a 270". I was pretty confused. He loves doing scooter tricks. He showed me each trick while  explaining each one to me that this a complete circle hop is a 360, this a half circle hop is a 180 so that makes this a more then half but not a complete circle hop a 270. 

Tiffani

From: "emstrength@..." <emstrength@...>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2013 6:23 PM
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] RE: An unschooled kid learning/using math

 
This morning my 7 year old came into the bedroom and said, "Four 5s is 20.  I know that because 10 plus 10 is 20."   Her Sunday morning musings. 


--- In [email protected], <vafnord@...> wrote:

This is what it lookeds like at my house today:
Lydia, 8, runs into the kitchen. "How long will the popsicles take?"
Me: "Three hours, maybe?"
Lydia opens the freezer to see the popsicles. "You made four popsicles." Thinks. "So, one for each."
Me: "Oh, no, they're for you guys." meaning, for Lydia and her sister.
Lydia: "So, two for each." Runs out.
Virginia


m cruger

My 5yo just recently shared something he didn't think I knew about but was sure I would love to know about- 2+8 is 10, 3+7 is 10, etc. Now he's working on others. Don't you just love it when something like that happens.
Martha

chris ester

My son was sleepy one day and I asked him why he was sleepy because I thought that he had gone to bed fairly early (he's 17).  His reply was that he was up until 3 am figuring out how to calculate weight to thrust ratios for rockets!  I asked if he wanted to take a nap after he had a nice cup of tea.
chris


On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 11:43 AM, m cruger <mrcruger@...> wrote:
 

My 5yo just recently shared something he didn't think I knew about but was sure I would love to know about- 2+8 is 10, 3+7 is 10, etc. Now he's working on others. Don't you just love it when something like that happens.
Martha


Sandra Dodd

-=- I thought that he had gone to bed fairly early (he's 17). His reply was that he was up until 3 am figuring out how to calculate weight to thrust ratios for rockets!-=-

Like you do...
:-)

Like school kids don't, if it's not on the homework or going to be on a test. Even if it's to be on a test, they'll just look in the book.

I do love stories like that.

-=-My 5yo just recently shared something he didn't think I knew about but was sure I would love to know about- 2+8 is 10, 3+7 is 10, etc. Now he's working on others. Don't you just love it when something like that happens.-=-

http://sandradodd.com/connections/

Sandra

<meghorvath85@...>

My 7yo son spent a little time asking us on a daily basis what the time was throughout the day. Yesterday, he told me that his show was going to be over in '600 seconds'. He also told his sister he was going to read with her in '350 seconds' - :)

Sandra Dodd

Here's a little collection of ideas about time. It's always math. If you have globe you can look at time zones. India is all one time zone, a half hour off from other time zones. China, I hear, is all one time zone without regard to nature. :-)

There's an ap for an iPad called World Clock that's very interesting, and attractive.

tandos mama

Several years ago,  my son who's now 6 yrs, brought our globe to me and after confirming the location of a couple of countries he said, "Look. If you want to go from Ba-Ba-Bee's (grandma's) house to China, it's faster if you go this way near the top because the world is fatter at the middle."

Tori

<blossomholly@...>

My six year old needs to crack a code (he calls it) for an ipad game. I took him out for a hot chocolate today and while we were out he noticed all of the table numbers around the cafe. he started to see things like 2,2 (thats 22 mum!) 4 and 0  (mmmm, 40!) "hey mum these numbers could help me ! i want to record them!" i handed him the iphone and he tapped on the note pad and recorded a list of numbers to use as a reference later when we returned home., he enthusiastically recorded his data, finding his "codes" hanging upside down above the till, on customers tables....


then i thought about  other connections we made with numbers through his life", noticing letterboxes and how numbers increase in value and size, and decrease and are odd and even, on different sides of the street, counting in spanish, counting to 100 as we take a drive just because its fun to take turns saying the numbers with his little sister and me, counting cars, minecrafting, coiunting change, playing video games that require certain amounts of points to advance to new levels and unlock new items....its every where...and they do it because its fun and interesting, and they have a Reason!


Holly



---In [email protected], <tori.arpad.cotta@...> wrote:

Several years ago,  my son who's now 6 yrs, brought our globe to me and after confirming the location of a couple of countries he said, "Look. If you want to go from Ba-Ba-Bee's (grandma's) house to China, it's faster if you go this way near the top because the world is fatter at the middle."

Tori

<zurrolaur@...>

 We love the World Clock app and have it set to show the times for Caitlyn's friends around the world that she Skypes with. We've talked about time differences in minutes and hours and how when she's on at midnight. With her friends in Australia it's morning for them, 


It's also amazing to watch the connections she makes with numbers. I remember back in our early days of unschooling, of worrying about how she would "learn math" since I have such anxiety surrounding anything math or numbers related. She doesn't have that anxiety. No one judging her for not "getting it" or trying to show her the "best" way to arrive at an answer. Instead she's had the space to learn in her time and her way, and as she needs it. Today we were playing Animal Jam together and she needed about 2000 points to be able to buy something for her animal. She was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1150 already and so she asked me to play the "dress-up" game which gets 200 0points each time you win. Without even hesitating she said, if you can win at least 5 times I'll have enough plus some extra.". It's just a part of everyday use, not some abstract calculation that someone else thinks is important to figure out :)



---In [email protected], <blossomholly@...> wrote:

My six year old needs to crack a code (he calls it) for an ipad game. I took him out for a hot chocolate today and while we were out he noticed all of the table numbers around the cafe. he started to see things like 2,2 (thats 22 mum!) 4 and 0  (mmmm, 40!) "hey mum these numbers could help me ! i want to record them!" i handed him the iphone and he tapped on the note pad and recorded a list of numbers to use as a reference later when we returned home., he enthusiastically recorded his data, finding his "codes" hanging upside down above the till, on customers tables....


then i thought about  other connections we made with numbers through his life", noticing letterboxes and how numbers increase in value and size, and decrease and are odd and even, on different sides of the street, counting in spanish, counting to 100 as we take a drive just because its fun to take turns saying the numbers with his little sister and me, counting cars, minecrafting, coiunting change, playing video games that require certain amounts of points to advance to new levels and unlock new items....its every where...and they do it because its fun and interesting, and they have a Reason!


Holly



---In [email protected], <tori.arpad.cotta@...> wrote:

Several years ago,  my son who's now 6 yrs, brought our globe to me and after confirming the location of a couple of countries he said, "Look. If you want to go from Ba-Ba-Bee's (grandma's) house to China, it's faster if you go this way near the top because the world is fatter at the middle."

Tori

[email protected]

My six year old currently spends many, many hours a day playing minecraft. So, this morning:

J:'Mum! Is four sixteens sixty-four?'
Me: 'Yup. How did you figure that out?'
J: 'from quivers'

And yesterday:
J: 'Look! A 'V', I've got five of something' (enchantments are represented by roman numerals in minecraft).

And other things like noticing that the most of anything you can collect in one [minecraft inventory] square is 64, and using symmetry in his minecraft building and calculations like 'if one iron ingot makes 20 bullets then how many will I need to make 48?' (that's one he asked me rather than working it out himself).

I figure he might be interested in more roman numerals and multiplication table type stuff so I'll print a couple of charts out and leave them about somewhere.

lucy.web

My 10 year old daughter and I were watching Brat Camp UK on Youtube. She is fascinated by these sorts of 'kids behaving badly' programmes. I mentioned that soon I would have to go out and shut the chickens away. She looked at the progress bar, which showed that we were something like 26.45 minutes into a 47.24 programme. "We're over half way," she said. "There's only just over 20 minutes to go."

Mental subtraction of decimals, conversion to fractions AND estimating all in one go. I remember estimation tripped me up for *ages* in school ... couldn't understand why we were being asked to 'guess' something when they'd already shown us how to work it out exactly. It never made sense for me until I actually had to estimate something out in the real world. By starting off with the real world applications, hopefully my daughters will never have to suffer the general foggy confusion over maths that I did.

Lucy

lucy.web

Oh and another one I forgot, also from today. My 12 year old daughter had a notepad by her computer which was covered in simple, written down sums. I was intrigued as that's not something she'd usually do. Turns out she and one of her Skype buddies had been pooling their resources on Minecraft and she needed to note down who had what, how much they'd have if they added them together, and how much more of each thing they'd need to get in order to reach whatever they were aiming for.

<judyw0607@...>

Here are two examples from my sons, ages 7 and 5:

 

A few months ago, my sons and I were hanging out in our front room, the 5 year-old on the computer, the 7 year-old watching TV from the comfy couch, and I reading on my Kindle.  My 7 year-old asks, "Mommy, what's 2 times 19?"  I answer, "38."  My son then says, "So, if that guy pays 38 dollars, he can keep it for 2 days."  I ask, "What guy?" thinking I missed something that just happened on the show my son was watching.  My son then pulls aside the curtain of our big front window, and says, "That guy -- with the pickup truck."  Turns out there was a U-Haul rental pickup parked in front of our house with a big Rent Me for $19 sign on the side (smaller print, of course, showed an additional 95 cents + tax, but I still thought that was pretty cool).

 

We were at Downtown Disney last week.  My 7 year-old son could stay for the entire day and into the evening.  My 5-year old is usually ready to return home, even if he's having a good time, after a fairly short time.  After getting some ice cream, my older son asked how long we'd been there.  I looked at my watch, and said, "Exactly 2 hours, actually."  My 5 year-old, with a big sigh, then says, "You mean, we've been here a *whole 120 minutes* already???"

 

---In [email protected], <lucy.web@...> wrote:

Oh and another one I forgot, also from today. My 12 year old daughter had a notepad by her computer which was covered in simple, written down sums. I was intrigued as that's not something she'd usually do. Turns out she and one of her Skype buddies had been pooling their resources on Minecraft and she needed to note down who had what, how much they'd have if they added them together, and how much more of each thing they'd need to get in order to reach whatever they were aiming for.

Sara Evans

This was yesterday and made me think of this conversation.

My 12 year old helped her papa unload firewood from his van and stacked it by the garage. Later she was making a list in one of those "composition" notebooks - in the back they have all kinds of references, like grammar or math facts.  She finds this interesting.  In this one it explained how much wood is in a "cord of wood". She thought this was pretty cool - She got to relate this knowledge to something she did herself and we discussed whether she thought the amount of wood she unloaded was a cord, how 3D dimensions work, etc.

Also

The 7 year old was playing Minecraft and called me over to show me what she discovered. She said very matter-of-fact - "Mom, four 16s is 64". Then showed me how she found out. She had 64 total of cobblestone, and in the graph they use to create in the game, she had 4 blocks worth 16 each.  

-- 
Sara
Momi to R ('01) and AV ('06)

Sara Evans

On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 10:57 PM, nataliespooner@... <nataliewilliams@...> wrote:
 

My six year old currently spends many, many hours a day playing minecraft. So, this morning:

J:'Mum! Is four sixteens sixty-four?'
Me: 'Yup. How did you figure that out?'
J: 'from quivers'


WOW!  I didn't even see this message until after I sent my own.  My seven year old had the very same experience.  How fun - so far two out of two unschoolers have learned 16 x 4 from Minecraft :)

 
Sara Momi to R ('01) and AV ('06)

Sandra Dodd

-=-How fun - so far two out of two unschoolers have learned 16 x 4 from Minecraft :)
-=-

When my kids were young, they learned it from Nintendo.  NES  (the original Nintendo Entertainment System) was an 8-bit machine, SNES was 16, Sega and some other systems made 32-bit machines, and Ninendo leapfrogged them with the Nintendo 64.   :-)

Powers of 2, because of base two, binary logic, digital encoding.  These kids are digital natives.  They know 32 and 64 the same way older people know 5s and 10s.

Sandra

chris ester

My son (17) learned to calculate thrust ratios for a rocketry simulation game.  Gerber Space something or other... 

When he was working on it, I asked if he wanted any help (his father was a math minor and I took lots of math in school/college) and he replied that he felt it was easier to find resources on the net because even if he couldn't articulate the exact question, he would know which information was useful when he saw it.   

I have to admit that a small part of me felt disappointed (I enjoyed when we would team up to find answers or I could explain something or other to him), but a larger part was immensely happy that my son is such a confident living-learning-living guy.  

I have adult friends who are very intelligent and can pinpoint the exact moment when they became fearful of math in school because of 'failure' in a math class.  An unschooled person learns what they want when they want to, and not a minute sooner; and this usually follows some perceived need or desire to get the answer to a particular question... 

My daughter (15) has recently decided that she will get a GED in the future (she doesn't have to, but feels it will be the easiest path to her goals).  She did some research and found some prep tests and these indicated that her math skills needed some improvement.  She did some more research and found Kahn academy and has been working through that to get to whatever level will enable her to pass the math portion of the GED.  

I found out all of this when I saw her writing out long division problems and asked what she was working on.  Her plan, her research, her success.  I love it when a plan comes together.... :)
Chris


On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
 

-=-How fun - so far two out of two unschoolers have learned 16 x 4 from Minecraft :)

-=-

When my kids were young, they learned it from Nintendo.  NES  (the original Nintendo Entertainment System) was an 8-bit machine, SNES was 16, Sega and some other systems made 32-bit machines, and Ninendo leapfrogged them with the Nintendo 64.   :-)

Powers of 2, because of base two, binary logic, digital encoding.  These kids are digital natives.  They know 32 and 64 the same way older people know 5s and 10s.

Sandra