Math Lessons From A Four-Year-Old

Last weekend, someone in the house offhandedly told Jillian that a ball was a circle. Not a big deal, right? Honestly, we have picture books here about shapes and almost without fail, the "circle" page will show a ball. It's something we say to kids.

Claire has been learning about three-dimensional and two-dimensional shapes at school and in her world a ball is NOT a circle. They are spheres and how dare we spread such evil lies about balls. Seriously...she gets really mad about it. I learned about her vehemence on the topic on the day she learned it. She got in the van at the end of the day and basically recreated her entire math lesson for the day for my benefit. You know, because despite the three university degrees including several advanced math courses, I need education about three-dimensional shapes (though to be honest I'm certain I didn't learn that stuff when I was four).

So, when the poor unsuspecting soul said "Jillian, a ball is a circle" (I think it was my brother but might have been my husband), her sister decided to take matters into her own hands. I noticed her shoot dagger eyes around the room and then she got up and went to her table and set to work. Three minutes later, we all got a lecture, complete with visuals. I've tried to recreate the gist of it on video for your entertainment. You'll have to excuse the cinematography and Jillian interruptions - that little person wants into show business big time and can't resist a camera:



I love the part where she says "circles are flat like a pancake and spheres are........not".

Her school has sent home strict instructions about writing. They believe in "Kid Writing" which is basically phonetic spelling (or just plain guessing). If our children decide to spontaneously print words or write a sentence we are to leave them alone and let them sound out the words in their own little brains. They have a list of common words they are expected to learn to spell (like, he, in, is, big, go, see, me...stuff like that) but otherwise they sound it out and we praise 'em if we can see the logic.

At first, this was really hard for me. When she wrote a card to her cold-stricken grandmother that said "I hop you fel betr soon" I had to resist the urge to correct all the spelling and explain the rules about silent Es. The more I sit and think about this method though, the more I like it. Ok, fine, SFER is no more like SPHERE than my mother is like an elephant but she has sounded it out, used good logic, exercised her brain and it makes perfect sense if I abandon all the things I know about the English language (which is a crazy language on so many levels). I can also see that as they teach her spelling rules, things will gradually improve until she's a superstar at this stuff. Maybe I just like seeing how her mind works.

As an aside, they are learning about proper punctuation and spacing and I like that a lot. Hearing Claire read a sentence with a question mark or an exclamation point is an absolute hoot.

Somehow I get the feeling that over the next few years, until she's old enough to think her parents suck, we're going to get lectured on quite a few things. I'm not sure if this makes her a natural schoolteacher or a girl with an urge to always be right. I suspect it is the latter, especially given her genetic background. Heh.

Oh, and just cause it annoys me and I feel the urge to share...neighbours of ours put their Christmas tree out for pickup today. Of course, I forgot to take the lights out of my window so maybe I should shut my yap. But the TREE? It's February 12th!

ETA: Bloglines hates me. Make it stop!