Math Games

One of my greatest challenges as a mother is my own easy annoyance.  Sometimes, my girls want to do things that are important and enriching for children, but which do absolutely nothing for me.  Like snakes and ladders.  Elsie loves playing that game, but to me it feels like some never ending sentence to obligatory boredom.

I read lots of blogs in which mothers see the light and change their perspective so that they (supposedly) enjoy all of their children's innocence.  They eagerly participate in every activity that brings their children joy.  Like this woman, who learned to stop and smell the roses with her daughter -- and is apparently all the happier never getting anywhere on time ever again.  It's a beautiful blog, and I wish I were mom enough to replicate it, but it sometimes takes Elsie 45 minutes to empty her bladder and wash her hands, and I don't think I will ever feel anything but stressed out about that.

I can't always meet Elsie where she's at.  Instead, I look for activities that we will both genuinely enjoy, and I try to make time for these activities every day.

I am thrilled to discover that Elsie shares my interest in math.  People always look skeptical when I say I love math -- but I do.  I love math the way I love art -- only maybe even more so, because I am a mediocre hobby artist, but quite skilled at math.  My favorite parts of my job (tutoring) are (1) the look of understanding that blossom across my student's face when she finally understand something, and (2) sitting around doing math problems for hours on end.  Seriously.

The Easter Bunny left some Math Dice in Elsie's basket.  The game goes like this: first, roll the 12-sided die.  It shows a number. Then you roll the five colored dice (three of which are traditional 1-6 cubes, and two of which have only numbers 1-3).  You then try to add and subtract the colored dice numbers to get the number you rolled on the 12-sided die.  However many of the colored dice you used in your math equation, that's how many steps you get to move on the board.  So you are rewarded more for complexity of equation and your ability to see many routs to one answer than for the chance of your rolls.

Elsie took to it right away.  She has a fierce competitive streak, which is both an asset (she is in it to win it, so she doesn't get bored!) and a curse (she gets really bummed out if she loses and it spoils the fun a bit).

Elsie and I have been adding on our fingers for ages now, so she got the addition piece right away.  I didn't press the subtraction until it became necessary, then I showed her how to start with a too-big number, and then count how many fingers she has to take away to reach her target.  Subtraction was tricky for a few days.  Then, suddenly, out of the blue, she had it, and I got to see that beautiful light of recognition shine from my own daughter's face.

A few nights later, Elsie asked me to read (sing) her The Twelve Days of Christmas for her bedtime story.  Christmas carols in April are not one of my favorite things.  I keep hiding that damn board book, but my girls keep finding it and pulling it out again.  I have been known to refuse to sing carols outside of advent, but that night, I inwardly rolled my eyes and relented.

When we got to 12-lords-a-leaping, Elsie noticed that the lords were arranged in a three-by-four grid.  She started counting them in groups.  Groups of three.  Groups of two.  Groups of four.  Could she make groups of five?  No.  I listened to her grouping, and started stating her own observations back to her with math vocabulary.

"There are four groups of three!"

"So twelve divided into groups of three... equals four groups."  I said.  "Twelve is divisible by three.  Three is a factor of twelve."

She was so engaged by this, that we stayed up late, reading backwards through the entire book again, counting groups.  By the time we were done, we were recognizing primes, listing factors, and getting a feel for division.  Elsie was positively giddy with the game of it, and she made me promise that we could play the grouping game again sometime.

I think that we start math too late in this country, and I think that's because adults are afraid of math.  But it doesn't have to be strict, and it doesn't have to be scary.  For Elsie, it's fun -- and maybe that's because it's fun for me.  I was grinning from ear to ear when I put her to bed that night.  Now, every time Elsie asks me to come play with her, instead of trying to find a way out of it, I stop what I'm doing and come running over with the math dice.