Slam Dunk School: Math is Beautiful

Recently I told Coral it was time to start school (it was about 11 am--late mornings are a Slam Dunk specialty). She replied with, "No, I don't want to do school. Math isn't fun."

I realized immediately I needed to nip that in the bud. Here's why: when Coral was nearing three, before her speech solidified into comprehensibility, she watched a Micky Mouse Clubhouse episode in which Goofy becomes a superhero and saves the day from muffins. By believing in himself he learned how to be fast, strong, and how to "fly." After that episode, I caught Coral running around the back yard, rope in tow across her shoulders, yelling, "I'm a Superpose! I'm a Superpose!" She meant that she was a superhero. It was funny and endearing. Later, it was the reason for a soul-crushing moment between her and me.

She wanted to play dress up and so I dressed her up as Super Coral the Magnificent! She got on my bed and jumped off, realizing a split second later, dressing up like a superhero doesn't give her the power of flight. She said, "Momma! I can't fly! What's wrong with my super suit?" So I had to tell her that people can't fly without the help of machines. I explained helicopters, airplanes, and space shuttles. She was crushed. She cried for a long while in my arms. She wanted to fly. She took off her super suit and decided to never dress up again because there isn't any benefit to it.

She did eventually get over the problem with make-believe and she does play dress-up still, although her dress up has evolved into taking my wireless headphones and pretending to be a pilot. So, when she told me that math wasn't fun, I kind of freaked out inside. I told her that we were going to do math all day.

Here is what we did:

A matching game,

that she spanked me at;

the Golden Ratio:

 Everywhere.

We repeated the Fibonacci sequence so many times that Coral had the first six numbers memorized by the end of the day. We looked at shells, pine cones, our own bodies. We did the addition, the measuring, the drawing. We did everything I could think of to make math fun again. 

And it worked.

Coral hasn't complained about math since then; she does her addition as well as she can and is getting better day-by-day. We do a lot of art reinforcing the beauty of math, and she loves it. She may never be a pilot, but she will have that opportunity if she wants it. I will make sure she has every opportunity to explore as much of the world as she can take, even if it's from our home computer and using Google Earth.

Slam Dunk School and the Value of Zero

When I chose to homeschool, I knew that there would be times when my daughter would have trouble understanding a concept and I would have trouble teaching it in a variety of ways. I knew that this would happen, but I could not have prepared.

Math has had many up and downs in the last semester. Coral's understanding of shapes and size is fantastic. She gets the concept of first, second, last without any trouble at all. She had no difficulty learning how to tell time. As for addition, she has practiced and made a lot of progress using different methods for adding including counting blocks, fingers, pictures problems, skip counting, and rote memorization.

Everything was fine and good with her progress until we had to start adding zero. As soon as zero as a number was introduced, suddenly nothing made sense any more. She couldn't add 1 + 1 anymore. Zero befuddled her and frustrated me because there was no way I could convince her that zero was "no objects" or that "nothing" existed.

I tried to demonstrate how to add zero with her fingers, with counting blocks, with pictures. I tried rote memorization, I tried every tool I had used before with zero success. She just was not able to understand the concept of zero as a number. My husband mentioned that he had had trouble with zero too until his dad had explained the value of zero.

I mulled that over for a while, a month in fact. I put addition aside for the entire month of December and instead concentrated on temperature and other science math concepts. I had decided to try adding zero after the holidays. I thought long and hard about zero all month long. I made no progress on a learning plan for Coral until December 29th--well, 30th.

I was in bed, unable to sleep because both of my kids were in my bed and I had zero space for myself. It occurred to me that I ought to learn as much as I can about the number, so I got on my phone and looked up the history of zero. Four-thirty a.m. history lessons stick with me.

In the morning, Coral and I had a history lesson and I used a completely new math concept to explain zero: strikes. I struck out five, ten, and hundred. I explained zero as a place holder, and then I put zero as a number up and showed her that zero did not get any strikes. I explained that every number has a value and then we went through many numbers and talked about their values including zero.

As suddenly as she had become confused, my daughter's understanding blossomed. Now adding zero is as easy as it seems it should be.

I too learned something about the value of zero in this whole adventure. Zero space on the bed, zero privacy, zero moments without my children interrupting, and zero regrets. I love my kids and I even love the many zeroes that having kids brings to my life. The value of zero in my life, is infinite. without the zeroes, I wouldn't have such a fulfilling life.