kitchen table math, the sequel: My Four Year Old Has Discovered The Calculator

Saturday, November 8, 2008

My Four Year Old Has Discovered The Calculator

... and she thinks it's awesome. The pink magical computing machine is her new best friend.

My aunt bought one for her last year, I tossed it in the toybox and promptly forgot all about it. But A. found it a few days ago and figured it out. She said, "Give me some numbers!!" "Uh, 4 and 5" "Nine! Give me more!!" I eventually told her to go around the house looking for numbers on things, and that kept her busy for awhile.

We're back to using Singapore 1A these days, after a few months of refusing to do anything that looked like it could involve writing. (Singapore Earlybird is fairly writing-heavy, with a lot of focus on learning to write the numbers. We skipped all that for now and I transcribe for her.) She's also really into the Singapore "extras": Challenging Word problems, Intensive Practice, and Extra Practice, which they have even for these low levels.

So as we're working more and more with beginning addition, we use our fingers or draw dots on paper and on a particular set I said, "Oh, this one looks like we should use our linking blocks to figure it out." She jumped in, "Or our calculator!"

I'm trying to gently explain why we don't just grab the calculator and cruise through the book so much more quickly and easily. She doesn't understand why we would reject such obviously magical and fantastic technology, but she's going along with it anyway.

3 comments:

Lisa Hall said...

Quite a few math instruction programs integrate the use of calculators into classroom lessons. I think it is great that your daughter has picked up the calculator and started experimenting with it around the house and making connections to other math you have been working on together. Her experiences are really rich and meaningful.

SteveH said...

"Quite a few math instruction programs integrate the use of calculators into classroom lessons."

Most of which we, at KTM, try to eliminate off the face of the earth.

"Her experiences are really rich and meaningful."

Meaningless edu-speak.


As long as you use Singapore Math, I wouldn't care too much about the calculator.

Catherine Johnson said...

Most of which we, at KTM, try to eliminate off the face of the earth.

lollll!!!!

And we're doing a bang-up job of it, too!