# Category Archives: Talking math with your kids

## Armholes (6-year old topology)

We were packing for a trip recently. I have developed a system for getting the kids packed. It is beautiful. Here’s how it works:

1. Send kids to basement to get suitcases.
2. Keep suitcases on first floor.
3. Send kids upstairs to get one type of item at a time. E.g. Three pairs of underpants. Then three pairs of socks. Et cetera.
4. Kids throw each type of item in the suitcase.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as often as necessary.
6. Done.

Seriously. It’s awesome.

I made an observation with Tabitha partway through.

Me: Isn’t it strange how a pair of socks is two socks, but a pair of underpants is only one thing?

Tabitha (six years old): Yeah. It should “a pair plus one” because there are three holes.

Me: Wow. I hadn’t thought of that. So how many holes does a shirt have?

T: Three….No four!

Me: How do you figure?

T: The one you put your head through, the arms, and the head hole.

If you are like me, you may be a bit behind the curve on her language here. “The one you put your head through” is the one that ends up at your waist once your shirt is on. I had to think about this for a moment.

A few days later, I was curious to probe her thinking a bit further. She was getting dressed (a process which is always slow, and occasionally very frustrating for the parents):

Me: Do you remember how you said a pair of underpants has three holes and a shirt has four?

T: Ha! Yeah!

Me: I was thinking about that and wondering whether there are any kinds of clothing that have one hole or two holes.

T: Socks have one hole!

Me: Oh. Nice. Sometimes Daddy’s socks have two holes, though.

T: Yeah. When they’re broken.

By this time, she finally has the underpants on and her pants are being slowly pulled on.

Me: Wait. You need socks!

She goes to her dresser and proceeds to sort through the very messy sock drawer.

T: There are no matches.

I find what appears to be two socks balled up together.

T: No! Those aren’t socks! Those are for putting over tights to keep your legs warm.

We look at each other.

Big smile.

TThose have two holes!

## Summer project

The Minnesota State Fair is a fabulous event (Twelve days of fun ending Labor Day!). Rachel and I love the Fair, and we have passed this love along to our children.

Griffin must have been thinking about the wonders of the State Fair as summer slowly (oh, so slowly!) unfolded on our fair state. He asked a question at breakfast one recent morning.

Griffin (eight years old): How tall is the Giant Slide?

Me: Good question. I would guess…40 feet. What’s your guess?

G: 45 feet.

OK. That’s a mistake. We should have written our guesses down privately to avoid influencing each other. Oh well.

Me: Let’s look it up.

Google returns nothing useful. It does return this awesome video, though, which we watch together.

Me: I found lots of information mentioning the Giant Slide, but nothing on its height.

G: Measure it yourself, then!

Me: Good idea. How should we do that?

G: We’re gonna need a lot of tape measures put together.

This will be a summer project for us: Measuring stuff without putting a ruler next to it. I’ll report on our progress in this space.

## Zero=half revisited

A few weeks back, Tabitha asked Why are zero and half the same? I was curious to know whether that conversation had affected her thinking in any way. So I asked.

Me: Tabitha, do you still think zero and half are the same? Or have you not thought about that in a while?

Tabitha (six years old): I think…Half isn’t a number. I mean, it’s made of numbers put together, but it’s not a number.

Me: What is a number?

I love this question. How people answer it can be revealing. I asked a version of it of Griffin when he was in Kindergarten.

T: $4\frac{1}{2}$ is a number.

Me: Oh? $4\frac{1}{2}$ is a number, but not one-half?

T: Yeah. But it doesn’t really get used.

Me: What do you mean by that?

T: Well, people say, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, but not $4\frac{1}{2}$.

Me: Oh. So when we count count, we skip over $4\frac{1}{2}$?

T: Yeah.

We are both silent for a few moments, thinking.

T: Zero, too. People don’t count starting at zero. They say 1, 2, 3…

Me: Yeah. Isn’t that funny?

T: It should go half, zero, 1, 2, 3…

It seems clear that has indeed been thinking about that conversation. She is struggling with the betweenness of $\frac{1}{2}$; that it expresses a number between 0 and 1.

## Division and fractions with a third grader

I found some notes on a conversation I had with Griffin last fall. I do not remember the context for it.

Me: Do you know what 12÷2 is?

Griffin (8 years old): 6

Me: How do you know that’s right?

G: 2 times 6 is 12.

Me: What about 26÷2?

G: 13

Me: How do you know that?

G: There were 26 kids in Ms. Starr’s class [in first grade],  so it was her magic number. We had 13 pairs of kids.

Me: What about 34÷2?

G: Well, 15 plus 15 is 30…so…19

Here we see the role of cognitive load on mental computation. Griffin is splitting up 34 as 30 and 4 and finding pairs to add to each. Formally, he’s using the distributive property: $2(a+b)=2a+2b$.

He wants to choose $a$ and $b$ so that $2a+2b=30+4$.

But by the time he figures out that $a=15$, he loses track of the fact that $2b=4$ and just adds 4 to 15.

At least, I consider this to be the most likely explanation of his words.

My notes on the conversation only have (back and forth), which indicates that there was some follow-up discussion in which we located and fixed the error. The details are lost to history.

Our conversation continued.

Me: So 12÷2 is 6 because 2×6 is 12. What is 12÷1?

G: [long pause; much longer than for any of the first three tasks] 12.

Me: How do you know this?

G: Because if you gave 1 person 12 things, they would have all 12.

Let’s pause for a moment.

This is what it means to learn mathematics. Mathematical ideas
have multiple interpretations which people encounter as they live their lives. It is (or should be) a major goal of mathematics instruction to help people reconcile these multiple interpretations.

Griffin has so far relied upon three interpretations of division: (1) A division statement is equivalent to a multiplication statement (the fact family interpretation, which is closely related to thinking of division as the inverse of multiplication), (2) Division tells how many groups of a particular size we can make (Ms. Starr’s class has 13 pairs of students—this is the quotative interpretation of division) and (3) Division tells us how many will be in each of a particular number of same-sized groups (Put 12 things into 1 group, and each group has 12 things).

This wasn’t a lesson on multiplication, so I wasn’t too worried about getting Griffin to reconcile these interpretations. Instead, I was curious which (if any) would survive being pushed further.

Me: What is $12 \div \frac{1}{2}$?

G: [pause, but not as long as for 12÷1] Two.

Me: How do you know that?

G: Half of 12 is 6, and 12÷6 is 2, so it’s 2.

Me: OK. You know what a half dollar is, right?

G: Yeah. 50 cents.

Me: How many half dollars are in a dollar?

G: Two.

Me: How many half dollars are in 12 dollars?

G: [long thoughtful pause] Twenty-four.

Me: How do you know that?

G: I can’t say.

Me: One more. How many quarters are in 12 dollars?

G: Oh no! [pause] Forty-eight. Because a quarter is half of a half and so there are twice as many of them as half dollars. 2 times 24=48.

## A kindergartener on units [Talking math with your parents]

The following conversation took place in my house the other day. Tabitha (6) had been informed by her mother that she (Tabitha) needed to eat something healthy before eating a chocolate-covered donut. I was—and remain—ignorant of the origins of this donut.

I came in partway through the conversation.

Rachel: I’m going to cut you a small slice of this apple.

Tabitha (6 years old): Do I have to eat the whole thing?

R: The whole apple? No.

T: No, the whole slice!

R: Yes!

If you are unaware of the fun we have had with units around our house, you may wish to check out our discussion of brownies, and (of course) the following.