Uncle Wiggily follow up

I was taken to task this week for my assessment skills as they pertain to the then $3 \frac{1}{2}$ year old Tabitha and our shared game of Uncle Wiggily.

Bill McCallum:

The alternative hypothesis, of course, is that she noticed but put it down to weird parent behavior.

David Wees:

I think I agree with Bill, just because she seemed oblivious to your omission doesn’t mean that she didn’t notice it, like Bill said, she may have just wondered why you were acting so strange.

Robert Hawke:

Maybe Tabitha is highly competitive and spotted an edge. “You really want to set yourself back a space due to poor counting technique? Suit yourself, Daddy.”

Michael Paul Goldenburg:

I have several takes on this: 1) Tabitha – “That daddy. Alway trying to turn my innocent childhood into a math-ed experiment. I’ll show him and pretend that I didn’t notice he forgot the 8.”  [And other delightful postmodern suggestions]

Great pushback from a great group of dads. Of course, I can refute none of these possibilities. I will say that it would be very uncharacteristic of Tabitha to let an error made by someone else (especially me) slide.

So now, a bit more than two years later, I revisit Uncle Wiggily with Tabitha. And again I count to 10 by skipping 8. About 30 seconds worth here. Discuss in comments.

On a related note, Robert Hawke has caught the bug and sends the following video report of talking math with his kids. If you like this sort of thing (and you’re still reading, so you do), it is worth the 2 minutes. Lots of great stuff in this one.

3 responses to “Uncle Wiggily follow up”

1. Michael Paul Goldenberg

Well, at least one of the dads was making comments that were more tongue-in-cheek than not. 🙂

2. Yeah, there’s definitely a very different reaction here. She thinks it’s funny, like putting gloves on your ears. It’s just wrong; wrong things are funny.

Looking back at the original videos I can’t figure out whether it’s coincidence or not that she landed on the correct square when she took her turn. The counting seems disconnected from the moving of the piece, but she manages to end up at 9 anyway.

3. LSquared

Great videos. I wish I’d caught the math-recording bug back when my kids were that age.