math lessons

When my two oldest girls were very small, I used to teach them math by giving them coins in random denominations and then taking them to the grocery store which was essentially in our backyard. I showed them how you could find the prices of various items (candy, mostly) and they had to figure out how much money they had and then if they had enough to buy the desired item. As they got more adept at this, I stayed out of it more and more, waiting at the door to see what happened.

I am not sure who ended up learning the most from this lesson. 16 was very careful about adding up her money and figuring out what she could buy with it. 15, on the other hand, was probably just as smart. But her strategy was different. She would figure out what she wanted first, and then try to think about how close the amount she had was to the product desired. I think she actually calculated this in head head, though I was never able to get her to verbalize it. Then, when it was close enough, she would essentially bat her eyelashes and hope that the store clerk thought she was cute enough to make up the difference in price between what she had and the item's cost him or herself. She was extremely effective at this.

16 was very frustrated at the realization that the rules appeared to be different for 15. She kept trying to explain how the price wasn't right for the amount 15 had, but 15 ended up somehow getting it anyway. After two of these experiences, I stopped doing this particular exercise in math. *I* had learned a lesson about my children and about real life. To this day, I tell this story about 16 and 15 and everyone who knows them laughs because they know how true it is to their personalities today. They are both extremely gifted in math. However, 16 spends a lot more time working at it than 15 does, who seems to see math as a means to an end. Go figure.