...Nine, Ten, Elenvteen, Twelveteen, Thirteen...

16 February' 2018 

(3 minutes read) 

My son Talha was four when the number fight began.

He was fine till the first 2-digit-number Ten, but he disagreed that there are numbers like 11, 12, and so on.

Number beads with number flashcard

He insisted twelve is merely a one and a two written together. For him, it was not a big deal. Numbers could be friends. He'd always call them "one-two" instead of twelve.

He also thought I am simply exhausting myself by believing there are more numbers than just the ones he has already learned (1-10) and assured me he doesn't need anymore.

He showed me his fingers and his crayons and asked, "Do you see more fingers? They are ten and so is counting".

So it happened that I failed to make him consider counting objects that were more than ten.

Then it struck me he doesn't feel the NEED to count as I haven't created it.

Realizing the mistake, I quickly corrected myself, always having bowls filled with numbers >10; 14 paper clips, 17 raw pasta pieces, 13 counters, 11 cloth pins and so on.

Kids love counters

All my plans came crashing to the ground when he very causally counted only ten of each object and asked me to take away the rest.

I thought harder and harder to try some other ideas. Something that was more than 10 (wwaayyy more than ten and he can't take it away) was right there with him all along, his HAIR!

So I pointed at his head, "you have more than ten hairs on your head, so there is a need to learn more numbers".

He looked at me, nodded, "I only brush my hair, don't count them."

I  have to be smarter than a 4-year-old if I am ever going to teach him math!

A 10 and a four

And that was the end of all my plans to teach him math. 

One day while coming back from school and climbing stairs, he started counting and told me, "Look mama!, I am so strong I'm gonna climb to 10!". 

Light Bulb.

"Oh, Talha! I know you are so brave and strong you'll easily climb 24 stairs!"

And from that day, he counted and counted on!

Count to a million!

No, not really..Its the title of a book by Jerry Pallotta, illustrated by Rob Bolster.

We do number crunching almost every day with our kids but have they really seen a million? or a ten thousand? In this I'll show you how you can do this.
 

 This book begins, "If you can count to ten, you can count to one million."

Although many teachers will not agree with the introduction of base ten system in this book but I found it so intrigue and interesting and well ... unique. I believe out of curiosity and thanks to big colorful pictures, kids will read on till the end.

 A "ten" is shown here as grain of sand that have been magnified.

A yellow gum attracted "one thousand" ants and I was wondering if there are actually a thousand ants drawn here.

Now this is some thing we don't see here in Pakistan! "ten thousand" people in a marathon!
We can make our younger kids believe that people with colorful flags in a political rally they see on TV (or a "dharna" for that matter) are actually in a "marathon" and I'm sure they'll be more than happy to see that many people "running".

Here "one hundred thousand" people are enjoying sport at a stadium. We had PSL 2018 final on March 25 at National Stadium, Karachi but its capacity was only 34,000 people.

Again grains of sands in a bucket are a "one million".

The book ends beautifully by narrating "This book started with one Earth, the planet we live on. There is only one Earth ...but look up in the sky on a clear night. There are millions of stars. Now you can count to million, and perhaps beyond..."

This book tells you what a 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and a 1.000,000 look like. It is out of print book and I got it from Old Books vendors in Karachi.

COUNT TO A MILLION sure inspired me to have a unique way of looking at exponents of 10. Next time I'm teaching Base Ten Number System, this book will be my teaching resource! 

Tell me what you think about this book. Post and share to let other math lovers know about this blog. 


You can check out my Facebook page about Math workshops for parents, teachers and kids here.