Soren sidelights

Due to some lucky circumstance, I've been getting extra time with Soren after her dance classes. We spend a lot of this time at playgrounds, but I've also been spending some of the time on learning new things.

One of the major things we've been focusing on is properties of natural numbers - how each number is unique and has its own special qualities. It's something that (I think) provides a good foundation for understanding mathematics. Our favorite number lately has been twelve, because it is evenly divisible by two, three and four (and one, as Soren pointed out to me). Figuring out "how many threes twelve has" gives her a good conceptual understanding of how division and multiplication work, and also involves some computation, which is good practice. We hit on some of the properties of logical operators, too -- mostly commutativity (we don't use terminology, because it's off-putting and is easily picked up when one has a solid understanding), in knowing that if three times four is twelve, then four times three is too.

Twelve turned out to be a great segueway into learning about time. We learned how to read an analog clock, and how to read it more quicky by counting by fives and fifteens. Also some terminlogy -- how "quarter 'til six" is the same as "five forty-five", etc. We also learned what AM and PM mean, and what parts of the day like morning, afternoon, and evening mean. I think she was really interested in all of this, because she put on a watch and wore it all weekend. She reported the time to us often enough to annoy Emma, and used different ways of saying it. Sadly, the watch is digital, but I think she'd use an analog one if it were pretty.

She'll need a lot of repetition to completely absorb all of this stuff, but I was very impressed by how much she remembered and understood, and how tenaciously she stays with a problem, even when it's frustrating. She seemed proud that I thought that.