To Infinity

Or Maybe Just Beyond 10

I read a quote this morning.

"I was explaining to my first graders what they would learn during the year. One of my students asked if they would learn 5 + 5. I responded that they would even learn 9 + 9. Joey replied that he could never learn that. I asked why not, reassuring him that he was very smart and good at math. He responded, 'I can never learn 9 + 9 because I don't have enough fingers!'" — Ann Fausnight

K, like Joey, is just learning to work with numbers that are greater than the fingers she has. We are continuing to slowly work on the first of our double digit numbers. Although K can count objects to 20 (although she does still sometimes call 20 - twenteen), recognising and writing the numbers 10-20 is a bit more tricky. We have been working recently on 10-13, and have just started talking about 14. I'm hoping in a few more weeks we will be able to read and write the numbers 10-20.

Playdough numbers are always fun.

On Saturday, we went for a nature treasure hunt.

K had to use the list above to find the correct number of objects.

Later, we used the objects to talk some more about our numbers. Normally K will not take risks and explore. "I can't make numbers out of that", she will say. Mum however only has to start moving a few things around and it is not long before the "I can do it" returns.

K has also started to talk a lot about the concept of half. For example she informed me the other day that a 'C' was half the letter 'O'. I think we will look a little closer at this during the week and see if we can explore a  little more about 'half'.