It's A Numbers Game

One of the joys of being a parent is watching your children grow, and seeing the ways in which they resemble you or your spouse. My hubby and I know that there's no denying our three kids. They share our looks, talents and interests. They've even inherited our sense of humor.

Occasionally though, a trait will come through the gene pool that's a bit of a surprise.

When K-boy entered his school years it quickly became apparent that math was not his favorite subject. Let's just say I knew exactly who he got that from. I still have the occasional nightmare about learning my multiplication tables.

M-girl never developed the active hatred for mathematics that her older brother did, but she didn't exactly love it either.

So imagine my surprise when D-boy started first grade this year...and discovered how much he enjoys math!

I don't mean that he just prefers math to his other subjects - he does. I mean that he's a child who practically lives and breathes math. We can be in the middle of doing something mundane, like shopping or laundry, and he'll start pondering some math concept out loud.

I credit his love of mathematics to two factors. First, he must just be one of those people who has a brain wired for math. He's always been very meticulous when it comes to building, and figuring out how to do something. Now that he's ready to learn math concepts, it's all coming easily to him.

Second, last year when he was in kindergarten, our family started using the Life of Fred math series. The main character is a little, five year old math professor, who often expresses how much fun math is. I think exposing D-boy to this fun, positive spin on learning math at such a young age really encouraged him to think of math as play.

Play is exactly what he often does with it too. He revels in coming up with the various ways to get to a certain number, and uses what I teach him to make new discoveries on his own. He told me once that he can think of more numbers in his head than he actually knows the names of.

It's definitely going to keep me on my toes to have a math inclined child. The other morning it wasn't even time for our lessons to start, I was still in my pajamas, when he insisted on dragging me up to the classroom to show me what was on his mind. He told me excitedly, Mom I counted to ten hundred before I fell asleep last night! I congratulated him on counting so high and informed him, Usually we call that number one thousand.

He proceeded to grab a piece of scrap paper and write out a series of numbers in the hundreds, asking me to say aloud the name of each number. When he grandly ended at 1,000, he proclaimed victoriously, See, it's ten hundred!

Egads! At this rate he's going to surpass my humble math skills by the time he's through with grade school!