Since her fifth birthday last month, Alex has been receiving an allowance of a dollar a week. We also give her our spare change from time to time, and all in all she’s amassed a fair amount of money. She had it spread out on the table today, preparatory to our upcoming trip.
To get the money into a more usable form, I offered to trade her dollar bills for her quarters, and helped her stack them in piles of four for the trade. After the exchange was made, I went into the kitchen to finish dinner. And there was Alex:
“Do these make a dollar?” She carefully laid ten dimes on the counter.
“Yes, that’s right! Because a dime is ten cents, and ten tens is a hundred.” With great ceremony, we made the exchange. I told Michael: “Guess what Alex figured out, by herself?”
She beamed. Then she asked for a pen and some spelling help: she wanted to write “ten dimes make a dollar.” (“You’re so excited about it that you want to write it down?” “Uh huh.”) After she wrote it down (losing her way a bit on the lower case m, and forgetting “make” entirely), she disappeared upstairs and returned to show us that she’d cut the words out.
“Can I take a picture and show it to our computer friends?” Yes, Alex indicated, that would be an appropriate tribute to its significance.
?
Whoohoo! Nicely done Alex!
I love the idea that I might be counted among Alex’s “computer friends.”
I adore that she is so happy to share with her internet friends. And I am so impressed with her math abilities. Boo does pretty well for three, but he still gets lost counting to 20. However, i have taken to heart the notion that math lessons do not need to be learned in sequence – he is getting pretty good with basic equations.
It’s so much fun having a child. I never realized how much I would enjoy participating in his growth of knowledge.