Math like Whoa

Now and then I do something that I am proud of without reservation.  Today, I taught Thor how to work multiplication and was able to explain the concept so that he could understand, and so that he has been creating and working problems all day since I showed him how.

I showed him that in a sample equation of 3×2, three was a number of boxes, and two was the number of things inside each box.  I showed him that if he counted how many things were in the boxes total, he had multiplied.

Like that.

We spent a happy half hour drawing boxes and counting things, or writing equations and drawing the concept of them, and then I taught him tricks for multiplying by two, five, and ten.

Now, that might not mean anything to those of you who are good at math, but for me, it’s like…  I’ll tell you what it is like.  It is exactly like Whoa.

Mainly, I’m proud of my kid, who grasped the concept and ran with it, and I’m proud to have a kiddo who begs (and I mean begs) to work math.  He’s going to be so sad to find out that I can’t do fractions.