Adding, division and days of the week.

The girls were complaining today that it is a long time until they turn 4 years old. Parker told them they had to wait a whole year from when they turned 3. I asked him if he knew how many days that was. He said No, so I told him to figure it out.

He did fine adding the first couple months in his head, but then the 31s sort of started to throw him off. That is until he figured out (and articulated) that it was much easier to just add 1 first and then the 30 for the months that had 31 days in them. He got to the end and had 335 which is when we realized we missed June.

It's interesting that my mind would never have made the leap to "just adding one first". I kept trying to do the "long math" in my head (carry the one, etc). But Parker's brain figured out the short cut pretty damn fast.

In other math news...

He was also pretty excited the other day to tell me there are 4 ways to count to 12. By 2's, 3's 4's and 6's.

And he has started to get division. I had to say it like this: "How many 2's are there IN a 12? So then 12 divided by 2 is ?"

And lastly and somewhat related, I had to work in his class yesterday for the annual Stone Soup making (which is apparently required in all preschool and kindergarten classes). They did a few things with numbers. Nothing major at all, just counting and had you not known that Parker can do multiplication and division already you would never have guessed. He was just like any other kid shouting "39" a bit late after the teacher asked what came after 38. He didn't tell the class it was 13 times 3 or 100-61. He just smiled and was happy with 39.

He did however, when one kid forgot what came after Wednesday in the days of the week, start making up new words for the days of the week (showing, to me at least, that this concept was boring.) But then he looks like a moron for saying Thurday, Friesday, Satday.