a pic is worth a thousand words..
he was getting frustrated today because he was having trouble adding some 3 digit numbers in his head, so I taught him long addition…I know his handwriting needs a little work, but we’re working on that.
By the way, he’s 5 and not in school yet 
pretty cool. My kid’s 14 and barely has better handwriting.
My son is 16, and his handwriting is worse.
There’s nothing better than to see a mind grow.
Have fun,
Oh, that is heart-rending. He looks like he’s gettting it though. It’s easy to forget that being little had its tough times. I like his hair 
.
He’s supposed to add 3 digit numbers in his head? Who can do that? Is long addition when you carry numbers to the next column using paper and pencil? Sorry to distract from the main point here.
So you are homeschooling your young’un, eh. Oh, yes, you already are… 
Lol..he’s got my cowlicks..he’ll hate me for it when puberty strikes.
Me… But I couldn’t do it at 5. He can do it, if there aren’t too many places you ‘carry the one’, so I showed him how to do it on paper today to make it easier on him. He can add and subtract negative numbers, do basic multiplication, and has a general good grasp of math. We were playing the kid game of “I’ve got more” and he told me “I have a million points!” and I told him “But I have 2-thousand million points!” And he said “No..that’s two BILLION”. I’ve started working on fractions with him, usually when we order pizza. He just loves numbers.
Is long addition when you carry numbers to the next column using paper and pencil? Sorry to distract from the main point here.
yup
Is long addition when you carry numbers to the next column using paper and pencil? Sorry to distract from the main point here.
yup
Oh, okay, I know how to do that. I think I will skip the in my head part .
I completely missed the part that said he was 5 and not in school yet! Goodness, I was not doing any arithmetic at all at that age in my head or on paper. That’s great that he is really interested in something like that.
Do you hold your pencil that way, Wanderer? Anybody else? Interesting. It looks like it would be difficult to control that way.
About the addition, Cynth . . . it can be difficult to add in your head if you try to do it the same way you do it on paper, i.e., adding the far-right column, carrying, adding the next column, carrying, etc.
It’s a lot easier if you do it from the left, building a total as you go, like this:
649 + 223
600 + 200 = 800
49 + 23 = 50 + 22 = 72
872
Or, 649 + 200 = 849
849 + 1 = 850, then 22 more is 872
I’m math-impaired, so I have a lot of trouble doing this on paper. It’s a lot easier this way. I can visualize little squares getting pushed together to form larger blocks. Seeing it that way gives me something to hold onto in my mind.
The other way, I lose track of what I’m doing and have to keep starting over and over, and it all seems utterly without meaning.
Lol, yeah, I was cracking the other day. I picked him up from daycare the other day, and asked him “Donovan..do you know what negative five minus negative two is?” and his daycare ‘teacher’ goes “Wow..he’s doing fractions?!”
Oh dear! 
Perhaps you should homeschool!
It is…he recently (like in the last 2 months) stopped fighting to hold the thing in the “hamfisted” manner, so we’re making progress
The way you describe math is pretty much how I do it in my head. I add (or subtract or whatever) “easier” round numbers, and then do a second, smaller and easier, addition subtraction to get where I want. It’s a lot faster than doing right to left column math, too…but that’s a skill he’ll need..in like the fourth grade or something
OMG – Lambchop! there is someone else who adds like I do! I nearly flunked math for years and years, and didn’t ‘get it’ until I was out of college. As soon as I got away from the drilled formulae we were taught and learned to think of numbers in my own way I became fascinated with math, mathematical recreation, and numbers as very cool things indeed!
Wanderer, your kid is spectacular!
Tyg
Oooh! People like me - high working memory vs. high bandwidth.
I’ve been adding like that since I was… adding?
I’m an odd bird when it comes to math. No math teacher has ever taught me anything. I always have to take the textbook home and stare at it until I figure it out on my own, and that means that sometimes I do things differently. It also means I’ve struggled with math since forever.
Now I’m an English/anthropology major and plan to avoid math for the rest of my mortal existence.
That’s very cool. Not just a cutie-pie, a smart cutie-pie.
P.S. Does that say, “There is no free lunch” at the bottom of his worksheet? Just curious. I didn’t run across “TANSTAAFL” until I was, uh, just a bit older.
And yet another. I think of those who are math-gifted as being like electronic calculators, whereas I liken myself to an old-fashioned, mechanical adding machine. It takes lots of awkward, careful steps, and makes a horrible clunking noise, but gets to the right answer.
I suppose that not having an affinity for numbers is the numeric equivalent of dyslexia, and being a word person, I should know the name for it, but I don’t. So I call it being dysnumeric. You can understand the process, and perform it quite effectively, but not quickly or intuitively.
BTW…I love the dancing around the kitchen image after he multiplied 100x100.
And I doubt if the daycare person’s math blunder was uncommon at all. I consistently mystify cashiers by handing them strange amounts of change so that I’ll avoid getting many coins back.
It does…but you know, I have no idea why It doesn’t actually have the full tanstaafl quote. It was just a bit of an oddity stuck on the bottom of a web math worksheet I found (he wanted four of them, and I thought it’d be quicker to find them on the web than make them in Word).
By the way, if anyone ever wants math worksheets for your kids, here’s a good spot that makes them automatically:
http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/math/add/
(though this one doesn’t have the free lunch comment)
We used Mathematics Worksheet Factory… you can download a free version at http://www.kidsdomain.com/down/pc/mathfactorylite.html and you can put in any quote your little heart desires.
Heck, I’m almost 56 and MINE’S not any better!
hush sir…it’s been over 30 years since I could read mine!