More Reading

Yesterday I wrote a note for Supriya (in all caps): "We need to go to the mall too." She read it with no problems. By now she knows most of these words by sight - as whole words. She had to sound out "mall", but could do it by herself. She still keeps saying "I cannot read", and I keep pointing out all the things she can read. I think until she can read chapter-books, she will not call herself a reader.

Modeling Clay Art

We visited Michael's the other day and got a couple of packs of modeling clay. Inspired by a book I'd borrowed from the library, Supriya made this aquarium. The black thing is a fish. 

Supriya does the Hula

Supriya has the hula-hoop thing down. Today she did 100 for the first time. 

Supriya and the Globe

Manisha reports:

The kids were looking for books for me to read to them and Aseem pulled down "1000 places to see before You Die: A traveller's life list" by Patricia Schultz. "What's this book?", he wanted to know. I said "It's a travel book. It has places you can visit." Supriya lit up and said, "Why didn't you tell me so? I'll bring my globe and see if I can find those places on the globe." She brought over the globe and started browsing through the book. She found a map of Africa and showed it to me along with Africa on the globe. She said, "This is where Tarzan lived."

I'm thrilled by the connections she's making. She understands that the map and the globe represent the world. She knows where Africa [and the US and India] is.

I was thinking about this after Manisha told me about it and realized that for Supriya the world is a small place! She has travelled to India a couple of times. We have relatives in London. She has been to California, Washington DC, Atlanta, New Jersey, NYC. Apart from this trips in person, she has watched so many different cultures and ways of living on TV and in movies. She is truly a citizen of the world.

Olny Srmat Poelpe Can

Marianne forwarded this to me yesterday:

Cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

I love it!

Supriya the Musician

Supriya, Manisha and I were watching the Winter Olympics late last night, after Aseem had fallen asleep. The Ladies' Figure-skating Short program was on. Suddenly Supriya asked me, "Isn't that Chinese music?" Neither Manisha nor I were paying any attention to the piano-violin duet that was accompanying the Japanese skater, but Supriya's sharp ears were tuned to the music. Once she brought it to my attention it was obvious. I explained to her that Chinese and Japanese music sound very similar (being based on the pentatonic scale). She said she had heard the music somewhere on TV a while ago. Like the true musician that she is, she abstracted the structure of the music and made sense of it.

Picture of Space

Supriya spent a long time yesterday drawing this picture and filling in the details. It has black holes, aliens and alien space-ships, a rocket-ship, stars, comets and the sun. It also has a map (in the upper right-hand corner) of space to show where the stars and planets are. For some unknown reason it also has the names of our family-members and our phone number - presumably to help the aliens contact us if they get hold of the picture. 

More Reading

Supriya and I just sat down together and she read major chunks of 2 books to me - "Hop on Pop" by Dr. Seuss and "Put Me in the Zoo" by Robert Lopshire (both from the "I can read it all by myself" series). And, aptly enough, she read the "I can read it all by myself" logo as well!

Math-Facts or Math-Principles?

Another term Manisha and I dislike - next to "word-problems" - is "math-facts". We prefer to think in terms of mathematical principles. What is the difference? Isn't it all the same once you have to add two numbers? Yes and no. Yes, they may appear to be the same when you are adding 2 and 2, but no, it is a matter of perspective.

The word math-fact implies that (2 + 2 = 4) is a discrete chunk of information that is unrelated to, say, (2 + 3 = 5). It is saying that this stands alone and cannot be derived from a more general principle. An example of a fact is the date of US Independence. It cannot be derived from other information. It is something you have to memorize - or better yet, look it up on the internet. That's what it is for.

Math on the other hand has principles. Addition is a principle. Once you know the principle, all "addition facts" get subsumed under it. Once you know (2 + 2 = 4), you can derive (2 + 3 = 5). Knowing what addition is all about enables you to add in real life when you have to add numbers you have never added before.

Both Manisha and I have a common secret - we never learned multiplication tables! On the other hand we became very good at figuring out the problem in our heads because we knew the basic principles involved. (We excelled in math and ended up going to an elite engineering college.) We are happy to see Supriya go in that direction as well. She knows the principles of addition, subtraction, multiplication and some rudiments of fractions. That's what we want to build on.

Knitting

I wrote a while ago that Supriya has learnt to knit at Harmony Hill. Manisha used to knit a long time ago. After a lot of pestering from me she went to a yarn store yesterday and bought herself knitting needles and a couple of skeins of wool. Now she is working on a scarf. I think this is going to be a great activity for her to do with Supriya.

"Word-Problems"

Supriya and I are sitting at the kitchen table. She is eating her breakfast and asks me for math problems. She cannot do big numbers in her head yet, so I think up problems that are a little complicated yet do not involve big numbers.

"If you go trick-or-treating to 10 houses and you get 2 pieces of candy at each house, how much candy will you have?"
"That's easy. 20, because 10 and 10 is 20."

"If we invite Robbie and his family over and each of us eats 2 cupcakes, how many cupcakes will we need?"
"20. 8 for us and 12 for them."

"We invite Robbie's family over. Now the kids eat 2 cupcakes each and the grownups eat 3 each, how many will we need?"
"24. 12 for the adults (3 times 4) and 12 for the kids (6 times 2), and 12 plus 12 is 24."

Manisha and I always amused when people talk about "word-problems," as if they are different and inherently more difficult creatures than symbolic problems. Since we know that math is just a way of representing reality using symbols, in our minds
there is no difference between word problems and the "other kind" of problems. The whole discipline of formalized mathematics developed because we wanted to solve problems in the real world - and as a matter of fact, the real world poses only word-problems!

Evidently Supriya thinks like we do. She effortlessly translates word-problems into their symbolic form and solves them.

I also asked her, "If 5 + M = 10, what is M?" She had no problem finding the answer.

At this stage Supriya has learned the essence of basic math, that it's a way of representing operations on quantities in real life. The rest is just details...

Supriya's Reading

Supriya was sick today and we were home the whole day. She spent a lot of time reading "Red, Stop, Green, Go", asking me for help a few times, but more-or-less doing it all on her own. She knows many words by sight now and knows how to sound out many more. She really wants to read and so she is keeping at it. The ball is definitely moving forward...

More on the Genographic Project

I wrote about the Genographic Project recently. This week the participation kit arrived. In it are two cool items (in addition to the cheek-swab sample kit): a map of the human migration over the last 60,000 years and a DVD. The DVD contains a feature called "The Journey of Man", narrated by Dr. Spencer Wells. Definitely recommended. Today I watched the show and Supriya sat next to me the whole time riveted - the whole 1 1/2 hours! I did my best to explain the whole concept to her. She got some parts of it (that we are all related if we go back far enough), although the numbers were a little too big for her to grasp (45,000 years - how much is that?!).

Tomorrow I plan to do my own cheek-swab samples so that I can find out for myself where my ancient ancestors originated!

Making Change

Supriya and I worked on making change the other day. She sat in her chair with her container of loose change. I sat across from her and said, "This bottle of Starbucks coffee is worth 13 cents [in my dreams!]. I want to buy it from you, so I give you these 2 dimes or 20 cents." She gave me the bottle and then counted out 7 pennies.

Next we tried with the bottle costing 20 cents and me buying it with a quarter. No problem. She counted out 5 pennies and then noticed that the 5 pennies can be replaced by a nickel.

We had tried this a couple months ago also, but she could not understand the process then. Now she is ready for it. Much of this elementary math seems to be a matter of being ready for it. Once the child is ready, the mathematical process or solution is obvious to them - with no pushing or drills.

Supriya is Swimming!

Today Supriya hit a milestone. She went from one end of the pool to the other, breathing "properly"! She has been doing a good imitation of a swimming dog for a while now. She can also put on her mask and swim a fair distance using the snorkel to breathe with her face under water. I felt that it was time for her to do some real swimming. I noticed that she was putting her head in the water but was not letting the air out in the water. After I pointed it out to her she tried it a few times and was able to breathe out under water before coming up and taking a new breath. Today I was getting a little impatient with her not swimming properly and so I pushed her a little and she did it!

She also spent a lot of time today doing somersaults in water. She claimed she did 3 in a row. She also touched the pool floor today for the first time - the shallow part by herself and the deep end (5 feet) with my help. She is getting to be quite the fish...

Star Wars

Supriya has caught the Star Wars bug. We got the stragely numbered "Episode 4: A New Hope" (the first movie of the series, produced in 1977) from Netflix last week. She has watched it about 4 times already. Now Episode 5 is on its way and I foresee a repeat.

Supriya had a very astute comment as the movie was ending. She asked Manisha if Darth Vader dies in that huge explosion of Death Star. Manisha said she did not think so. Supriya added, "That's right. If he dies, how can there be more movies?"