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.
posted by MP at 10:02 PM
2 Comments:
Hi,
My name is Heather Daniels - I'm writing an article on unschooling and ran across your blog. Would you be willing to set up a time that I could call to ask you about how this works?
If you are, my email is hldaniels@students.phc.edu
Thanks!
3:05 PM
Right on Ron. As the Chinese saying goes, "When the student is ready the teacher appears." But it's so much easier to go by your schedule and not pay attention to where the individual learner is! Then you are free to claim that if they don't learn, something is wrong with *them*.
10:39 PM
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