Aseem's Math

Aseem has been working on math on his own. He loves to count everything. We have also spent some time on the orange Miquon book. He has a very good handle on addition and subtraction. He knows what they mean and can do small numbers competently. Recently we came across a stumper. It read "3 + blank = 5". So I said, "If 3 plus something is 5, what is that something?" He repeated what I said but could not get his mind around it.

So yesterday I tried a different tack. I asked him, "If you have 3 pieces of candy and you want 5, how many more would you need?" "2", he said after about a second's thinking! This goes right back to John Holt's thoughts about math. Always start with "word problems" because kids can relate to them in a tangible way. Always go from the concrete to the abstract.