Math Problems

I was a bit of a math whiz when I was a little kid. In second grade, I was already attending math class with fourth graders, and my older friends in that class would then parade me around at recess to their friends, saying things like, “hey, tell this kid two numbers and he can multiple them in his head!” I did math puzzles, read math brainteaser books, and basically maxed out my nerd quotient in all possible directions.

Fast forward to the present, and neither of my kids have proven to be nearly as geeky as I am, which is mostly a good thing. But I do hope they’ll take to math, if only because it’s so fun and fundamental. (There I go with my inner dork.)

So I was delighted to see Jada meld her interest in drawing with her talent with numbers. She called me over one morning to show me that she was drawing math problems: two rocks, a plus sign, two more rocks, an equal sign, and the number four. I dropped my jaw and dropped whatever I was doing and immediately drew her two more math problems.

I think she was a little weirded out by my enthusiasm, because after she did the two problems, she rebuffed my suggestion that we do more, and she moved on to drawing tigers and flowers. No matter, I am glad she and I had that math moment. Hopefully more to come. And hopefully not too much of the ancillary dweebiness.