Quick question....

[conuly]

Let's say you had to do some math in your head. No calculator or pen and paper, though you could also use your fingers and toes (or other body parts as appropriate. As a kid, I'd count to twelve by closing my eyes!)

There's a lot of ways to do this, and they don't all rely on what you do when writing with pen and paper.

Like, take 8 + 5. Working with Ana, I've found that I usually add 5 + 5 and then 3 more. I could also add 8 + 2 and then 3 more, but even though that's the same equation I would not do that. I don't know why. It's just easier to break apart the numbers that aren't fives.

Ana starts with 8 and starts counting upward. Evangeline... well, that's a bit big for her, but with smaller numbers she counts with her fingers, even if she's not using her fingers. So she would go "One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight" before counting straight up to 13.

But I have no idea what other people do. I'm sure there's a huge range of things. (I'm sure plenty of people have, for the sake of convenience, all their single digit combinations memorized, for example.) What do you do?

Comments

[conuly]

I've been trying since I learned it to teach Ana chisanbop for that same reason, but she's reluctant to take it on. Maybe we'll work on it this summer. (Along with her cursive and "teaching Eva to read". Not because I want Evangeline to read so much, but because I hope that if we approach this from the right angle I can help Ana fix her spelling so she doesn't get so frustrated when writing. She HATES being wrong.)