Numerical Oyster

[radegund]

[cross-posted to Who Teaches Whom?]

It's wall-to-wall numbers at the moment. I don't know how many sets of Numberjacks I've cut out of paper in the last week. (For the uninitiated, the CBeebies show Numberjacks is about superheroes who are also numbers and solve maths-related problems

Comments

[rmc28]

That's really interesting, especially the classroom thing. Charles is quite enchanted by simple counting out loud - I tend to stop after each ten (30, 40, 50, etc) and he looks at me and says MORE. Or he tells me "no mummy, you stop counting I'M DOING IT" and does quite well.

[radegund]

I do lots of counting too. It's resurfaced after ages of dormancy, actually - I remember last summer, driving along singing the numbers to (a) entertain the Oyster, and (b) sing the Feaster to sleep.

[rivka]

This is really fascinating! Thanks for sharing. It's so cool that he has this comfortable sense of ownership of the numbers.

[radegund]

Yes, I love the fact that he feels entitled to make up numbers and change the order around :-)

[ailbhe]

The colours thing is fascinating to me. Can you ask him what colour is seventeen and get an answer? Or is it about the written one? That's so cool.

[radegund]

Yes, I can ask what colour a number is and get an answer. I think the basic 0-9 colours determine the higher ones. 17 and 27 are both red, for instance. The 10s go by the 0-9 colours (30 is green, etc.). I'm not sure what happens after 100, which is orangey-brown.

Sometimes he colours the circles in with "the Numberjack colours", as distinct from "the real colours". And the other day he asked me to colour in a set with my colours. When I said I didn't really have colours that always went with particular numbers, he said, "well, just do them with the colours they mostly have".

[ailbhe]

Oh, wow.