Digits

This isn’t a math game, though I decided to mention it here. Tonight I decided to introduce the idea of digits to Penny. Not sure where I’m going with this, but in general I think teaching her the language of mathematics is important, and also allows me to make up different games involving the number of digits in a number.

We first learned how to find the number of digits, which is simply counting the numbers…in a number! So 24 has two digits, and 300 has three digits. I then showed her some crazy! things, like how two 1-digit numbers can sometimes add up to a single 2-digit number! (5 + 5 = 10). We had fun with this, and I quizzed her later in bed and she got tickles if she got a wrong answer. Hey, if she’s laughing about math, I’m doing my job.

I don’t want to push it quite yet, but I feel it shoudn’t be more than a few months before I can start showing her how to add multi-digit numbers on paper, using the carrying method. I don’t feel she’s ready for that yet. Subtraction will be much later, I feel. It might be a situation where I introduce it and then wait for her to show interest in how I did it.

Anyway, I’ll be thinking of some game we can play using digits. If you have any ideas, please let me know!