Two odd things that makes me realize my kid is becoming her own person.

DD12 was on the middle school academic team and one of the boys from the team was talking to her at an event my store had a booth at. When the boy said he didn't like to read my daughter shut him down so fast his head spun. She wasn't mean to him but you could just see her thoughts like, "We are done here." She said she wasn't sure how he made the team since most the questions are over things that are not in regular education classes. I said maybe he watches documentaries, there's other ways to learn.


Then she was looking on youtube at trombone music (Her instrument in band) and she came across Nyan Cat produced as trombone music but played on a keyboard. (It's super fast for those who don't know.) She was so excited she asked me if I thought she could do it. (I also played trombone in school) I told her if she slowed it down at first and worked on it who knows what she could pull off. It's summer vacation and she found something that inspired her to practice over the summer.

So I'm sitting at the table the other day explaining factors to the primary-age little one, including some of the little "tricks" one can use to determine if a number is a factor, such as that if you add up all the digits of a multiple of 3, they will sum to 3, 6, or 9 (given enough iterations). A few minutes later, I ask, is 4 a factor of 72?

LO says "yes" immediately (even though LO does not have the multiplication facts memorized, and still does repeated addition to divide multi-digit numbers by 2). Surprised, I ask how LO knows this. Answer: the tens place is an odd number, and the ones place is a 2. I had to think about that for a minute.

I don't believe I had ever observed this, and, though math is not my personal strength, I am considered to be reasonably decent at math (I have a graduate degree in a STEM field). To top it off, the next child up quickly demonstrated that this is true for all whole numbers.

DD: I am going to be a soloist.
Me: Sounds great sweetie. Any other goals?
DD: Like what?
Me: Like finding a cure for cancer?
DD: Shouldn't the focus be on prevention?
Me: Yes but some people are genetically predisposed.
DD: How do we go about finding a cure?
Me: You have to ask the right questions.
DD: (talking into my phone) Siri, how do we find cures for cancer?

She has just turned 7 and as you can see, still as snarky and sassy as she can be.

YK, it's hard to argue with her question!

I am not sure when the school teaches Roman numerals. Obviously it wasn't third grade because my DS10 has not learned anything about it (He's going on fifth). However, DS8 "just know" them when he picked the third grade math topic on Roman numerals on IXL to work on last night. We were all surprised and asked him where he learned it? Videos? School? Books? He said no to all of them but could not tell us where else. This kid just surprises us like this :-)

Oh, he was also 72% complete on the 8th grade geography on Oceans and Continents on IXL last night, before going to bed.
This doesn't surprise us though because he memorized the world map since he was five.

It's great that your kiddo picked up knowledge of Roman Numerals as if by osmosis.

Common Core standards do not include Roman Numerals. A quick perusal of the Common Core Math Standards, a search of the 93-page downloadable CCSS Math Standards PDF file, and a use of the Common Core search tool for "Roman" in Math Standards do not find this topic.

If schools do not go beyond Common Core to teach this concept, then parents hoping for their children to become familiar with Roman Numerals may want to expose their children to the concepts and/or simply point out Roman Numerals when they see them IRL. This old blog post from 2013 mentions several contexts for the use of Roman numerals... including the Super Bowl, Olympic games, names of persons (such as Queen Elizabeth II). I can think of a few more: some styles of analog watches, clock faces (especially grandfather clocks), page numbering in book prefaces, formal outline formats.

A few resources:

1. Life of Fred covers Roman Numerals in 5th grade, along with Fractions.

2. I like this RapidTables Roman numerals chart as it contains all I need to know, in a concise format.

3. Another resource for learning Roman Numerals is a video (length 5:49) currently found through HippoCampus. Current navigation to the topic is as follows: Select MATH... Arithmetic... WHY-U Collection: Pre-Algebra Foundational Concepts... Roman Numerals: Sign-Value versus Positional Notation.

Wikipedia has a page on Roman Numerals here, which unfortunately seems to dismiss Roman Numerals as being somewhat obsolete... which may be reflective of Roman Numerals not being included in Common Core.

Indigo,

Thanks for the information. No wonder my fifth grader didn't learn the Roman Numerals in school. It is not included in the CC standard!

I will have DS10 learn this topic on IXL.

Sounds like a plan!
IXL lists Roman numerals for grades 1 (A.23), 2 (C.8), 3 (A.8), 4 (A.9), 5 (A.6), 6 (A.4).

Thank you!

We have moved overseas, and life is very different nowadays, but DD12 never fails to remind me how different her interests are from "typical" 8th graders...

I walked into her bedroom the other day to give her a good morning hug and found her reading an article on her phone. I asked her what it was, and she said she was reading about Ebola. Just the thing to start her day!!