Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "Incidental exposure" for math?

Been pondering lately: DD-almost-6 is obsessed with Beast Academy. She is totally not "ready", but she loves the monsters and keeps bugging me to read even though I know she's zoning out on much of the math. But it finally occurred to me -- she IS learning math. Terms are becoming familiar, ideas are making partial sense, and she's easing her way in to understanding.

We take it for granted for most subjects -- language arts, topical knowledge, etc. -- that early immersion and accidental exposure in a rich environment matters. We don't wait for targeted instruction when the child is "ready."

Why not with math? Why do we (collectively, as a culture, not neccessarily parents on this board) withhold it until the day the kid is deemed ready, and then say, "Here are exponents, understand them now or else"?

Oh, and when Beast Academy was covering proto-algebra, DD said "Hey, that's like DragonBox!" and we had to scamper off and play a little DragonBox. I'd been dubious about DragonBox, since it's not really teaching algebra, it's just teaching a set of rules for manipulating. But my opinion of it just shot up. DragonBox is giving them a sense of familiarity and comfort-level and ownership of algebra-world. That can only be a good thing when they start doing algebra for real.

We have quite a lot of incidental maths in our house. I like maths so I don't mind having random conversations about it. A lot of people are uncomfortable with it though.

Your dd may enjoy Hands on Equations

Yes, we are huge fans of math chat and incidental exposure. :-)

We also have a lot of math chat at home, usually kid-driven. One of my favorites was teaching percentages while in the car on the freeway. DS6, then 4, wanted to know how fast I could go without getting a ticket. I told him 10% over the speed limit...I was on a freeway with a speed limit of 60 at the time, and on the way home we were on streets with speed limits of 40, 35 and 30. It was a fantastic exercise and he still "gets" percentages. We saw a sign in front of a Pawn Shop the other day and he commented that TV's were 25% off, so if we need one we should go get it there.

Cooking is a huge source of implicit math in our house. I try to include DS in all our cooking--both for pride in his work and to encourage him to eat more--and the math is a happy incidental.

We are a number family as well. Dd4.5 gets a lot of incidental exposure and it is no surprise that she has a natural ability with numbers. Dh and I think in numbers and find it easier to express ideas using figures and data. Dd has started doing that too. Re: language arts it is a different story. Neither I nor dh are that great with languages (except technical writing). I used to read a lot but not so much anymore, dh does not read for pleasure at all. No wonder dd only started reading after she turned 4 and still does not really enjoy reading.

I think with language and literacy education, people get the holistic nature of it whereas with math, we tend to think of it in term of scope and sequence. A K teacher isn't going to discourage her students from attempting beginning readers if she reads Charlotte's Web to her class but I think there is an unfounded fear that if she tries to expose them to higher math, it could lead to confusion or even worse, a math phobia.

Thought y'all might be interested in this site:

http://www.moebiusnoodles.com/

Bought the book the other day after reading about it in an article on kids doing calculus. It's got some neat activities, but there are things on the site as well.

Ironically, I think the oppposite is true. Kids get a message of "oo, scary, you're not ready for this yet, don't try this at home."