Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Math abilities - age?

As I was answering the reading thread, I thought we don't get much on math abilities and when.

DD is more mathy. First math answers would "pop" into her head. Like when she was 2 and she would subtract 97 from 106. Not something we expected or asked of her. As she learned to add and subtract linearly, in preschool, it seemed to slow down as she understood how it was done. Then it speeded up again. Her concepts of multiplication followed.

After she turned 3, she worked in the math area of her montessori school and got the concept of base 10, 100s, 1000s. After 4, she got more into multiplication.

After 4, her father would let her keep the change in his pocket if she could count it, so she had to do it in her head, 25 + 2(10)+3(5)+6(1)= sort of thing for quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies.

Ren

DD3 is pretty much still at the counting stage. She can count to fourteen with perfect accuracy (I would say twenty, but she always skips fifteen), and can count backwards from five (both things she taught herself). She does very simple addition, but that's about it. She loves math and is always wanting to talk about numbers. I suppose I need to make a concerted effort to actually teach her something, since she is so interested. I'm not really sure how to go about it, though. Perhaps a chart.

DS is most gifted in math (and critical thinking/abstract reasoning). Just after his fourth B-day, he skip counted alternately by fives, twos, and tens to almost 5,000 on the way home from the airport, quitting only when we pulled into the driveway.

Figuring sales tax for fun as a Ker is pretty impressive!

What is it with 15? That number caught my DS up for the longest time to.

Math is probably DS5 second best area. He started addition on his own at 3 and subtraction came soon after that. Then he didn't do much with it for a while. Recently I decided to show him some math stuff & see how he did. Odd & even was a snap along with there properties. Multiplication is a little tricky for him yet but he does fine with division. He has also been known to climb up in my lap to learn fractions.

Whenever I make him a sandwich, I let him decide how many piece it should be cut in. This was fine until recently he decided it should be cut into 100 pieces. That is because 100 is his favorite number.