Counting fingers A while back I met a mathematician. He is the husband of a colleague. He found my Talking Math with Your Kids project fascinating and asked repeatedly for additional examples of the conversations I have had with Griffin and Tabitha. He referred to...
I took the kids camping this weekend. Jay Cooke State Park is lovely. I recommend a visit if you have never been. We had the following conversation at the campsite on Saturday evening. Me: Griff, we have two pears and three people. What should we do about...
Jim Trelease's The Read-Aloud Handbook is lovely and very helpful for parents wanting to immerse their children in the world of written and spoken language, stories and books. I aspire to creating the math version of this; the Read-Aloud Handbook of...
On a family trip to a farm from which we have bought a tremendous amount of produce this year, Griffin and I were heading to the pumpkin patch. We had already taken the wagon ride to the other pumpkin patch; where the pie pumpkins were grown. We had helped with the...
Long ago, we were given the game "What's Gnu?" as a gift. What better time to dig it out than in the waning days of summer leading up to the return of school? So Tabitha (six years old) and I did just that a couple weeks back. Neither one of our children has been...
I was in New York City for a conference recently. I arrived at JFK airport on a Monday evening and took public transportation into the city. I observed the following scene. --- At about 8:30 p.m., a mother and her (roughly) 6-year old twin girls board the train and...
...it's probably true for number language too. University of Pennsylvania researchers have studied the quality of parents' speech to their toddlers, and its relationship to the children's vocabulary later on. "Quality" of speech was measured by how well an adult...
We were driving home recently. Griffin was in the back seat reading his book about U.S. Presidents. Griffin (9 years old): Who was the capital of Wisconsin named for?Me: Is this a quiz or a question? This is an important distinction with Griffin. He has both in his...