Tag: skip-counting

If you ask him, Limerick will tell you that his favorite thing in the whole world is numbers. More than milk, more than cookies, more than hugs – numbers are the best. So I thought I would capture seven ways he shows that love for this week’s {SQT}! Join Kelly for the rest of the linkup 🙂

1. Limerick’s favorite numbers of all are 1, 11, 111, and so on – anything that is all 1’s. So the other day as we were skip-counting back and forth together the way we do, he decided we should count by 11. When he got to 1111 (and he was the one who got to say it!), he was so happy that he stood up on his chair and clapped his hands together while laughing for joy.
2. This past week he’s been asking me to make number coloring pages for him, where I’ll draw the outlines of numbers on a page and he’ll color them in. Well, for one of those pages, he decided the best way to color them in would be to fill all the little spaces with smaller versions of the number he was coloring – very meta 🙂

   

3. In addition to coloring numbers, Limerick likes me to make skip-counting number boards for him – this week alone we’ve made one that counted by 499, one that counted by 999, one that counted by 4, and one that counted by 1 but had all the multiples of 3 drawn in a different color. After a board is made we’ll play a game with it once or twice but then it is on to the next one! I sometimes think he just likes watching the numbers appear on the paper as I write them…
4. Speaking of watching numbers, Limerick’s favorite book, You Can Count On Monsters by Richard Schwartz, gives him plenty of chances to do just that. He will sit for hours poring over every page of the book, noticing how the focal number of each page breaks down into its factors and figuring out how the accompanying monster illustration incorporates those factors (or the number itself, if it is prime). He’s been through it at least three times this week, taking 2-3 hours each time, and it doesn’t seem to be growing old yet.
5. I pulled out a math workbook for Limerick this week also, thinking he might be interested, and so far he has just been turning the pages looking at all the numbers and math problems and shapes. He isn’t interested in writing anything down, but when I ask him about any of the problems he knows the answer instantly, or knows how to figure it out. There are some fractions later in the book that would be more of a challenge for him, though, so maybe that will catch his attention eventually. It’s a bit of a tightrope balancing between guiding him towards new information and allowing him the joy of freely exploring numbers without pushing or interfering.
6. I did, however, get to explain different base systems to him this week! I just sat down at the table and started counting in hexadecimal on a piece of paper, and he glanced over and was immediately intrigued. We discussed what place value means in the context of the various base systems, and ended up writing out 1-32 in decimal, hexadecimal, binary, and base 6. I think binary was his favorite because there were so many 1’s and the numbers got long so quickly!
7. One other fun book we’ve read through a few times (though not as recently) is Bedtime Math by Laura Overdeck. It’s been a great introduction to the application of numbers, and a challenge for Limerick to translate the words into the more familiar arithmetic. He’s actually quite good at tracking along with the question as I read it, deciphering the logical connections, and doing the math in his head – he can for most of the stories do even the most difficult problem on the page already!

All in all, I just have to echo Limerick and say that he really does love numbers the best 🙂 And he has, honestly, since he was 18 months old and would sit on the driveway drawing them in wide circles around himself until he was familiar with each one, and since he was 2 years old and would count the bites remaining on his plate at dinner and practice subtracting them as he ate. I’m looking forward to watching this love continue to grow with him in the years to come!