Are You Smarter Than a 5 Year Old?

Let me tell you about my nephew and aspiring mathematician. I had the opportunity to spend some time with him last weekend. He is not quite 5 and will start Kindergarten in the fall. We went to a playground and did the usual horseplay one would expect 2 guys to do. When we got back to his home is when it really got interesting. He likes math and his mom told him I am a math teacher. He took out a whiteboard so he could display his math mastery. He started by adding one-digit numbers and showed how to add 10 to any number. Then he showed some of his subtraction skills. He didn’t stop there. He went on to do multiplication and division with small numbers. I’m not sure how this came up but he told me that 16 was a square number. Wow! So, we discussed rectangular numbers like 8 and 12 and square numbers like 16. We talked about why 16 is a square number and I introduced him to some other square numbers (4 and 9). He grasped the concept quite well and we talked about why 3 and 7 are not rectangle or square numbers. I stopped short of talking about prime numbers. After all, he’s not yet 5 years old. 😊

We then watched one of his favorite TV shows, numberblocks.tv. They were talking about patterns starting with 8 red cubes, then alternating red and blue cubes and then alternating green, blue and red cubes. Theo did not think that 8 red cubes constituted a “pattern”. I was amazed that I was having an intellectual debate with a pip-squeak about patterns.

I won’t see himfor another month or so. I have this nagging thought that I may need to brush up on my math skills before then. 😊