Let me brag a bit on Zeke. He is such a smart cookie. Part of it is having older siblings who come home from school talking about all sorts of stuff and he wants to be just as smart as they are. Part of it is just who he is. He is a sponge and remembers everything. Because the big kids are working on addition and subtraction facts, Zeke thinks he ought to be too. So for months now, the big kids have been quizzing him on math facts. It's not unusual to hear them ask him "Zeke, what's 3 + 1?" and for him to answer correctly. It's also not unusual to have him ask me, "Mom, what's 2 + 2?" and then have him tell me the answer.
It's mostly just rote memorization with out a lot of actual understanding of what he is saying. Or so I thought. Tonight at supper he told me that 1 and 2 are close together. So that means that if you add 5 + 1 and then 5 + 2, that the answers have to be close together too and that the answers are indeed close together because the answers are 6 and 7. Teacher me was super impressed. Zeke didn't articulate it quite so clearly so D was completely confused and then slightly skeptical when I interpreted Zeke's version of how to find the answers. I raised my eyebrows and told D how that was pretty impressive for a 4 year old to understand.
And then Conleigh shared with us all the real reason why Zeke can do math problems. "Mom, he's smart like that because I let him smell my armpits at night."
I can not make this stuff up.
Not if I tried.
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