D: I know what 100 + 100 is. Do YOU want to know what it is?
Me: Yes please!
D: It’s 200. What’s 166 + 166?
Me: 332.
D: Ah. I think I know ALL the numbers now!
D: Today we learnt a new thing for numbers at school – dot, then line, then dot [drawing in the air]
Me: Ah – that’s ‘divided by‘.
D: Yes.
Me: So what’s 10 divided by 2?
D: I don’t know – 7?
Me: No. Look – there’s 10 pieces of tortellini, and if 2 people want to share them, how many pieces do they get each?
D: 5.
Me: Yes, well done!
D: And I know that 5 and 5 and 5 and 5 make 20.
Me: That’s right – so how many 5s is that?
D: 1-2-3-4.
Me: Yes! So the other way round, 20 pieces of tortellini divided by 5 people is 4 each.
D: So what’s 9 pieces of tortellini divided by 5?
Me: That’s when you have to go into fractions. Because everyone would get one whole piece, but there would only be 4 left after that and you’d have to chop them up to share them out – so they wouldn’t be whole numbers.
D: Guess what my teacher did today? She brought in 2 apples, and she cut them into pieces. The first one, she cut a TINY piece off and gave it to Mrs C, and she had the REALLY big bit. That wasn’t equal was it? How funny is that?! It’s really funny isn’t it?
Then she cut the second one in half down the middle.
D: We’ve got some homework to do – there’s a letter in my book bag.
Me: What’s the homework?
D: It’s literacy and maths. I don’t know what we have to do. Can you read the letter to me?
Me: You’re right – for literacy you’ve got to try and “write a simple sentence and join with ‘and’ or ‘but'” and for maths you’ve got to try and “know all the pairs of numbers that make 20 and the matching subtractions.”
D: Yes, like 5 and 5 and 5 and 5.
Me: That’s right – or 10 and…?
D: 10. Yeah – it’s homework. Does that mean I get the day off school?
D: Do you know the biggest number in the world?
Me: What is it?
D: Back to the beginning. One. That’s the biggest number. And do you know the number that comes before it?
One hundred and two thousand ten nine eight seven five four three two one hundred thousand thousand thousand… and two.
It’s bigger than ANY of the planets. If you put all the numbers in a line, it’s bigger than a Saturn. It’s a number in space.
D: How old are you?
Me: I can’t remember… 36.
D: I can’t count that high. I can only count to 40. I go up, and then back down again. Up and back down. Up-down.
Me: You’ll be able to count to 36 then – it comes before 40.
D: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… …22, 23, 24 – what comes next?
Me: 25.
D: 25 – what comes next?
Me: 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 – that’s how old I am – and then it’s 37, 38, 39, 40.
D: So you’re nearly 40?
iwantmarbles 