{"id":1024,"date":"2011-08-31T20:08:11","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T20:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kidnexions.com\/blog\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2012-07-21T15:50:52","modified_gmt":"2012-07-21T23:50:52","slug":"the-bad-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.familymathnight.com\/blog\/?p=1024","title":{"rendered":"The Bad Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It was 6:45 a.m. this morning when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet on the floor. \u00a0It was my 7-year old niece who was visiting for a few days. \u00a0I was shocked to see her peek into my office that early in the morning; I’ve seen her sleep til 10.<\/p>\n

But today was the last day of her short visit and I’m guessing she didn’t want to miss out on anything. \u00a0Ryan was up and fixing himself breakfast, John had just left for work, and I was answering emails. \u00a0Frankly, I’d have gone back to bed if I were her.<\/p>\n

Instead, to my surprise, she wanted to “do math”.<\/p>\n

“Don’t you want to eat breakfast first or have a cup of hot chocolate?” I asked her.<\/p>\n

“No. \u00a0I really want to do some math.”<\/p>\n

Alrightie, then. \u00a0I glanced around my office which is filled with mathy stuff. \u00a0I’ve been organizing the Family Math Night kits<\/a> so I had plenty of material to work with. \u00a0I pulled out the Intermediate activity for the ‘What’s My Rule?<\/em>‘ station. \u00a0We had done a few of these problems the night before so I figured she would be ready to create some of her own.<\/p>\n

She chose a butterfly rubber stamp and proceeded to stamp these on the blank What’s My Rule?<\/em> card. \u00a0I was impressed that I didn’t need to give her any direction. \u00a0She then began to record the numbers: \u00a04, 8, 12, 16. \u00a0She was counting the wings of the butterflies.<\/p>\n

“Hey, these numbers are like the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8,” she said.<\/p>\n

I beamed. \u00a0I love it when kids make connections.<\/p>\n

“Do you know what we call those numbers?” I asked.<\/p>\n

She didn’t so I supplied the answer.<\/p>\n

“They’re called even numbers.”<\/p>\n

“Oh yeah. \u00a0Even numbers.”<\/p>\n

“Do you remember what we call numbers like 1, 3, 5, 7?” I asked.<\/p>\n

“They’re the bad numbers,” she said.<\/p>\n

As sometimes happens when working with young kids who are just learning concepts, I was confused at her answer. \u00a0But she said it so matter-of-factly that I knew it must be coming from somewhere.<\/p>\n

“What do you mean by ‘bad numbers’?”<\/p>\n

“They’re the numbers that aren’t even. \u00a0You know, the bad numbers.”<\/p>\n

I could tell that she was trying to impress me with her math vocabulary knowledge. \u00a0So I had to stop and think. \u00a0And then it made sense to me. \u00a0To a young child, the definition of the word ‘odd’, can be taken to mean ‘bad’. \u00a0Since she’s more familiar with the word ‘bad’, and hasn’t had enough experiences yet in working with and communicating about odd numbers, her brain offered up the word that she associates with ‘odd’…the word ‘bad’.<\/p>\n

We spend a couple of minutes talking about numbers not being good or bad and what the word odd means. \u00a0She gets it. \u00a0She was even a little embarrassed that she had called the numbers ‘bad’. \u00a0But she shouldn’t be embarrassed at all. \u00a0After all, she was trying to assimilate something brand new. \u00a0It was a great reminder for me that it’s up to us adults to make sure we provide opportunities for our students to share their thinking and ask if they have any questions.<\/p>\n

And it made me wonder…who was the real student this morning?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was 6:45 a.m. this morning when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet on the floor. \u00a0It was my 7-year old niece who was visiting for a few days. \u00a0I was shocked to see her peek into my office that early in the morning; I’ve seen her sleep til 10. But today was the last day of her short visit and I’m guessing she didn’t want to miss out on anything. \u00a0Ryan was up and fixing himself breakfast, John…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,58],"tags":[66,67,21,22,65,62,61,40],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algebra","category-problem-solving-kids-and-math","tag-k-5-algebra","tag-k-5-math","tag-karyn-hodgens","tag-kidnexions","tag-math-lesson","tag-math-patterns","tag-number-sense-2","tag-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Bad Numbers - Karyn's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.familymathnight.com\/blog\/?p=1024\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Bad Numbers - Karyn's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It was 6:45 a.m. this morning when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet on the floor. \u00a0It was my 7-year old niece who was visiting for a few days. \u00a0I was shocked to see her peek into my office that early in the morning; I’ve seen her sleep til 10. 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