Five Plus Six

I really don’t intend to brag incessantly on my children. But, I want to remember. And, when one day Steven tries to give me fits about learning something, I want to point to this to rub it in his face. Heehee. Yes, I’m mean like that.

Doug had a meeting in Little Rock today, and we realized after we got home from our weekend trip that we had missed a few things on our Sam’s trip last weekend. So, we decided that the kids and I would tag along, drop Doug off at his meeting, go for lunch at Chick-fil-A, go to Sam’s, and then pick Doug back up.

Whenever we get in the car to go further than Stuttgart, the kids each want to pack a bag. Books and lovies typically go in the bags, but Steven often likes to stick a few cars in his, too.

At one point along the way, Steven counted his cars. He informed me that he had eleven cars. Then, he proceeded to say:

“I didn’t start with that many. I started with just five cars. Now I have eleven. Five plus…(pause)…five…no…(another thoughtful pause)…five plus six equals eleven!”

I just stared at him. Finally I got over my shock enough to ask him how he figured that out.

“Well, five plus five equals ten. One more than that is eleven. If you put that one more with the six, that means five plus six equals eleven. I had five cars, I added six more, and now I have eleven.”

No, I did not teach him that, and I don’t think his sisters did. He knows from his fingers that five plus five is ten because he has five fingers on each hand and ten total. Also, if he wants to know any addition facts between ten and five, he holds up his fingers for visual, but can do the math in his head immediately without actually counting the fingers.

I’m beginning to wonder what I’m actually going to teach him when he’s supposed to be in first grade in another year and a half – not to mention what in the world I’m going to do with him between now and then!!