It's educational!

Steve buzzed me this evening to ask Bob and me to help another blogger out by filling out a simple online survey to help her kids' 3/4th grade class can learn about other communities, both in the United States and around the world. I did it, and I know they'd love to hear from any of you as well :)

Also, you know what's cool? Watching kids learn new concepts. I was playing cards with Julia this evening and she was keeping score. She generally adds up the points on the cards by counting the hearts or clubs or whatever on each card. But when it was time to add one hand's score to the running total, she couldn't do that. 29 + 13. She wrote the equation:

29
13
--

She thought about it, and was obviously starting from the left. I don't know if this is how they are learning to do it in school, or whether it's simply her instinct based on reading. So, she came up with "thirty-twelve" - now, she knows that's not actually a number, so she was really surprised when I told her she was right. She thought about it a little longer and determined that "thirty-twelve" is more commonly known as "forty-two."

Later on, she did the same thing again, getting "seventy-leven" for 58+23, and then parsing it to 81.