When I told my 5-year-old daughter that I bought her a book about math at the school book fair instead of the cheesy dinosaur paperback she had requested, she angrily walked 20 feet ahead of me the whole way home from school and refused to talk to me. When I asked her to just take a look at it, she snapped, "I hate math" (already, at 5?!?). But then she saw the illustration on the front cover, and she agreed to look through it. Then she asked me to read it to her. Then she hung the poster above her bed and I spent the next week reading this book to her every day. Now she counts herself among the people who like math and even recommended this book to an adult who she knows also likes math.
I wondered if she was just enjoying the illustrations and the really fun prose, so one day I asked her what negative numbers are. She explained that's what you use to count numbers that are less than zero. She's not perfectly clear on all the concepts in the book, of course, but what's important to me is that she now sees that math has a fun and exciting side. Now that she knows that there are cool math ideas out there, hopefully she won't just go back to "I hate math" as we slog through the basics of addition and subtraction.
I wondered if she was just enjoying the illustrations and the really fun prose, so one day I asked her what negative numbers are. She explained that's what you use to count numbers that are less than zero. She's not perfectly clear on all the concepts in the book, of course, but what's important to me is that she now sees that math has a fun and exciting side. Now that she knows that there are cool math ideas out there, hopefully she won't just go back to "I hate math" as we slog through the basics of addition and subtraction.
