math progress

Me: "[Storyteller], we need to eat dinner."
Story: "How about when I'm done with math?"
Me: "How much math are you going to do?"
Story, flipping through his Math Mammoth workbook: "I already did one page, and I want to do this page... and this page... and this page... six more pages?"
Me: "Um. Hm. Okay. Just don't take too long, alright?"
Story: "Well as long as I can learn it easily I won't."

The Scientist these past two weeks read a lot of Life of Fred books. He went through Decimals and Percents, Beginning Algebra, Pre-Algebra: Biology, and Pre-Algebra: Economics. He wanted to read Geometry but I made him wait until Advanced Algebra got here to read that first, since the author intended the series to go in that progression. It hasn't arrived yet. I hope he's still interested when it does. I also got him Trigonometry. My ten-year-old's cry of joy at learning of that amused bystanders.

Scientist's not doing the exercises, though he is reading through them and the solutions, so I'm not sure how much of the mathematics he's retaining. I figure a preview will only help him feel friendly with the material when it comes time to work through the problems.

This morning the Hero, while helping me make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, asked me what half means. My other children picked this concept up before kindergarten just by hearing the word in daily life. They never asked me what it means. I found myself momentarily at a loss to explain. This is something intuitive, something primary. Finally I told him that if he put the same amount in the mixing bowl that he left in the measuring cup, both amounts would be half of the canned pumpkin. He said, "Oh," and carried on measuring and distributing ingredients without any mention of halves. As we were finishing up the dough, just putting chocolate chips into it, he came out with, "If we had four chocolate chips, two would be half of them." I told him he was right, and he said, "If we had three chocolate chips, it would be hard to find the half." I explained that we'd need to halve one of the chips. He laughed at the silliness of halving to get a half. Then he found the half of two, six and eight. I called him a smarty pants. It didn't come up again.