TMWYK Sausages and Equality

Maybe I TMWYK's more than most people.

It is Sunday morning and I am cooking sausages. G is awake and C is still sleeping.

G: "Ya we are having sausages." He walks over to the oven and counts out loud informing me he is having all of them.

Me: "Now that's not fair." I quickly count the sausages and there are 14. I inform G that we will all get 4. Selfishly I will get 6. But I am not telling him that.

G: "There are 14.

Me: "Yes."

G: "We get more than 4."

Me: "How many do we get?"

G comes over and looks in the frying pan and starts splitting it up in groups of 5. When he gets to the third group and realizes there are only 4 for that group. "We can't do this."

Me: "So if we give everyone 4, how many will we have left?"

By now Cole has come downstairs.

G: "2"

Me: "So what if we cut them up and split them up?"

G: "OK"

C: "Dad did you know it is an odd day?"

C has no idea what the date is. I know that.

Me: "How do you know it is an odd day?"

C: "We are learning about odd and even numbers at school. Our last school day was an odd day. So that makes yesterday an even day and today an odd day."

Me: "Oh"

I am trying to get breakfast ready.

C: "One is an odd number. Two is an even number. Three is an odd number. Eight is my favourite number."

This leads to a discussion about favourites everything between C and G and many questions to me about my favourite everything.

Me: "Ok G we are ready to do the sausage thing."

Me: "How many on each plate?"

G: "4"

We put four on each plate and two on the cutting board.

Me: "Ok where are we cutting these."

G blurts out "In thirds." G grabs the knive and with my help shows me where to make the first cut. It is through both sausages at the one third mark-bang on. He quickly says " And the second cut is here." Bang on. And then he says "And the third cut goes." He stops himself realizing there is no sausage left to cut and says "There is no third cut."

Me: "Ok so how are we sharing this?"

G: "We each get two. There are 6, so we each get two."

Great. Too bad mom is already gone to her course-she would of been impressed.

TMWYK

TMWYK means talk math with your kids. If you do a google search of it you get this:

 

So this just happened on my way home from lunch with my two boys in the van.

They are G who is 7 and C who just turned 6. And to be fair I am a math teacher, and we do talk math often (usually in the van). This is just the first time I am writing about it.

G: "There is 60 minutes in an hour C. If you take one minute away you would have 59."

Me: "That's right G. And if I took 7 minutes away from 1 hour what would you get?"

Pause

G: "53 minutes"

Me: "Nice. What if you took 10 minutes away?"

G: "That's easy. 50"

Me: "20 minutes way?"

G: "Easy. 40"

Me: "G, if you had 1 and took away 3, where would you end up?

Pause

G: "At minus 2"

Me: "How do you know about minus numbers?"

G: "From the winter."

Me: "What do you mean?"

G: "When it's cold the TV says it's minus ten."

I wonder how far I can push it.

Me: "So G. If you started at minus 2 and took away 3 more where would you end up?

G: "Minus 5."

Me: "If you started at minus three and added 5 more where would you end up?

G: "2"

We pull into the lane way.

C: "Dad did you know 3 is in the middle of 1 and 5.

Me: "Can you tell me two other numbers 3 is in the middle of?

C: "1 and 6."

Me: "Not quite C. If three is in the middle then you need to go the same amount on each side of it. So with 1 and 5 we go over 2 each way. So C when you said 1 and 6, for 6 you went over 3 from 3, and for 1 you went back 2, so 3 is not in the middle of those two numbers"

G: "So nothing and 6."

C: "So 2 and 4."

Me: "So how far did you go over on that one?"

C: "1"

Me: "Nice. So if we went over 10"

G: "13 and....."

Pause. This is the moment.......

G: "Minus 7"

Me: "Nice G. OK boys let's go in. Mom's going to be home soon and we need to clean the house."

C and G: collective "awww"

As we are walking in C: "Dad can we do some more math?"

Nice!!!!

So  Mr. Danielson- surprising? What I should expect at this age? Other thoughts?

From circle man to triangle man! Love your work.

My first tweet up - one on one with Justin Lanier

Pretty cool evening recently. Tried to explain it to friend. Went down something like this.

Him: "What are you up to tonight?

Me: "Hooking up with a guy from the math twitter blogosphere"

Him: "What's that?"

Me: Long explanation about #MTBoS

Him: "Do you know him?"

Me: "Not really"

Him: "Do you know where he is from?

Me: "No."

Him: "Is it safe?"

Me: "Ya of course it is safe!"

Of course it is safe - in a way. The #MTBoS is a wonderful place. People share, contribute, vet ideas, and get to kinda know each other.

Then this happens:

So for the first time I go out and meet someone from the #MTBoS that is not from my own city.

And it is great. We talk about teaching and education. We talk about math. We share ideas. We tell stories.

We share personal stuff. We put a real face to a name we know online.

We tweet about our tweet up.

We both took a risk. We are that type of people.

We will meet again at twitter math camp in Jenks, Oklahoma this summer.

It is a great time to be in education-take risks-it is worth it.

As @BDMcLaurin would say freefall!