Bathroom Math- 9's

Emma- "Can I show you a cool way I can do math?"

Me- "Sure!"

Emma- "It's in the bathroom."

Now, I realize that we live a bit differently than most, but if your bathroom is tiled, or has squares of any kind, and your child tells you that they can do math in the bathroom, just go with it. 

Bathroom math is not a new concept around here, but it is still really cool. 

Today's session of bathroom math was more involved than the first time. First we counted the rows, columns, diagonals, and any other way we could think of. Then I showed Emma how to count by 3's and we went up to 12- we probably would have gone higher but we ran into the wall. I was explaining to Emma that 3 squares times 1 row equals 3, 3 squares times 2 rows equals 6, etc. Just trying to get the verbiage out there. 

Emma- "O.k. Mama, here is a math problem for you. If this square had a barn with 9 stables, and this one had 6 stables, and this one had 3 stables... Wait, if all of these in this row had 9 stables, this row all had 3 stables, and this row all had 6 stables, how many would we have?"

I am working on my public math, but I am not there yet.

Me- "So do you still have those little counting bears? What about the little block things that you can stack?"

Off to her bedroom to see what we have. 

Emma found the bears, but I think the small stacking blocks are at Gramma's. We went with mega blocks. 

This is what we ended up with. 

(please ignore the messy floor, we were busy learning math)

I liked using the mega blocks because it was a sneaky way to show Emma that numbers can be added together in different ways to get the same number. 

Anyway, Emma counted all the "stables" in the 9's row. I showed here that by combining the 3's row with the 6's row she gets the same number (27) as the row of 9's. She thought that was neat. 

We used pen and paper to add 27+27 (glossing over the concepts of adding 2 rows of numbers). She was impressed that we could have 54 horses. So impressed that she wanted to go get her model horses and see how many she could put in the bathroom. 

Even I have my limits on how much time I can spend playing in the bathroom. So, we cleaned up and now she is watching some Wild Kratz on PBS.com. 

I am always amazed at the ways this child learns.