Glitter's Shark tooth

Glitter has a shark tooth.

 

 

Glitter takes rehearsals seriously

Glitter takes rehearsals seriously. She wanted to get a notebook to write down her rehearsals just like Her big sister. Here she is looking up her info on the call board and writing it in the booklet I made for her.

 

Inside Glitter's Brain

Sometimes it is fun watching how Glitter thinks.

At dance On Thursday I show Glitter the call board where the rehearsal schedule is posted. I want to teach my kids the habit of checking the bulletin board for important info. I help Glitter find when her next rehearsal is. Then the precious child takes out her phone and tries to input the rehearsal on her phone!!! She navigates to the calendar on her phone and is trying to figure out how to enter an event. (Now, before I get blasted for having a six year old with a phone, it was a gift from Santa two years ago because it was the easiest way to give her a camera which she dearly wanted. This phone has never even been activated and shows the wrong date and time.)

Anyway, I try to steer Glitter away from putting the rehearsal in her phone because, quite frankly, I have no idea how to do it and there are other people who want to see the call board (and they have phones in hand). I give her some lame excuse that I just wanted her to know when the rehearsal is, but she doesn't have to jot it down. The sweet girl just knew that everyone else puts this type of info in their phones, and she has a phone with a calendar, so of course she wanted to act like a big girl too.

Then today on the way to dance Glitter was musing about the size of the theatre and wondered how many people it could seat. When I started talking with her she shushed me saying she was trying to do the math. So, I shut up and wonder what math she is doing. A few minutes later she asks me if 15 time 20 is 300. Um, I mentally double 15 to get 30, and tack the zero on, yes, it is 300. I tell Glitter that she is right. But I am amazed that she figured it out. I only just told this child what multiplication is last week!!!!

So I press Glitter to explain how she figured it out. She doesn't answer for a while, and I get fearful that explaining herself is too hard a task. But then she explains it in a way that makes total sense! First she broke the fifteen into a five and ten. She took 20 fives and figured out that is a hundred. (I think she might have known that it is ten pairs of fives, and each pair of fives is a ten.) Then she figured out that twenty tens is two hundred. Then she added the two hundred to the hundred and got three hundred. Makes perfect sense. This child is still in first grade and a month ago thought that multiplication was a different name for subtraction.

While I am trying to get over my amazement, I realize that I am totally missing the point. Why did she want to know 15 x 20? A few questions later Glitter explains that she was thinking that the theater had fifteen seats in front and twenty on the side. Fifteen in front and twenty on the side? I try to picture the front section of the theater and the side section, and it doesn't make sense. Then I realize that she means fifteen seats across the front, and the 'side' is when you walk down the side aisle. She means fifteen seats across the front, and twenty rows. I ask her if that is what she means, and she agrees. I am so flabbergasted that at the time it doesn't even occur to me to explain that the theater seats are not arranged 15 x 20.