Three. Five. Two.

It finally happened. Today, Babe actually struggled with something. Struggled hard, too. To the point where I nearly stopped all work for today. But since I know that the end of this week will be hectic, I had to carry on and forced myself to stay calm amidst her frustrations with...

...Math.

Today I introduced her to the idea of cutting numbers into fourths. Now, her frustrations may have been my fault all along, as I may have made it way too hard by making her use numbers in addition to shapes and towers, but she was pretty unfocused all morning so I figured with plenty of repetition she'd get the hang of it.

I started off by making her build a tower four blocks high. I asked her if she could tell me if four is an even number. She cut the tower into two equal parts and told me yes, four is an even number. Then I asked her to cut the two equal parts into half again. She did. I separated the blocks so there were four equal parts, and told her that she just cut 4 into four equal parts.

"How many blocks are in each equal part?"

"Four."

This was her answer two more times, and then when she started guessing, I had to quickly think of a new route (especially since I was repeating the words "fourths" and "four"). So I tried using the number eight, since I could say "How many blocks are in each fourth of eight?" without her getting completely confused.

She built a tower eight blocks tall, then cut it in half, then in half again.

"Four equal parts!"

"Good! How many in each part? In each fourth?"

"Two!"

Awesome! We were finally getting somewhere. I pushed my luck a little bit and asked her to do the same exact thing with a tower 12 blocks high. She cut it in half, told me that 12 is an even number, and cut each half into half again.

"OK, how many are in each fourth?"

"12?"

Dang. Back to square one. I asked her to look at the blocks that were sitting in front of her and tell me how tall each tower was.

"3."

"Yes! So that means 3 is one-fourth of...?"

"3?"

OK...not so awesome. I asked her to take a little brain-break and told her that we'd start all over with the Math lesson in 10 minutes. She hated that idea, but I was adamant about her clearing her mind, so she went and played until the timer went off.

While she was taking a break, I reviewed the Calvert Math Manual with a different perspective. I think the point of this lesson was to get the Kindergartner comfortable with the basic idea of splitting things into four equal parts, not necessarily knowing what one-fourth of a specific number is. So I went with that and drew four shapes onto a sheet of paper - a heart, circle, square, and diamond.

I called her back to the table, had her cut out each shape, and we started with the square. I asked her to cut it in half, which she did, and then asked her to cut each half into half again, which she did. I pointed out that she just cut the square into four equal parts.

"Yeah! They are the same size!"

I then had her do the same thing with the diamond, without my help. She did.

Then I asked her to cut the heart in half. When she did that, I asked her if she thinks she could cut the heart into four equal parts. She cut.

"These aren't the same shape."

"Right! So can a heart be cut into four equal parts?"

"No."

Awesome. Then I had her cut the circle into four equal parts, without my help. She did!

Alrighty, that was successful. I had her do the worksheets, and just to end on a challenge, I had her build a tower eight blocks tall. I asked her if she could remember how many is half of eight.

"I know this one. Four."

"Yes! Good job! Do you remember what one-fourth of eight is?"

She cut the tower in half, then half again.

"Two!"

"Awesome job!"

We ended Math with a smile, which is the complete opposite of how we started it, so that felt good. But by now it was nearly lunch time, so we didn't have time for much else. I got out "My Dad and I" by Julio Ricardo Baerga for her to read and add to her reading log. We didn't have time to name the nouns in the book, but she was able to read it easy.

I then had her draw a picture of something she likes to do with her dad.

I recognized the couch immediately and asked her what she likes doing with her dad.

"I love snuggling with dad on the couch while we watch TV. And we play feetsies."

Ha! Adorable!

Lately, I've noticed that the way she writes some of her letters is a little lax, so for the last 15 minutes before lunch, I had her practice writing the alphabet on manuscript paper in her very best handwriting.

And with that, it was the end of the day.

On to Wednesday!