six

The bigger the number, the greater the trouble,

Except when the little one you can double.

Pair two threes, it's quite a trick,

In no time at all, you've built up six.

from Number Qualities Verse, Enki Education 1st Grade Academic Activity

We are using one story, "The Evil Giant", a Colombian Fairy Tale, as an introduction to our work with six, eight, and ten. The focus on these number is the doubling of numerals we've already worked with -- doubling 3 gives us 6, doubling 4 gives us 8, and doubling 5 gives us 10.

Our initial recall the day after we read the story didn't go very well -- this is by far the most complicated, and longest, fairy tale I've read to the boys, and it apparently was just a bit over their heads. J gave an attempt at recalling it, but was missing most of the key points, and Zoo Boy acted like he'd never heard it before. So we ditched our plans to work with "6" on Tuesday and instead I read the story to them again, this time using simple silk scarves and a couple of doll house dolls to illustrated the story a bit. Recall yesterday went MUCH better -- a little too well, in fact, as the kids had actually memorized some of the lines and ALL of the details, so rather than a brief summary, I basically got to hear the entire story again. And then J spent the next two hours drawing illustrations to go with his retelling.

After the recall, we discussed doubling, and when it was obvious that the kids weren't "getting" the concept, I broke out some M&Ms to illustrate (which was a very popular decision). Then we discussed the number "6" -- which is two "3s". I hadn't really planned on pulling a "6" from the story, but the kids were insistent on finding one, and find one we did -- there were six ways that the Giant preserved his life --he hid his "life" candle inside an egg, which he hid inside a dove, which he hid inside an ox, which he hid inside a box, which he hid at the bottom of the ocean. Candle, egg, dove, ox, box, ocean -- 6 things! J was excited and asked for a led drawing, which I was only too happy to oblige him with (this first is my drawing).

Here's J's version. Rather than writing out the 6 things as I did, he chose to write the first letter of each of the 6 things in the margin of the drawing.







Zoo boy opted out of the led drawing, wanting to come up with his OWN six. We had discussed the 6 legs on an insect, but he was insistent on finding a 6 in our lives. And so he did -- the 6 parts of our ceiling fan -- 4 blades, plus the light, plus the pull string. That's just SO Zoo Boy....


Today we drew our 6s, and our dots (two sets of 3 to make up 6) and our geometric figure. As you can tell from J's writing (the first photo on this page), our geometric figure was a Star of David (which is two triangles -- our geometric figure for "3" -- overlapping). J had no problem with this, but Zoo Boy has all sorts of trouble. He started over in a few different locations and allowed me to draw dots to help him, Finally he got it, in the upper right hand portion of this drawing (too bad he picked such a light colored crayon to work with!). I drew the dots for the first triangle and labeled them A, B, and C, and let him draw that first. Then I drew the dots for the overlapping triangle and labeled those 1, 2, and 3, and he was able to follow those and complete his figure. He was quite pleased with the results, and I was quite impressed with his ability to work through something that was very difficult for him without getting frustrated with it (or me)!