todd and evan

Even's end is great

O, 4, 6, 8!

Odd ends every time

With 1, 3, 5, 7, 9.

-from "Even and Odd Dance", Enki Education 1st Grade Academic Activity

This week we are working with the math concept of odd and even, introduced via an Enki Education Math story called "Todd and Evan". The two brothers both amass an army to defend their kingdom, Evan arranging it so that every soldier has a partner to look out for them, and Todd leading the way before the troops. I like J's drawing so much more than my own, I'm not even going to include mine this week. The boys' drawings are so much more detailed than mine.


Zoo Boy's drawing. So we read the story on Tuesday, then did our story drawings yesterday. Today we started our story work with the "Even and Odd Dance", and without my saying a word about the story or our work with it to this point, J suddenly shouted, "Hey! Even and odd -- that's just like Evan and Todd in our story! I bet that's why they're named that!"

Then we sat down with a dot number chart, and I asked the boys to color in the boxes with dot numbers with the correct color -- red for Todd/odd and green for Evan/even. J immediately set to work coloring in his chart. Zoo Boy colored the "1" block in red, and the "2" block in green, then sat puzzling over the chart. "Are the rest green?" he asked. "They all have friends." I could see his confusion and offered, "Some of them have leaders." "OH!!" his eyes lit up with understanding, and he joyfully colored in the rest of his chart, getting them all correct.


Then I asked J to write the numbers next to the dot boxes. Zoo Boy started to do the same, but was quickly frustrated as there wasn't enough room for his larger writing, and because he hasn't had enough practice with writing the numbers yet to feel confident without a guide to follow. So I labeled the boxes for him as J completed his chart.

J's final dot number chart. As he completed it, he sat back to look at it and made an observation. "Hey, I see a pattern!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Oh?" I said, playing it cool. "What pattern do you see?" He pointed at the alternating colors and said "Red, green, red, green." I nodded and smiled. "Cool!" he said, and Zoo Boy pointed out the pattern on his chart, too.

Story work time was over and the boys transitioned into play time. J immediately ran to find some unit blocks, and he built armies for Todd and Evan of various sizes, pretending the blocks were soldiers, and noting which were odd numbers ("23 -- that's an odd number" I heard him tell Zoo Boy at one point), and which were even ("Now I have 100 -- that's Evan's army, because it's even.").

The discovery process is just TOO cool....