African American Educators of Mathematics

  Conversations with Jonah, My Five-Year-Old Grandson Counting Collections: When Five-Year-Olds Teach You About Mathematics If you've spent any time around a five-year-old, you know they can surprise you. My grandson Jonah is five years old...going on fifty. He is full of personality, questions, opinions, and what seems like endless kinetic energy. Jonah could spend hours watching Number Blocks, Alpha Blocks, Color Blocks, and Super Why! This summer, his favorite has been Number Blocks , and after watching several episodes one afternoon, I had an idea. As a mathematics educator, I'm always looking for opportunities to see how children naturally think about numbers. Earlier this summer, I bought a bag of colorful flower-shaped beads to use for a Counting Collections activity with Jonah and his older brother, Maverick. Maverick is eight years old and already acting like he's sixteen. He's the typical big brother—always reminding Jonah (and sometimes me!) what we should...

Conversations with Jonah, My Five-Year-Old Grandson I'm writing this blog as a way to get back into the habit of writing. What better inspiration than conversations with my five-year-old grandson, Jonah? Jonah is five years old...going on fifty. He is curious, opinionated, energetic, and absolutely loves learning. Give him Numberblocks , Alphablocks , Super Why! , or anything involving numbers and letters, and he is completely captivated. He watches, listens, talks, writes, and then talks some more. Did I mention he talks? A lot. Lately, I've noticed how naturally mathematics has become part of his everyday conversations. He counts out loud. He adds out loud. Thanks to Numberblocks , he'll happily count by twos, threes, fives, and tens. Sometimes he'll even practice without the show playing, working through the patterns on his own. One day, I decided to join him in his mathematical thinking. "Gigi, 3 plus 1 is 4." (My grandsons, Jonah and Maverick, call me Gig...