Why We Don't Homeschool

We got this book at the library called "My First Picture Math Book" or something like that.

It's a great book, actually. It has bright and colorful pictures, and it asks the reader to do things. For example, it will ask "Which number is the pink house?" And they will be in order - 6, 7, ?, 9. And Nate took one look, placed his finger on the pink house and said "Question Mark!"

But the best part was on one of the last pages. "How many more players are needed to make a team of ten?" was the question. And underneath are six shiny soccer players. Nate's face was a blank. I could see he didn't understand the question - after all, he's three. So I tried to help him out.

"Look, Nate. We need ten players for a team. How many are there here?" We counted the six players. "Is that enough?"

"No."

"So how many do we need?"

"Ten!"

"OK, but we only have six, so let's count and my fingers will be the extra ones, OK?"

And together we counted to six, and then I placed my fingers on the page next to the picture of the shiny players as we finished counting to ten.

"So Nate, how many fingers do I have?"

"Ten!"

"Um, OK, but how many players do we have?"

"Six!"

"OK, there are six on the page, and then we counted to ten with my fingers, see?" I wiggle my four fingers. "So how many did we end up needing?"

"Ten! Mom, why are you laughing?"

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