Ok, I admit, this is a bit of a mummy-brag here, so if you don’t like that kind of stuff, read no further!
But it’s also a marvel about the human brain. I can’t really fathom the leap that Finn’s brain made today, all by itself. I don’t know how this works!
I’ve been dyeing some more floss these last couple of days (yay). Today when I was hanging a bunch out to dry, Finn decided to count them all – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Ok, good. Then he decides that since they’re each hanging in a way so that two ‘legs’ hang down (from the middle, like an inverted ‘U’), that he would count all the legs. 1, 2, 3, 4…. up to 20. Excellent. So, being the marvellous educator I am, I confirmed for him ‘two groups of ten, that’s twenty’. (Well, technically 10 groups of 2, but who’s being picky?!)
That’s not the amazing bit. The amazing bit is that without missing a beat, this three year old of mine then pipes up ‘three groups of ten is thirty, and four groups of ten is fourty, and five groups of ten is fifty…’! I had to pick my jaw up off the floor, I tell you. That means his mind effectively made the connection that the ‘…ty’ end of a number indicates ‘…groups of ten’. Wow 😮 !
Brains are awesome things. I should have stayed in research after all!
