Tuesday 25 February 2014

Half and making good guesses!

We were reading a Dora magazine that we have just started subscribing to. It features Dora the Explorer, one of Bebu's favorite characters. This is a children's publication entirely filled in with all sorts of activities, puzzles, little stories and colouring pages.

Today afternoon we were sitting together going through the magazine. There was a page that had a picture puzzle of sorts.There were a total of 6 cupcakes on the page and the question read, "How many cupcakes will Dora and Boots have each?"

At first Bebu said "6". I didn't say anything.And then I explained to her that they had meant that Dora and Boots would be sharing the cupcakes.

She said "You mean Half? Oh! that would be three".. after staring at the page for a bit.

I knew that she had heard the word "half " many times. We have baked together - so I am pretty sure I have said "half a cup" atleast a dozen times. "half a bucket", "half a cookie", "half my brain".. the list was endless. I knew that the word "half" was entirely a new thing to her but I hadn't quite ever explained it to her

So while my heart was leaping in joy on learning that she knew how to figure out the half of something, I managed to maintain my composure and quietly asked her, "How did you know it would be half?"

And very matter of factly she replied "I just made a very good guess".

2 comments:

  1. I like her first answer. If I tell someone how many cars Keith and I have, I count all of them, not half. If two people go out shopping together (a mother and daughter) and they have a certain amount of money to spend together, it's counted as one figure.

    Maybe it's "each" that she didn't understand—how many will they have "each." But y'know… maybe one only wants two. Maybe one doesn't like cupcakes. :-) So the correct answer as it was asked is "We don't know." But toghether they have six. :-)

    http://sandradodd.com/betteranswers has a great answer by Rosie Soroosian, when she was younger, to "There are 72 students in a school and 6 classes. How many students are in each class?"

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  2. Sandra,
    Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to write here! You are right! We did talk about how we didn't know as well because it "depends"! I will check out that link:)

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