Kortlyn, Math Smart
Kortlyn, a five year old girl, was the first patient of mine who understood the concept of a negative number. She knew that –1 is bigger than –2. Her mother taught her negative number. At the office she was able to add up to 12 without using her fingers. All of her addition was in her head. Without difficulty, she was able to do 5 + 5, 6 + 4, 7 + 3, 8 + 2, 9 +1, 10 + 1, and 10 + 2 all in her head.
With the help of Lego Duplo blocks, I demonstrated the concept of fractions. Kortlyn got the concept of ¼ to 4/4 using the Lego blocks. Then I drew a circle with a diameter of about six inches. I used this drawing to demonstrate fractions of ¼. I drew two lines inside the circle dividing it into four parts. Kortlyn easily identified one fourth, two fourths, and three fourths. During my demonstration, I said if I ate this part of the pizza (I was pointing at the ¼ shaded part of the drawing) what do you call it. She correctly said, "one-fourth." Then I shaded three parts of the circle and I asked her, "What do you call this now (I pointed to the three shaded areas of the circle)." Again she answered correctly, "three-fourths." When I shaded the four parts and I asked her, "if we ate all of these parts of the pizza, what do you call it?" Kortlyn said, "zero." The correct answer from her would be four-fourths but "zero" is also correct because we ate the whole pizza.
With the use of eight Lego duplo blocks, I was able to teach Kortlyn how to do simple multiplication and division. I divided the eight blocks into four groups of two. Then I explained to the mother the concept of addition using sets. We started with 2 + 2, 2 + 4, 2 + 6. She got the concept of adding serially. With the eight blocks, I demonstrated multiplication like, 2 x 2, 2 x 3, 2 x 4.
I mixed eight Lego blocks, four yellow ones, and four blue. I requested her to divide the mixed blocks into two groups of equal numbers of blocks. She took all of the yellow blocks and arranged them horizontally, and took the blue blocks and arranged them also. And I asked her how many groups or set are there? She correctly answered two groups.
I took my abacus from our laboratory. I demonstrated the simple concepts of reading the abacus. Kortlyn learned easily how to read numbers at the abacus.