And While I'm Bragging About My Kids. . .

Last night Mia and I were out having dinner at her current favorite Panda Express (sigh). We were chatting about school, and she told me her second-grade class was working on fractions. "I can do ANY fraction," she said, clearly enthusiastic about her new skill. "Give me one!" I didn't know exactly what she wanted, so I asked what I needed to give her. "Well, if Ms. Waters [her teacher] tells me there's a circle divided into 4 sections and 2 of those sections are colored in, I can tell her it's two-fourths."

"Oh, I see," I said. "but do you know what else that is?" She thought about it for a few seconds, and then she gave up. "I don't know what you mean," she said.

So I picked up the paper plate in front of me and divided it into 4 sections with a pen. Then I shaded in two adjacent sections. "So, what's that?" I asked her. She smiled and answered immediately, "two-fourths." "Exactly, but what ELSE is it?" She looked at it for a minute, and then her face lit up. "Oh my gosh, it's one-half!" "Yep," I said. "And look what happens if I subdivide the four sections to make eight sections. Nothing changes. It's still one-half and it's still two-fourths, but what ELSE is it?" "Four-eighths!!!" says Mia.

And then she looked up at me, really excited, like we had just discovered electricity or something, and she asked, "Do you think Ms. Waters knows about this?"

I was mightily amused.