It was 6:45 a.m. this morning when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet on the floor.  It was my 7-year old niece who was visiting for a few days.  I was shocked to see her peek into my office that early in the morning; I’ve seen her sleep til 10.

But today was the last day of her short visit and I’m guessing she didn’t want to miss out on anything.  Ryan was up and fixing himself breakfast, John had just left for work, and I was answering emails.  Frankly, I’d have gone back to bed if I were her.

Instead, to my surprise, she wanted to “do math”.

“Don’t you want to eat breakfast first or have a cup of hot chocolate?” I asked her.

“No.  I really want to do some math.”

Alrightie, then.  I glanced around my office which is filled with mathy stuff.  I’ve been organizing the Family Math Night kits so I had plenty of material to work with.  I pulled out the Intermediate activity for the ‘What’s My Rule?‘ station.  We had done a few of these problems the night before so I figured she would be ready to create some of her own.

She chose a butterfly rubber stamp and proceeded to stamp these on the blank What’s My Rule? card.  I was impressed that I didn’t need to give her any direction.  She then began to record the numbers:  4, 8, 12, 16.  She was counting the wings of the butterflies.

“Hey, these numbers are like the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8,” she said.

I beamed.  I love it when kids make connections.

“Do you know what we call those numbers?” I asked.

She didn’t so I supplied the answer.

“They’re called even numbers.”

“Oh yeah.  Even numbers.”

“Do you remember what we call numbers like 1, 3, 5, 7?” I asked.

“They’re the bad numbers,” she said.

As sometimes happens when working with young kids who are just learning concepts, I was confused at her answer.  But she said it so matter-of-factly that I knew it must be coming from somewhere.

“What do you mean by ‘bad numbers’?”

“They’re the numbers that aren’t even.  You know, the bad numbers.”

I could tell that she was trying to impress me with her math vocabulary knowledge.  So I had to stop and think.  And then it made sense to me.  To a young child, the definition of the word ‘odd’, can be taken to mean ‘bad’.  Since she’s more familiar with the word ‘bad’, and hasn’t had enough experiences yet in working with and communicating about odd numbers, her brain offered up the word that she associates with ‘odd’…the word ‘bad’.

We spend a couple of minutes talking about numbers not being good or bad and what the word odd means.  She gets it.  She was even a little embarrassed that she had called the numbers ‘bad’.  But she shouldn’t be embarrassed at all.  After all, she was trying to assimilate something brand new.  It was a great reminder for me that it’s up to us adults to make sure we provide opportunities for our students to share their thinking and ask if they have any questions.

And it made me wonder…who was the real student this morning?