Game Night Liar

Game night is our Friday night tradition. We have been going at it for about a year now. The girls really do look forward to it, but they refuse to have game night when Daddy is out at sea. They say we aren't a family when daddy is not here.

As a preface to this story. I believe heavily in making sure that my girls lose games on a regular basis. I rarely 'let the girls win.' The only time I will purposely mess up to give a daughter advantage is when the game skews constantly to one kid so I will set the other kid up for success. For example, in memory if one girl gets all the matches for the 5th game in a row, I will try to show the other where her card is through a pretend mismatch. Anywho...

Last weekend, we played Brady and Reese's all time favorite game night game...Life. At the end we were counting money, First Karl announced how many 100,000 bills he had: "13" then Brady speedily proclaims "I have 19!" Reese jumps in with "I do too" (I thought I heard her count only 18, but I think it was an honest mistake). There I sat with 21 100,000 bills in my hand (yes I know that is 2.1 million but I am working with 4 and 6 year olds). No one looked my way, but I was completely okay. No need to claim victory here. I am not competitive and what ensued is much better then claiming victory. The girls SQUEALED in delight that they had "the same exact money and they BOTH are the winners". They danced around for at least 15 minutes singing the victory song of the dual champions. I cleaned up the game with Karl and then snapped pictures of the closing ceremonies in the game night festivities. They were so excited about the tied 'wins'...now who could break the news to them with faces like these. So, yes, on this night I 'let them win'!

Math-Minded

I had a very cool experience with Reese tonight.

I was reading a book that encouraged the kids to count how many stars were on a page. Both Brady and Reese tried to count simultaneously out loud,  I suggested they each count a section then we could add the two together. There were 5 on one page and 6 on the other. I asked "what is 5 + 6?" Brady answered 10 quickly while Reese said 11!

I asked Reese how she knew that so quickly. She says "well, mommy, five and five makes ten and six is one more so that is eleven." HOLY COW people she is using logic to simplify math. This is a trick I was trying to teach my eighth graders when I taught public school. For example I would say 6+7 is also 6+4+3 which is 10+3 or 13. Often times this was over their head and my four year old just came up with it on her own...so freaking cool!!!!!

Naturally this frustrated Brady; her reply "My teachers always tell me that I am good at adding, now I have to work on it some more" Oh Brady, just like your papa. Logic for Reese and work for Brady. Either method works and I am lucky to have such smart girls.

Oh my math heart will go to be smiling tonight!