20130610-203423.jpg My business mentor always used to say “know your audience.” This is the most basic and important rule of business presentation (or any presentation for that matter). There are a million ways to present a topic but if it doesn’t attract the audiences attention, you’ve just wasted your breath and everyone’s time.

Apparently the same goes for 1st grade math. Sara is a creative person, she loves to draw, color, create beautiful things from stuff she finds in the yard and flower beds and sometimes from junk in the garbage can. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been in the process of throwing something away and Sara stops me and says we can use that for an art project.

She sees how colors, shapes, patters and objects fit together to make art. That’s why memorizing 8+5=13 is difficult for her – it’s abstract with no context…and in her words…”boring.”

So tonight I brought out the Big Kahuna, the Billy Baroo (think Caddyshack) of math tools….the Million Board. I specifically made this board big with bright colors and moveable foam numbers for my little creative princess. In one short lesson, she learned how to say any number in the millions (213,875,909 for example). She also learned how to add two numbers that were in the millions (we don’t carry yet). I was ecstatic with the ease that she learned these concepts.

Then it happened. Not by design or could I have ever predicted it.

She began having fun and creating with the million board. We tried to stump each other on creating the biggest number possible and as you see from the photo on this entry, she created an alien with 3 eyes, sitting on Saturn, looking at the moon with a spaceship in the distance. She spent 15 minutes creating this numeric master piece.

Could math actually be fun?

I’m not sure if the outer space adventure has a direct line to actual math but I do know that she was having fun with math tools and numbers. If she is excited about our morning lesson tomorrow, I will conclude that there is a direct line to learning when math and art collide.

“it is the glory of God to conceal a matter but the glory of kings to search out a matter” Proverbs 25:2