Math, Puppets, and Grown Unschoolers
May 10th, 2005 at 12:03 am (Unschooling Life)
Yesterday, Kenzie and my youngest brother, Sean, were playing a “bet you can’t answer this one” game. Kenzie had me come up with questions for Sean (mostly trivia stuff), and Sean asked Kenzie addition problems. Here’s a particularly interesting exchange:
Sean: “What’s three thousand, four hundred plus three thousand, four hundred?”
Kenzie: “Six thousand, eight hundred.”
Sean: “Okay, what’s three thousand, four hundred plus three thousand, four hundred plus three thousand, four hundred?”
Kenzie (Thinks a moment) “Nine thousand, twelve hundred.”
Sean: “Close, but that’s not a real number. It’s really ten thousand, two hundred.”
Kenzie: “I know, because nine thousand plus one thousand is ten thousand, plus two hundred is ten thousand, two hundred.”
He also told us that three three thousands is nine thousand and three four hundreds is twelve hundred. He seems to have this figured out fairly well. I had no idea he could do that.
Saturday night, we traveled to San Antonio to see an old friend who is a puppeteer. He showed us several life-sized puppets, and Kenzie worked the controls and made them talk using different accents. After the long trip in the car, the lack of sleep, and the chance to perform, Kenzie was more wound-up than I’ve seen him in years. He could hardly stop talking (and singing, and running, and jumping, and screaming, and acting, and dancing) long enough for our friend to get a word in edgewise.
Terry and I have missed this guy for so long, and we’re working on getting him to move down to our area. He’s an amazingly talented artist, and he and Terry feed off each other’s creativity. He’s great with Kenzie, and he’s a fun guy to be around. He’s also intelligent, aware, concerned, kind, and helpful - someone we’d be blessed to have in our lives. Hopefully, we’ll win him over in the next few months, or so.
We also met and ate dinner with a young man who worked for the same puppet company and happened to be an unschooler. He and I talked at length about unschooling magazines and about stage lighting (a passion of both mine and his). It was wonderful to meet a grown unschooler, and I have to admit to being impressed by his articulate nature and the interesting path he has chosen to follow. I like to see people pursuing what they love. I wish it happened more often.