unschooling math: you don’t split tens.

so we’ve been going through this phase in the in-between place where we educate our children somewhere between unschooling and homeschooling, where we’ve reached the end of the cirriculum for the year our youngest daughter is in, and we’ve resorted to math games, like blackjack, and one I made up on the fly where I deal two cards to her and two cards to me, and the higher total when you multiply the cards together is the winner of the cards. at the end of the game, whoever has the most cards win - but in actuality, i’ve won because this eight year old has set herself here for fifteen minute practicing timetables, and i’ve removed the easy cards (mostly the tens) from the deck.

so, that’s how math is going this week.

she’s becoming a total shark at blackjack. like, she’s got the strategy card memorized better than a nineteen year old kid who has been coming to the blackjack table for a few weeks. and when one of her siblings, who aren’t as hyper-adhd-focused on blackjack asks about splitting, she screams at them judgtngly that ‘you don’t split tens, obviously’.

obviously the next move is teaching her to count cards, right?