Even or Odd

So people ask me all of the time what curriculum I am using and I always say "We actually don't use one. We learn from things that happen everyday." I am sure some people think I am crazy and I am not to worried about this. So here is an example of how it works.

Now I am not a big game person but we do have Reader Rabbit for the Wii and it is 100% educational. So Milton was not able to pass a part of it because he did not know what even and odd were. He really wanted to pass this part of the game of course.so a couple of days latter I wrote on a 3X5 card the numbers 1-40 having all of the even and odd numbers lining up in a column. Then I wrote the lever "E" over the even columns and "O" over the Odd columns.  Then on the back and just wrote some random numbers, mostly two digit. So after explaining to him the we look in the ones column of a number to determine if its even or odd and then I had him flip over the card and circle all of the even numbers. I also gave him a ditty to remember. "2,4,6,8, who do we appreciate? 0!" That took about 4 minutes. We have talked just as short about the numbers when the opportunity comes up about 3-4 other times. Tonight at the table during dinner I asked him if he could remember his even numbers. With little thought he rattled them off. Then I asked for the odds and he was able to figure it out without any promptings from me.

He wanted to learn it and now he has. No matter how many places are in the number he can tell me even or odd. No hours of work sheets drilling it into his little noggin. Super M was ready to learn it.