Math So Beautiful

I had been watching her play with the kinetic sand for several minutes. She was carefully forming it into a small, smooth dome, then using a wooden knife to cut it first in half, then into quarters before re-forming it into a single dome to do it all over again. She must have done it a half dozen times or more.

She said, "Look, Teacher Tom."

I had already been watching, so I said, "I'm looking at your sand."

"It's a muffin."

"I'm looking at your muffin."

"Now watch," she commanded as she picked up a wooden knife. "It's just one muffin, right?"

"Yes, I see one muffin."

She then cut it in half. "Now I have two pieces."

"It's true," answered, "There are two pieces."

"But I only cut it once!" she said it with exaggeratedly raised eyebrows, selling the feeling of wonder that she must have felt a few moments ago when she discovered this mathematical principle. "Now watch!" She carefully placed the knife perpendicular to her previous cut and did it again, cutting it into quarters.

She looked at me with a smile that asked, Is your mind blown?

I said, "Now you have four pieces."

"Except," she replied, shaking her head while directing my attention to the sand with her open palms, "I only cut it two times!" As she gathered the sand back into a single muffin, she asked, "Want to see it again?"

Mathematics is something that gives human beings great pleasure. Of course, I was tempted to fill the air with concepts like "whole," "half," and "quarter." Of course, I imagined myself helping her take it a step farther, introducing "thirds" or "eighths" or whatever. But it was easy to stop myself because over the course of my education, the way I'd been taught math caused me to slowly lose my enthusiasm for it. For most of my life I'd believed that it was the subject matter, but the longer I've been teaching preschoolers, the more I've come to understand that my classroom aversion to math is a result not of math being hard, but of how it was taught to me: a dry, abstract process of drilling, rote, and formula.

I still don't know how to "teach" math without ruining it, but when it happens like this, when its principles are simply discovered by a child, it's so beautiful that I want to see it again.

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