Last night, William and I were watching a TV show together - Dragon. In the episode we were watching, Dragon was trying to teach his cat some tricks. At one point he started trying to teach his cat subtraction (using pickles dipped in catsup as props) and William answered Dragon’s questions before Dragon did. I paused the show - unsure what to make of it. It was possible that he was just using his memory to dredge up the answers, but since we don’t usually watch Dragon (I honestly don’t remember the last time we watched it) I didn’t think it was likely. I asked him some more questions, and he got them right. He’s able to subtract numbers 5 and under, and add two numbers 5 or less (using his fingers) I don’t know where he picked it up, but it struck me as pretty amazing that he spontaneously picked it up on his own.

About the only math I’ve actively taught him is the concept of zero, and that was just out of his own curiosity. He needs the visual clue of holding up fingers to get the job done, but when that condition is met, he’s accurate all the time.

I suppose it’s just normal that kids pick stuff up like this, but I always find it amazing when William comes up with a new thing like this seemingly out of thin air.

One other trick he does is that he knows how to spell his name. He doesn’t write any letters yet, but he can type his name - sometimes he misses the second ‘i’ or sticks a ‘p’ in there for some reason, but he’s got it down pretty solid. I think that’s more out of necessity than anything else - his password on the computer is ‘william’ and when he wants to play the computer and hasn’t been told he can’t, he logs himself in. Meanwhile at 3, I know for a fact that I hadn’t even heard of computers - I remember not even really knowing what they looked like at 6 or 7. Kids today. Sheesh.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “*gasp* It’s the four elephants of the apocalypse!” - Ned Flanders