when maths is not maths but art that is maths

Did that title confuse you?

That was its purpose. This is how Mb sees maths. A confusion of numbers, symbols and near cryptic coding. Mb is six years old.

Take today's problem. A simple worksheet with trees on it. (You can find it here.)


It was chosen by me for him - mistake number one.

It looked like fun - mistake number two.

The questions were simple enough. "Here is a tree with two branches, each branch has two twigs. How many twigs in total?" That kind of thing.

Then you have to draw your own tree, with four branches and four twigs on each branch.

"That's weird" Says Mb "The tree won't look right"

Instead he does this:

Four trees. Not what he was asked to do.

I tell him that he was supposed to draw one tree with four branches and four twigs on each branch.

"That's stupid. How many times do you go to the woods and see a tree like that?"

I persist. Mistake number three. Just try to draw the tree like they've asked I plead.

There is a sigh, and a bit of eye rolling but he gets his pencils and knuckles down.

I make toast.

I come back to this:

"I tried but it was just wrong. I didn't like it. I wanted to draw a tree that had birds, a gnomes house and my initial carved in it, and I know that four lots of four make sixteen anyway so I really don't need to draw them, do I?"

Silence.

I think I should just let him do maths his way.