The tally of checks got cut off the scan, GF won with 11 checks.

DJ, age 9, diagrams the story of The Tiger's Tail. By using a circular story "wheel" he indicates the effect the story has of not really ending (the monk is still holidng the tail, hoping someone else will rescue him, like he rescued the farmer).

DJ's sister, Kira age 5, decides it's time to join in the fun. She creates a "Number Pizza" and proudly shows me.

DJ age 9 diagrams The Blind Men and the Elephant. The top bar are his "notes" he took during the story. He then added the plus signs to make the parts equal the whole of the elephant.

But wait, there's more. He decided to recombine the parts to make another animal. He added the tree to the snake to make it "rigid and strong." Then he added the spear to give it "sharp teeth." He added the fan to make it able to withstand the wind and weather. He gave it the wall to make it impenatrible. He added the rope finally to give it it's shape. The bottom picture is the completed "First Snake." Wow.

Delenn, age 6, asks me to help her get started. She drew the figures in the corner, I wrote the abbreviations for Hassan, Ali, Ahmed and the Princess for her. We used an alternate symbol idea s well, Brother 1,2, & 3 and C for cousin (I had to explain the marrying of a cousin idea!). Then, she took off from there. She drew the paths of all three brothers, what they bought, how much the paid. She drew the purses of gold, but then said, how will someone know they are gold? Oh, I'll put a G on them (she reverses letter and numbers a lot, so if you look, there's a backward G there).

We summarized the gifts up top in symbols - the tube carpet does not cure the princess, but the carpet and apple does, etc.

We did this together, he coached me on some symbols and names that made sense to him.

My daughter's drawing inspired by her brother, no math yet. She states she doesn't "know how" to do this as she is a bit intimidated by DJ. She was 6, almost 7.

However, by the next drawing, she starts using his techniques of symbolizing instead of drawing or spelling completely, and finding ways to show ideas abstractly.

But my 6 y/old daughter Delenn copied the diagram, symbol by symbol, word by word, complaining I wasn't neat enough for her to read in places (I had no idea she'd want to copy it, it was just an idea I was sharing with my son, LOL)

And this was Kira's (age 5) inspired drawing while I read the Tiger's Tail story aloud to them. She narrated the story back to me in great detail, but decided there was a girl there to take the tail.

Kira age 5 joined right in as I read the poem, The Blind Men and the Elephant.

I asked, is there math there Kira? She said yes, the snake - and then recited all the numbers she knew in Spanish, elongating the "sssss" sound on them. Then she grinned and showed me the dots and stripes were math.

DJ, age 9, takes symbolic "notes" while I read the story of the Three Wishes from Arabian Nights. He used these notes to create a very elaborate story diagram that was on 2 pages taped together and too big to scan. 

I was very impressed, however, at how he came up with the idea to shorthand with symbols the story ahead of time, and then he used the notes to fill out the completed story - I never taught him to do this, but of course, this is a very successful technique in college :o)