Thinking about scaffolding integrity and mindmapping with numbers I resolved to write a booklet for children that combines both. I had pages in my head but am afraid to forget what I imagined. I should sit down and write. It gives children useful concepts.
A new schoolyear started with mindmapping and numbers. This time I left the books of numbertheory and mindmapping at home and gave my lesson à l'improviste to about thirty children. We divided in groups with different numbers. "Natural numbers" a child remembered from last year. Free association showed me that most associations with the numbers are in images, some are actually related to the number. Children learned how their brain remembers well concepts with which they associated freely. Hopefully this will help them learn. I don't know yet where to go from here. I have a week to decide what to do with the harvest, a pile of paper with free associations in children handwriting. I want to show a possible direction.
In my thoughts sounds 'logical reasonning', 'categories', 'nature', 'music', 'ethics'... but the child associates to four: cows.
Yesterday was the third day of mindmapping with number theory. We tackled mindmapping today. We wrote the number one in the middle of a piece of paper and read a difficult piece of writing about the number one. Then we tried to understand little by little what was written and decide what we wanted to write on the mindmap. This was difficult because the ideas in the text were difficult propositions like "discrete numbers cannot be divided by zero and this is similar yet opposite to the number one, all discrete numbers can be divided by one." Then we finished with trying to learn the four propositions that we found using a mnemonic strategy, using a list of rhyming words, and inventing images that are easy to remember with the proposition. The first one was of lots of groups of toes that could all be divided by one. I have fun doing this with children who have difficulties with different parts of learning and seing how they manage anyway.
Yesterday I had a difficult day, my brain was not working completely. Although I'm on medication I thought "I want a pill." But I still went on and gave my facultative lesson of number theory to four elementary school children that have each different challenges. Although the first thing that leaves me when my brain has 'one of those days' is order (I'm more disorganized) and one child immediately felt more disorganised, they still enjoyed talking about numbers. One couldn't remember what it was what we are doing. Maybe I should write it down for him. We talked about if it's possible to divide by zero and why not. We talked about that even scientists can make mistakes with numbers. I was afraid one of the children might find it too difficult, because I tried to raise the level, but they followed. I made it easy enough and difficult enough at the same time. Don't ask me to put it on paper...
