Behold the power of math

When I picked up the kids from the playground today, we had a little time on our hands as my helper ran around to open the door so we could go inside. So naturally, the kids took that opportunity to loudly pester me for my age. I refrained from answering.

Suddenly, though, one of my girls announced that she had a 36 year old sister. Seeing as how my student is 9 years old, I thought it odd that she would have a sister that old. Not entirely within the realm of impossibility, but very unlikely. So I asked her how old her mother was. She told me that her mother was 43.

I didn't want to jump to any immediate conclusions, so I asked her if she had the SAME mother as her sister, and she affirmed. I told her that her mother would have had to have had her sister at age 7 if that was the case.

Apparently, judging by her red face and her sheepish grin, she was a bit mistaken on one age or the other, I never found out which.

Ain't math great?

On another note, the Carnival of Educators is up and running (with a Mother's Day theme!) at I Want to Teach Forever. Go over and check out all the great posts!

My birthday wishes

Hey everyone,
Tomorrow is my birthday, so I thought I might make a couple of birthday wishes.

1) That everyone who reads this might go to Amazon.com and order a copy (or 5) of my book, Learn Me Good!

2) Barring that, that everyone might at least go to Lulu.com and read the first couple of chapters of Learn Me Good and talk it up to their friends!

3) That Duke will make the Final Four, seeing as how I just procured tickets to San Antonio this year.

4) That all of my kids will pull their heads out and pass the TAKS!

5) That ABC will decide to prolong the television season so Lost can show their full 8 episodes for this season.


In the meantime, I heard some very interesting things last week related to birthdays and aging. On Friday, my kids were asking me how old I was going to be this week. When I told them I was going to turn 35 on Thursday, I heard three things almost simultaneously.

One of my kids said, "My mom is 23."

Another of my kids said, "My mom is 24."

And a third of my kids said, "My grandmother is older than you!"

My thoughts at the time were that I would certainly hope that their grandmother was older than me, and doing some quick math, that their moms must of been 15 and 16 when they gave birth to the kids in my class!

Yikes!