Skip counting

H has a knack for numbers. He knows the concept of skip counting (which is in fact multiplication but he doesn't know that). For him, it's just a game. I'm not sure how he picked this up. It could be imprints from the tweedlewink classes he attended when he was a toddler, or from the "I Can't Sleep" bedtime storybook I read him in which the boy started counting animals to fall asleep - 1 by 1, then 2 by 2, then 3 by 3, then 4 by 4.

Last night, H said he wanted to show me a new game. He drew grids on his magnadoodle board and wrote 1-8 in the first column. The game was to skip count and write the correct numbers in the squares.


Not sure how this can be a game since he's essentially playing on his own. Halfway through it struck him that what he has is in fact a matrix, i.e. the 6th row is in fact the same as the 6th column. Daddy was rather impressed and thinks that we should send him for maths classes since he likes maths. Maybe mental maths? I'm not sure if that will kill his love for maths, last thing we want is to make it seem like work rather than fun. But I guess there's no harm finding out more about how some of these maths programmes are run, then we can decide.