Five + One = Six

I'm learning.  Slowly, it seems, but I'm learning.  I chose to not make a comment the other day when every fiber of my being wanted to!  We'd been working on little man's 100th day of school t-shirt project; we'd discussed what he wanted to decorate his t-shirt with, and we made the trip into town to Michael's to get the things.


His decorations?  Balls.  100 of them:  baseballs, footballs, soccer balls, and basketballs.  His favorites. 


As we stood in the aisle, I tried to use the occasion as a 'teaching moment'.   (The balls were actually stickers, probably made for scrapbookers, but I figured they would stick to a t-shirt well enough to work...maybe not for long-term use, but they'd last through the day!)
The stickers come packaged in a cellophane sleeve in groups of 5, so I helped him count out 100.  He can count to 100 easily, but I wanted to help him do it by 5s, and then (making it quicker for me) 25s.   I showed him that 25 + 25 + 25 + 25 = 100.   We went over it several times.  And by, "we went over it several times", I mean:  I went over it several times.....to his lack of interest.  Next, after many many minutes of arguing and whining discussion, we decided on a black t-shirt for the ball stickers.  I paid for the items and off we went. 

We spent a good 45 minutes a couple of nights later working on the project.  More arguing and whining discussion about how the items should be placed on the t-shirt - finally, we grouped them in the simplest of ways - chaotically: no specific pattern...completely random. There were balls everywhere!   It actually turned out pretty cute, even if it was a little harum-scarum.
Sent the t-shirt and the little man off to school the next day, hoping for a good grade for our his project.

That afternoon on the ride home from school is where I had my little lesson on keeping my mouth shut.  I asked the little man how his presentation went (oh yeah, forgot to tell ya they had to "present" their work....explaining how they'd come to choose their objects, and how they'd grouped their objects on the shirt.  I'm sure that was entertaining.)
He told me it went "good", but he'd had too many balls on his shirt; the teacher counted them and he'd had 105.  I was immediately on the defensive, because I knew I was right and she was wrong....I mean, we counted the wrappers over and over and over!  Remember my 'teaching moment'???  But for some reason, I kept my mouth shut.  We got home from school, he parked himself in front of the tv, I went to quietly dig through the garbage.  

I found the cellophane wrappers that had held the stickers and sure enough, for whatever reason, the basketballs were packaged in groups of 6.  Why?  I have no idea.  But I missed it.  Completely.   And because I missed it, I never even thought of counting the stupid balls as we stuck them to the t-shirt.  Because of my mistake, he probably won't get the best grade he could have gotten. 

Now, did I come clean?  To him, yes.  I told him I'd missed the fact that the basketballs had more than 5 in the package.  

To his teacher?  No.  Maybe I should have, I don't know.  It was supposed to be his project.  I'm a rotten mom - I let the 6 year old take the heat.  Would it have done any good to tell?  I don't know.   

The kid?  Completely unfazed by the whole thing.

Me?  Going back to elementary math class.