So two of the older girls got in an argument right at the end of the school day. A insisted that 5 plus 5 was 10 and G was convinced that it wasn't. A was visibly upset when she turned to me, barely keeping back tears of discouragement because she KNEW she was right. Now I could have just agreed and told G that A was right (after all, I do know what 5+5 is), but that's not the Montessori way.
Instead I told them to each fetch 5 of some object and then we'd combine them and count to find the total. Man, they thought that was a great idea and almost tripped over each other in their hurry to go find something. After we added the objects together and G took it in stride that she had been wrong and that 5+5 actually was 10, what did they do next? Why, asked me to do some more problems!
So instead of ending the day with one child upset that she had been wrong, we ended the day with three children (somewhere or other I picked up an extra who was interested in joining us) happily doing real life math. I gave them some addition problems, some division and even subtraction scenarios.
The biggest upset? When I told them that they needed to get ready to go home.
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