Sunday, November 16, 2008

Kid Quote: Counting

The other day I was reading a book to one of our 1st graders for YMCA child care.  The book is called How Much is a Million? and it's all about putting things in perspective for kids about how large the number "one million" actually is.

In the book, it describes the fact that if a person tried counting from one to one million, without eating or sleeping, it would take about 23 days.  Personally, I was pretty shocked by that. But after thinking about it, it does make sense because all of the bigger numbers, such as "seven hundred eleven thousand, five hundred sixty-three," would take a long time to say.

Wanting to involve the 6-year old in the story, I asked him, "Do you think you could count from one to one million?"

He paused for a second to think. "Yes," he confidently stated. "One time I counted all the way up to 150!"

"Oh, wow!  Nice job," I said, congratulating him.

"I had to stop and start along the way, though. I had to catch my breath," he admitted.

It's pretty amazing how limited our human minds are when we are kids.  It amazes me thinking about how now, as adults, we think we know so much but in comparison to what God knows we are still just as limited as this 6-year old.

3 comments:

  1. You should be a writer, Aaron. You've got some awesome skills. :)

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  2. Thanks! I hope that's not sarcasm... :-)

    Well it's hard to make it in this world as a writer, but I guess it's good that I will be a teacher! Then I can pass on my skillz ;-)

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  3. No...it was not sarcasm.

    PS. We totally have that book in our ESL classroom. Haha. Haven't read it yet. We'll get to that lesson in time. :)

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