We got up to the part of "Little House in the Big Woods" last week where Laura and Mary had the cookie dilemma.
"Mrs. Peterson talked Swedish to them, and they talked English to her, and they understood each other perfectly. She always gave them each a cookie when they left, and they nibbled the cookies very slowly while they walked home.
Laura nibbled away exactly half of hers, and Mary nibbled exactly half of hers, ant the other halves they saved for Baby Carrie. Then when they got home, Carrie had two half-cookies, and that was a whole cookie.
This wasn’t right. All they wanted to do was to divide the cookies fairly with Carrie. Still, if Mary saved half her cookie, while Laura ate the whole of hers, or if Laura saved half, and Mary ate her whole cookie, that wouldn’t be fair either.
They didn’t know what to do. So each saved half, and gave it to Baby Carrie. But they always felt that somehow that wasn’t quiet fair."
I remember the jubilation I felt in 4th grade walking to the bus stop at Yasumora’s house, and figuring out this problem, we had been dividing by fractions in math class. I remember promising myself to let my children think through this math problem when they got to it, so they could have the same fun I had in figuring it out. I had been puzzled by that story since Kindergarten when my Mom and Dad had read it to me.
So, Sunday night, M and I talked about the math problem. Could the children have asked Mrs Peterson for another cookie to take home to Carrie? But what if her English was fuzzy? M began a complex plan involving giving some left over parts to Pa and Ma, because grown ups don’t mind getting less cookies than children do. He also thought about dividing the halves into halves of halves, and halves of halves of halves (got to boost his math vocabulary, but he is only 5!) but his idea seemed a bit like calculus, only hard to do on a real cookie, they don’t divide neatly, too many crumbs.
This morning as B was away at band, I cut some construction paper cookies out for M to divide with his mini fiskars, the kind you can use left handed without crying in frustration.
I cheated a little, by laying out some pattern blocks to show sixths, thirds, and halves, to remind him that he didn’t need to stick to halves.
As I was putting away my laundry, he came running into my bedroom in great excitement. He held up three fingers in each hand, then held his hands together to put them into three groups of two fingers. "See Momma? They’d each get two parts!"
I don’t have Little House on the Prairie out from the library yet and my copy is missing. So in the mean time, we are continuing to play with literary fractions by reading "Half Magic" by Edward Eager. Lots of laughs that one.