Word problems

Rachel  is so little, it's hard for us to remember (well, it's hard for ME to remember) that she's in kindergarten, which is "real" school. She comes home with a folder full of writing samples. Apparently she is also learning math. Consequently, we have begun giving her little word problems at dinnertime. (On Friday I kept goofing around and told her, "If a car is 50 miles away and drives 70 miles an hour, and another car is coming from the opposite direction and drives 80 miles an hour, at what point do they meet?" I always hated word problems because I could never translate the words to the math).

This Saturday, while Drew was sleeping in, I decided to give Rachel some word problems. If there are three cupcakes in a store and six kids want them, I said, how do you divide them up? I drew a picture of three cupcakes, pretty sure she wouldn't get the answer.

"What does divide mean?" she asked.
"It means to split things up," I explained.

She then promptly took the marker and drew a line down each cupcake. I was flabbergasted. "What if there are 12 kids??" I demanded. She then drew lines across each cupcake. Then we go into a discussion about there being no point to splitting each cupcake in fourths because, you know, the cupcakes would get all crumbly and there wouldn't be a lot for each kid. She understood.

Then she started asking ME to do word problems.

"If one car's going right, one car's going left, and one minute hand is pointing to the 12 on one clock and one minute hand is pointing to six on the other clock, what point do they make? Draw a heart if you know and draw an x if you don't know," she said.

Um, not sure.

Second word problem:

"If two ladybugs are fighting, what makes them not fight anymore?" Rachel asked. "Give them a aphid. If they're fighting and you give them an aphid, they feel a lot better."

"Now, you do a word problem," she said. "Don't do anything about time, because I don't know anything about time."