Things Your Children Probably Shouldn't Be Telling Us, Part 1

So we were working on time in the 1-2s this week. Today, the kids named and ordered various units of time, from milliseconds and seconds up to centuries and millenniums, and explained what they knew of the relationships between them, using nice NUMBER SENTENCES (60 sec = 1 min, 1 day = 24 hours, etc). On the whole, they did quite well, though why "half an hour" and "5 minutes" don't count as separate units of time was a bit mysterious for a few of our first graders. Next year--

Anyhow, after this lead-in, I asked children to fill out a sheet about time units. The structure was simple enough. "It takes about one SECOND to..." was the first one, and kids were supposed to think of an activity that takes about one second. Then they followed it with one minute, one hour, and one day.

The responses were fun and revealing of children's understanding: one second to "squash a bug," "pick up a feather," or "say four letters of the alphabet," one hour to "clean my room" or "draw a perfect picture" (quick, tell Picasso!), one day to "make a really good sculpture."

My personal favorite, though? "It takes about one minute to do my homework." Given that mathups, reading, and spelling alone are supposed to take at least 20-25 minutes each night, this is the sort of statement that is perhaps better left unsaid. Ah well--by high school I'm sure this child will have figured that out!