After a rather difficult start to our homeschooling day (every question was answered with "squamwich!") we moved on to an exciting math lesson on the abacus.
First, a word of background. Working with Samuel's older brother Isaac, I found it helpful to introduce the opposite operation close in time to the principle operation. So addition and subtraction are taught almost simultaneously -- same with multiplication and division (in all its forms).
Today, after doing a few addition problems on the abacus, I turned it around and started showing Samuel subtraction. After he did a few correctly, I let him put up his own problem. He moved all 10 beads over, and I held my breath -- 0 is a pretty big concept, what's he going to do? It didn't slow him down at all. "Ten minus ten," I coached him through the math sentence, "equals zero!" he crowed.
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