Yen and Yang

I've started volunteering at the Henderson Student Care. Reckon I better teach somebody something before I go nuts. This is the disposition of a TEACHER. You got to TEACH.

They've given me two APSN girls - Yen and Yang (assumed names, of course). What's APSN?
APSN = Association of Persons with Special Needs.
Go check them out at www.apsn.org.sg
They used to be called AESN, which stands for Association for the Educationally Subnormal. Yeah, right. You can understand why they changed the name, can't you?

Anyways, the girls have an identified IQ of about 70, and it's been an interesting experience teaching them.

Today is my 4th lesson with them.
They are making great progress!
They can do number bonds quite well up to 5 now.

It's interesting that at each session, one of them will excel above the other. And they take turns so far. Today was YANG. Last lesson was YEN. Wonder if it will be YEN again next lesson. It's been like that so far.

Taught them to count in 10's today.
They went like .... 10, 20, 30 ... 90, 20.
Take 4 ten rods, and 5 ones.
They'll be counting them as 10, 20, 30, 40 .... (and the ones) 50, 60, 70, 80, 90!
Quite a challenge.

Had to show them. Showed them how to represent 45 in tens and ones with UNIFIX cubes.
They saw nothing wrong with identical sets of rods represented as 45 by me ... and counted as 90 by them. They said it was ok. They put the shorter column on different sides and said it was significantly different.
Hence, one was 45. The other was 90.

HO HUM!