Multiplication Savant

I am more excited than Sassy that her 1st grade school year is coming to an end this week.  Sassy will miss her friends and she adores her teacher, but I will be so happy not to fight with her over her homework every night.  I realize that I am the grown up and, by extension, should be more mature, but doing homework with her is a constant drain on my psyche.

Math and spelling are the two worst things.  Interestingly, they were my worst subjects as well at her age.  Now, I’m a great speller and surprisingly good at math, and I keep assuring her that it will happen for her with practice.  She just looks at me like I’m completely full of malarkey.

The other day I was going through her backpack.  One must do this on a regular basis otherwise the accumulation of junk gets completely out of hand and, before you know it, your 7 year old is walking with a sway back from the 45 pound backpack.  I sorted through countless notes and worksheets and other nonsense until I found her math practice sheet.  Her teacher has the students practice addition by working on a strip of paper dedicated to a specific number.  For example, the one I held in my hand was for the number 5.  All the numbers from 1 through 12 were added to the number 5 in random order.

5 + 3=_      5 + 9=_    5 +12=_   and so on.   

Sassy had completed her worksheet and I didn’t pay much attention to it except the following note was written at the top by the teacher, “What?? Multiplication??”  So I looked further and discovered that every single answer was not addition but the correct answer if she had multiplied each number by 5.  Even 5×12 was correct.  I asked her if she copied the answers from somewhere.  She told me no repeatedly.  I assure you that, while advanced, her 1st grade class is not studying multiplication yet.

I took the worksheet to her teacher the next morning.  I looked at her with a quizzical expression and asked her if Sassy had copied the answers from somewhere and she assured me that she hadn’t.  She was just as aghast as I am.

My daughter is a multiplication savant!  Of course, so far this is only applicable with the multiplier of 5.

Still.  Weird.