Or maybe it’s a way of exploring the child’s feelings about balloons.
Lol!
I thought it was you have 6 red ballons, and then you have 5 blue ballons, how many more ballons do you have? (5!)
I always got mad at the 4th or 5th grade math where they tried to teach addition. Even had a name for it - confused me all to heck.
16+13 = ?
Well, 16 is close to 20, and 13 is close to 10, so:
20+10 = 30.
BUT, you had 16 and not 20, so subtract 4:
30-4=26.
Oh - don’t forget about the 13, which is 3 more than 10, so:
26+3 = 29.
So the answer to 16+13 is 29!
My one daughter could wrap her head around it this way or the normal way. My other daughter, like me, could only get it the normal way. She would come back with the right answers but marked wrong, and would need to do it over again. I would write a note back - that’s okay - she got the right answer. Give her whatever grade you want!
Of course that was 4th grade. In high school where good grades mean A LOT in getting into colleges, it is much more important. My son (11th grade) has straight A’s so far. Except for missing an A in 9th grade by 0.1%. He tried to get extra credit but no luck. Oh well.
But if there seemed to be some monkey business I would speak up. My daughter just related a story where she spoke up today on conservative issues while the history teacher was doing some stupid “game” on equality (frikkin Commies). We’ll see how that plays out.