Inside her brain

The way I view numbers is very different from the way my daughter views numbers.  I love numbers, and she loves everything, so she also would say she loves numbers.  But the way they line up in our respective heads appears to be quite different.

For 6 years I have been using a laminated "number chart" to try and teach her various math concepts.  It is very dog-eared and marked up now as we've referred to it over and over.

Recently I was realizing she still wasn't speaking the language I was when it came to the order of numbers, so in frustration I told her to go write out all the numbers up to 50.

So I was expecting her to come back with something resembling the number chart I had created -- the way my brain works:

This is what she came back with:

As her math teacher, I want to bang my head against the wall repeatedly, but as her mother, I find her brain fascinating.  She completely followed the directions and wrote all the numbers... but she did it in her own order and design.

The inside of her brain looks like a very fun place..... but now I'm beginning to see why concepts like more and less -- and all the other building blocks of math -- are very hard for her to grasp.  Her numbers aren't all marching in a line like mine do -- they're dancing all over the place!