Love. Live. Love.: Joy of arithmetic!!

DD1 takes arithmetic class!!!

In the process, learns...No rote or force just to finish a problem faster or to score first in an exam whose questions were already revealed and practiced repeatedly by students for a week prior to the exam date.

She spotted some candles and said the following lines:
'lets play a game'.

We will add some candles and see how many we have.

I'll put 2 candles first and add 3 more, you tell me, how many in total.

Next, I'll put 3 candles first and add 2 more, you tell me, how many in total.

Oh 2 plus 3 and 3 plus 2 are both 5.

(Did some more additions. )

Now we will remove some candles.

(Did some subtraction using the candles.)

Now, we will do this...She shows the cross symbol with fingers ..I say it is multiplication.
She knew about that symbol when playing around with calculator app on smart phone.

I ask her what she wants to multiply. She said 2 cross 2 and asked me what it meant. I explained in words. 2 groups of 2 candles. She grouped and counted all to 4.

Next was division. Again she didn't know the term but wanted to share the candles between two people.
She said, When sharing 5 candles between 2, each gets 2 and 1 is left. I just wrote the term remainder though have not insisted in learning the terms now. I had written her observation in words that's all.

Next, she said when sharing 4 candles between 2 people, nothing is left, write 0 there.

Again when sharing 5 between two people, we could break the left over candle and give each person a half. I had written it as 2.5

Then the doorbell rang.

I have not called her for any maths class.
I have not forced her to sit to solve problems.
I have not initiated the play to do additions.
I have not given her the candles in order learn something out of them.

I just don't know how to describe the entire scene. But children are so curious to pick things from their environment. Even without adults (forced) direction, they are always in their learning journey.