It seems that the most obvious times I see my children making connections in school, Latin is involved.

We’ve been learning the Latin numbers, 1-10, over the last few weeks. First 1-5, then 6-10. For those unfamiliar with Latin, the numbers for 7-10 are septem, octo, novem, and decem.

After they had memorized the numbers, and pronunciation, I asked Turkey and Bunny if they recognized the numbers for 7-10 at all? Did they seem familiar? Could they identify any kind of derivatives? They both thought on it for a bit, and then Bunny came up with the answer–September, October, November and December!

I asked her if she could figure out why, and she immediately started to say, “September is the seven…” But she knew that wasn’t right, because September is the ninth month of the year, not the seventh as the root of the word suggests. So, that gave us the opportunity to talk about the difference between the old Roman calendar (which only had 10 months) and our current Gregorian calendar.

It’s so much fun to watch them figure things out, and it’s a great bonus when teachable moments pop up on top of it!