Our little bird has been getting closer and closer to being ready to release back into the wild. Finally, this afternoon I felt it was time to say goodbye. So I sent Laura and Isaac out to take a long walk along the bean field and let Frizz be on his way, for better or for worse.

They were gone a long time, and finally came home having said their farewells.

And I promise you, not an hour later, the kids came hollering in from the back yard with another little bird in their hands. Somehow another fledgling had wandered into our yard and Isaac caught him. Now the kids wanted to go back and see if they could find Frizz again. I said that was fine, hoping that Frizz had disappeared. But no, Frizz was exactly where he had been deposited, and apparently was waiting patiently to be rediscovered.

I insisted that no birds could come back inside, so now the children were all out back, hovering around a cage containing two wild birds. The new bird was quickly named Squeakers. I let them have their fun for a while, but when the children started squabbling over who was sitting where and who was doing what, I decided it was time to let the birds go… again.

Off they went, gone again for a while, and finally they came back again having deposited the birds safe and sound in a tree.

Isaac asked me this evening if he could go out tomorrow and see if the birds are where he left them. I thought about it for a minute and decided that would be fine.

Somehow the math curriculum we use doesn’t have complicated “story problems” like this.

If you have a bird and you let it go, how many birds do you have left? Seems like it should be zero, eh? Well, think again! I think a real-life scenario would go something like this…

If a boy and a girl take their bird on a walk to let it go, and then find another bird when they get home, and then go back out to get the first bird back again, How many birds do you have? You end up with two birds. Therefore, one minus one is two.

My hope is that now that both birds have been let go again, that two minus two doesn’t equal four!