The valuable part is abstract math, thinking in symbols, not counting 2+3. A good old way to teach is to invoke a surprise, as it grabs attention, and then explain. So you'll need easy problems, but with surprising solutions. One that comes to my mind is the old story where a simple man asked a king a simple favor: put one grain on the first square of a chessboard, put twice that much on the next square, twice more on the next square and so on until the board is filled. A categorically different understanding of math happens when you learn what a proof is, but I'm not sure how to make this problem interesting.
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The valuable part is abstract math, thinking in symbols, not counting 2+3. A good old way to teach is to invoke a surprise, as it grabs attention, and then explain. So you'll need easy problems, but with surprising solutions. One that comes to my mind is the old story where a simple man asked a king a simple favor: put one grain on the first square of a chessboard, put twice that much on the next square, twice more on the next square and so on until the board is filled. A categorically different understanding of math happens when you learn what a proof is, but I'm not sure how to make this problem interesting.