Mug shapes & pistachio shells

Last night, I finished dinner in 10 minutes while Ning took way too long. I sat with her at the dinner table talking and ate some pistachios.

She was getting restless and wanted to get off her high chair. So I said we'd play talking game.

I asked her what shapes were on my mug.
"It's a cylinder."
I drank from it so the bottom faces her.
"There's also a circle."
Then I put my eye at table level, she followed.
"And rectangle."
Mummy: "What about the handle?"
Ning: "It's the shape like the ear." (Wow, I never saw it like that)
Mummy: "I think it looks like half a heart shape"
Ning: "Wow!" (And she looked really amazed, I really enjoyed the moment)

Now Mummy's in the mood for introducing multiplication and division or just the concept.

We did some simple additions and subtractions with the shells.

I asked her to count how many pistachios I ate. She counted 20. Then I said each pistachios had 1 pair of shells. So she's got to arrange in 2s and count how many pairs. She counted 10.

Hehe, then I said "10 pairs of shells is 20 shells I.e. 2x10=20"

Doesn't seem to sink in. Ok change tactic.

If I gave her 2 shells to share fairly with Mummy, how many should each of us have?
"One."
And we continued till we had 5 each.
How many do each of us have?"5".
How many in total? "10".
So 2 (x) 5s equals... "10".
Get it?

She looked disinterested.
Ok. Better change topic than kill her interest.
Til the next opportunity!