Yesterday evening this happened… we had just come back only.
Her bag was still on the floor, open… tiffin out already… and one crayon had gone under the sofa. She was trying to take it out from there itself… without getting up.
Then suddenly she asked me something.
“Amma… what is this?”
She was looking at my phone.
For a second I didn’t get it… then I saw.
XXVI
Not from school. Not homework. Just something she noticed somewhere… maybe a video or something, I didn’t even ask properly.
I think that’s how most of these things start actually… not from books.
That random curiosity children get
At this age, they’re not really learning roman numerals properly in school yet. That comes later.
But they notice things.
Anything that looks slightly different… especially something like this which looks like letters but also feels like numbers.
Last week also she had asked about xxiv. She saw it on a clock somewhere and kept staring at it for a long time.
Then she said, “This is not number… but it is number?”
I remember laughing a little at that.
Because honestly, that’s exactly what it feels like the first time you see it.
So now yesterday it was xxvi roman numerals, and she was just curious. Not trying to solve anything… just trying to understand what she was looking at.
I sat next to her, pushed her bag slightly so it wouldn’t spill more things out, and said, “Okay wait.”
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Explaining it without making it feel like teaching
I didn’t want to make it sound like a lesson.
The moment it starts sounding like school, the interest goes off somewhere else.
So I just took a notebook and wrote it again.
XXVI
Then I told her, “See… this is just another way of writing a number.”
She leaned a little closer… still unsure.
So I broke it slowly.
“X is 10.”
She nodded.
“Another X is also 10.”
She counted softly… 10… 20.
Then I pointed again.
“V is 5.”
“And I is 1.”
She paused there.
You can actually see when they are doing the addition in their head… that small pause.
20… plus 5… plus 1…
Then she looked up.
“26?”
I nodded.
That’s it.
xxvi number is 26.
That small ‘ohhh’ moment
She didn’t react loudly or anything.
Just that quiet “ohhh”.
And then she wrote it down herself.
XXVI = 26
A little tilted… slightly bigger letters… but correct.
Then she asked again, just to be sure.
“So this is the xxvi roman numerals meaning?”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s the xxvi meaning… just 26.”
She seemed satisfied.
Then immediately she got distracted because that same crayon she was trying to pull earlier had rolled again somewhere else.
And she went back to that.
Kids don’t stay on one thing for too long.
Why this feels confusing to them
Roman numerals like xxvi roman numerals feel a little strange because they don’t follow what they already know.
There’s no tens place, ones place.
No 2 and 6 separately.
It’s just pieces that you add together.
10 + 10 + 5 + 1
That’s it.
But for a child, especially when they haven’t been taught this yet, it feels like decoding something.
Which is actually nice.
Because there’s no pressure attached to it yet.
It’s just curiosity.
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The questions didn’t stop there
After that, she started asking more.
“Then what is 27?”
“Then what is 30?”
“And why do we write like this?”
That last question… I didn’t have a proper answer ready.
So I just said, “We don’t usually… this is just another way. Like different styles.”
That seemed enough.
Then she flipped back a few pages randomly and said, “That other one… xxiv… that is 24 right?”
I said yes.
She didn’t even wait for explanation this time.
Just nodded like she already knew.
Kids do this sometimes… they connect things quietly.
The slightly messy part of learning
Somewhere in between, her water bottle tipped slightly and a little water came on the edge of the notebook.
We wiped it quickly.
Then she continued writing like nothing happened.
No irritation.
No restart.
And I was just watching her for a second.
This is how learning actually happens at this age.
Not in a straight line.
Not clean.
Something falls.
Something distracts.
Something clicks.
Even something like xxvi meaning happens like that.
In between everything else.
And then… it just moved on
After that, she closed the notebook.
Got up.
Asked for something to eat.
And then completely forgot about Roman numerals.
I sat there for a bit, just looking at what she had written.
XXVI = 26
Underlined twice.
I don’t know why they underline everything like it’s very important.
Later when I was putting her things back into the bag, I was just thinking…
Nobody taught her this.
She just saw something unfamiliar.
Didn’t ignore it.
Didn’t get scared of it.
Just asked.
Tried.
And figured it out.
That comfort with the unfamiliar… that doesn’t suddenly appear in primary school.
It builds much earlier.
In small, everyday moments like this.
I’ve seen this with other kids also. A friend whose child goes to EuroKids Preschool was telling me something similar… how they don’t push heavy concepts early, but they keep exposing children to patterns, symbols, stories, small observations.
So later, when something like xxvi number or even something like xxvi roman numerals meaning comes up in school, the child doesn’t feel lost.
They don’t freeze.
They don’t wait for someone to explain everything step by step.
They just try.
And honestly, after yesterday, I feel that makes a big difference.
So if you’re in that phase of thinking about preschool options, it might actually help to step into a EuroKids Preschool Admission once… just see how they handle these early learning years.
Because it’s not about teaching things like Roman numerals early.
It’s about making sure that when your child does come across something like this later…
they look at it, think for a second…
and say, “26?” without hesitation.
