Have you noticed anything special about today’s date? It’s all 2s! That’s because it’s the 22nd day of the 2nd month (February) in the year 2022. In the U.S., we write the date by month/day/year, so it’s 2/22/22. Other places around the world use day/month/year or year/month/date, but either of those makes 22/2/22. And all those 2s land on a Tuesday! So what should we do to celebrate? We could put on a tutu or 2. We could eat 2 Tuesday tacos 2 ways (like this recipe for fish and steak tacos). We could have a 2-minute 22-second long dance party… or 22 of them. When you get to choose, there’s no such thing as too many 2s!
Wee ones: Can you count by 2s? Start counting out loud with 2 and see how far you can go!
Little kids: If you split all the numbers in today’s date and add up 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2, what sum do you get? Bonus: How much more is 2 + 22 + 22 than that?
Big kids: When is the next day we’ll have a date made up of only 1 digit? Bonus: In this century, how many more dates after that next one will be one-digit dates? What’s the pattern?
Answers:
Wee ones: Count out loud: 2, 4, 6, 8…
Little kids: 10. Bonus: 2 + 22 + 22 = 46, which is 36 more than 10. You can also reason that 22 is 18 more than 2 + 2, and 18 + 18 makes 36 more.
Big kids: 3/3/33. Bonus: We count just 6 more dates this century: 4/4/44, 5/5/55, 6/6/66, 7/7/77, 8/8/88, 9/9/99. Each date occurs every 11 years, 1 month, and 1 day after the previous. (2/22/22 and 1/11/11 are the exceptions to this pattern, but no month has 33 or 44 days!)
As Staff Writer, Derek strives to bring you exciting Bedtime Math content and keep commas in their rightful place. Previously he helped manage a film studio in the Philadelphia area. Derek holds a B.A. in Communication- Media Production from Villanova University.