Junior mathmatician

Ethan has a gift for numbers. The things he can figure out on his own — really, it’s almost scary. I mean, he’s in first grade and already can do multiplication in his head. He started to figure out division on his own. He can even do complicated running problems (like 6 + 3 - 2 x 5) in his head. 

Tonight at dinner he asked us what he would learn after he finished with division. So I was explaining math with fractions and complex problems and algebra. He wanted examples, so I wrote out this:

1/2 x 4 + (6-2)2 =

Ethan asked how you solve something like that, so I told him to start inside the parentheses and then work his way out. So he did this:

1/2 x 4 + (4)2 =

I had to help him with 4 squared, since that's a little advanced (but he was able to figure out 4 x 4 on his own), which got us to:

1/2 x 4 + 16

Which led to:

2 + 16 = 18

So he wanted to do another problem, and I came up with this:

(3 + (6 x 2)) - (12 - (4+3))

Ethan got to this first: (3 + 12) - (12 - 7), which led to 15 - 5 = 10.

Scary, huh?