Math

Has anyone else noticed that homeschooling is a journey that takes you, as the primary educator, on roads you previously thought were too wild to traverse?

I'll put it more plainly. I used to think most homeschoolers were loonies. Whacked. Crazy. Etc. I joined the homeschooling scene hesitantly--secure in my decision, but entirely skeptical of other homeschoolers. I was a "retired" public school teacher, for heaven's sake. And now, two years in, I still vacillate between joy at the incredible richness of experience available to those of us off the beaten path and a deep-seated fear that I am getting as loony as the looniest of the homeschoolers.

My decision to stop teaching math is a prime example. (That was a joke--prime, get it? That's about as good as my math humor gets.) I have noticed lately that my Miriam is starting to dislike math. She still loves her math analogies and problem solving strategy books--but the math workbook that goes over the same thing so many times that we both want to pull our hair out? That has to go.

I've been counseling people for years to ease up on the reading anxiety. That learning to read can't be pushed. That children mature differently. Provide a literacy-rich environment and the child will learn when he is ready. So why is it so hard to apply those same principles to math? Is it my fear that she'll fall dreadfully and irretrievably behind? Please. She's a smarty-pants. Is it my fear that my hubby will freak out? A little--but he usually comes around.

Okay, I'll admit it. It is my fear that I won't be able to provide a math-rich environment for my kids. It isn't that I can't "do" math. It's that I don't enjoy it. Creating a literacy-rich environment in my home is a joy. A delight. I can create an atmosphere so literacy dense you can taste the words when you walk in the room (and step on one of the 40 books scattered on the floor) without any effort on my part. It's as much a part of me as breathing.

Math is different. Math is . . . work. So much work. I don't know the best math children's books. I don't know the best math games. I don't know where the best resources are located online. I have no idea how to create a math-dense environment in our home. Work, work, work!! It would be so much easier to just stick with the math program we've been using. But I can't.

So here I am. Facing yet another of those dark, overgrown, tangled homeschool roads that I thought I would always safely avoid because only loonies walked it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'll keep you posted on how it's going. I feel confident that shoving traditional math in the garbage is the right thing, but oh it is hard to inch myself onto this particular path.