Dr. F gave some examples of just this sort of intuition-deadening, cym. People who figure 100/8 by doing long division in their heads, for example. That's not the "natural" way to do it; it's learned. And sometimes that learning can kill the intuition. My dad had this happen to him, too. It's pretty tragic to see it happen.

I'm the POGS secretary, so if you want, I could send you my notes from the meeting. It would be a long PM, and he talked REALLY fast, so there's a lot I missed, but I'd send it if you'd like. It's not the same as being there, but it might give you some food for thought. Just let me know.

I'd say that my fear is not of math itself, kcab, but is of teaching math, if that makes sense. I have never felt that I have an intuitive grasp of math, though Dr. F would argue that it's just because I was "drilled and killed," as he's never met a GT person who wasn't FANTASTIC at math; they maybe just didn't know it. (I didn't do long division in my head to figure 100/8, so maybe there's some math intuition in there somewhere...) Math doesn't feel like it comes naturally to me, I never felt like I understood it, though I got A's in school because I could "do" it. That's not a great person to teach math, in my opinion. (Though I do think I'm probably more mathy than the average elementary school teacher, at least.)

To tell you the truth, I'm scared of math because I'm worried I'll blow it. Math is the one area of homeschooling that I think I can really fail DS6, and that scares me.

On the bright side, DH is a chemical engineer who spends much of his day writing computer code. Maybe this is one case where I hand off to daddy, eh, squirt? Each weekend, DH and DS6 do some big science project together, then I can help DS6 do the grunt work during the week to complete it?

Hmmm...Maybe...

I'm posting questions to a homeschooling group, too, since this sounds a lot like unschooling to me as well, Debbie. I didn't know about that Yahoo group, so thanks for that. I'm going there next!

Good posts. Thanks all. It's helping me think this through.

Kriston