There are definite benefits to an English major marrying an engineer! Together, we make one person who may actually be capable of effectively homeschooling an HG+ kid!
This is what allows me to even entertain the idea of homeschooling in the future! My husband is SO good at math, and I'm SO not! I laugh about it being the subject that drove me to law school. The funny thing is that he's a lawyer too, but for completely different reasons. Anyway, I think he does math much like how Cathy A. has described it (I've loved the posts, by the way!). I've always been amazed at how quickly he can do arithmetic in his head, and finally I asked him about a year ago. He explained that he does it through rounding, usually to 10, then adds or subtracts as needed. I felt so dumb. I'd never even thought about math like that. It just came naturally to him, and I would be bogged down trying to carry my tens the way my teachers had taught me so many years ago.
He thought of it as kind of cheating, but I realized how I'd been focusing on something way too literal for my whole life, which is weird because I'm not a black and white thinker. But I think it was how I was taught math and I never thought to look beyond it.
I started disliking math in about the 4th grade when we had those math competitions to fill in the blanks (Math Factors, or something like that) as quickly as possible. Around that time I got it in my head that I wasn't very good at math, and it's always stuck with me. I will say, though, that despite "hating" math, I loved my AP chemistry class, particularly balancing equations. This wasn't math, though, right?
That was chemistry, something completely different.
I feel a little silly now because at age 34 I'm finally beginning to see how a lot of math "works" and I'm actually delighting in it. As I'm explaining things to DD6, I find that suddenly I'm seeing patterns there that I had never really noticed before. I don't know if I was never taught math that way or if I just blocked it out but I would LOVE to take a class taught by Cathy A.! If I went back in time and learned math her way as a 3rd grader maybe I would have done a little better in my high school calculus class, or at least maybe I wouldn't be relearning it at my age now.
So Kriston: you go, girl! I love that you are exploring this way of learning about math. When you get it figured out maybe you can share it with the rest of us. I'd definitely be interested in that. And I'd love a PM of your notes, if it's not too much trouble.
