Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Math resources for DD who states she hates math???

Is that actually as bad as it sounds?

Yes, unfortunately, it is.

FWIW, here is a brief thumbnail sketch of EM's history, as I understand it (feel free to correct me, disagree, etc.; this is off the top of my head):

EM was written in the 1980s, originally as a collaboration between the mathematics and education departments at U of C. Unfortunately, that collaboration apparently didn't work out and the mathematicians left the project (e.g. Paul Sally).

Circa 1989-1990, NCTM set forth "standards." I will leave a characterization of those standards to google. See also "Math Wars."

In 1992, a guy named Phil Daro authored(?) the California math standards using much of the language from the NCTM.

EM was one of the programs widely adopted in many geographic locations in light of the NCTM standards. Sometimes such programs were referred to as "fuzzy."

In 1997(?), California changed its standards.

Phil Daro is also one of the authors of the CC math standards and again used some of the NCTM language. Accordingly, controversial programs like EM that had fallen out of favor in recent years are coming back around in some places.

If it helps, we have a lot of love/hate for AoPS in our house... I love it, my kids like the math but hate getting homework done (and here I thought they were the only ones! At least my ds does his python homework LOL)

Maybe the Mathcounts class at AoPS or better yet an in-real-life Mathcounts club/team? I imagine that class involves less homework because there's no book.

I have no idea if this will help, but this thread made me think. I grew up hating math, and had a pretty good idea that I would never need it. I found this, and found it interesting http://www.ted.com/conversations/16890/why_does_everyone_hate_math.html

Math is a language, but we don't really get a lot of its benefits until we get to higher math. Both my kids love to read (not so much to write, but they love reading). What if all they ever got in school was spelling tests, lessons in proper sentence structure, and the alphabet? No reading?

But that's how we teach math. Memorization and drills. And we never tell them why we are doing it. So I sat my kids down and explained it to them. I said math is the language of the universe. We used it to figure out where to send New Horizons 10 years ago so that, even in a constantly moving solar system, and even though we only knew about 1/3 of Pluto's orbit.. we could get a probe the size of a grand piano to the the Pluto system.

I showed them fibonacci spirals in nature and I explained to them that the reason we know about the smallest known particle in the universe (the smallest lego piece in kid terms) and black holes is because we are using math.

I don't think anyone shows kids the "reading" part. They just show them the drills. I am going to be looking for opportunities to teach them math to understand their world in a more poetic way. I am not a natural mathy person, so I do not know if this translates to mathy kids who already get it…but anyway, if it helps maybe it's not just curriculum, it's big picture. Sort of like, if you learn French, we can go to Paris...

I agree that you've found a winning approach.