Not at all. Not one little bit of me likes math. In teaching Goober, I am learning it again and again learning I don’t like it.

When I was in school learning fractions, I wasn’t all that thrilled.  I did fine with 1/2 and 1/4 and so on. But any more than that, I was lost.  Reducing fractions to the lowest common denominators went right over my head.

Care to wager a guess what Goober is learning in math right now?

Fractions!!!

She has crazy problems like 9/8 x 8  =?  And 3/2 x 8 =?  If 2/2 equals one whole, how can you possibly have 3/2? I know I know. reduce. But to what?

Why can’t we just go back to multiplication and division? That is easy. I am too old for this stuff.

Last week, Goober and I were working our way through some Miquon Math pages. On those pages we were working on learning “The Pattern Of….” And she was getting it. I was thrilled. I knew this math program was the best around because she was getting it. I was able to ask her, “What is 7×7?” And she would answer “49″.

Life was grand. I bragged on her one evening to Daddy. I remember telling him previously to that night that I thought she was merely filling out number blanks and didn’t have a clue what she was really doing.  Needless to say, most of my bragging was that she was not doing that, but was actually getting it.

That, I’ve discovered, was  my first mistake. You see the next morning she couldn’t add 7+3, much less multiply 7×3.  I dunno, maybe I’m expecting too much, but after three years of teaching this child math I would hope she could, when asked what 7+3 is, answer “10″ quickly without thinking it over for a few moments.

I spent two days with this type of math.  On the pattern of five and pattern of 10, I told her, “All you really need to do here is count by fives.(tens)” I would ask her “10 times 8 is?” And she would have no clue.

Ai yi yi.

Then we move on to the Prime Numbers. I’ve been out of school for a few million years and I have no recollection at all of learning prime numbers. None. I maintain I never learned them. A teacher/principle friend of mine told me I did learn them, but deemed them unnecessary to life and so disregarded the whole issue.

I read in the teacher’s manual what prime numbers are and how you know if a number is prime or not. So I was ready for her to complete the page. Until I came to number 1. According to her book, one is not a prime number. I was puzzled. “Why isn’t one a prime number?” It seemed to fit the criteria for one, but nope.

I know now. It takes too unique numbers. So while you can take 1×1 and get 1, that doesn’t make it prime. Ahhh. My teacher/principle friend, C, told me this and then told, “Make sure you teach her not to divide by zero.”

Duh! If you have nothing you can’t divide it. C promptly looked at me and said, “So what is zero divided by zero?”

“Uhhh. Zero. Everyone knows if you have none and divide it you still have none.”

“Yeah, but you just divided by zero.”

Our pastor was a math major in college. He has been a teacher, principle and school administrator. I received an email from him today, in response to one about prime numbers. He closed his email with, “don’t you love math!” I replied, “Oh yeah. Math is grand. It’s my non-mathematical  brain that causes problems.”

Today we did not do any math. Tomorrow we will. I have been having Goober spend 15-20 minutes a day reading over her “pattern of…” pages. Out loud. 1×1=1. etc.

Beanie thinks if you have 10 and don’t get any more you have none. She also thinks if have 13 and don’t get any more you have 17. Now I know at not quite 5 she is really just filling out blanks with numbers. But she is kept occupied, enjoys it and thinks she is really doing something (which she is) and maybe just maybe she’ll learn something.