Math Anxiety

Yup--get out your copies of Raising Ophelia--we have full blown math anxiety in this house.

Which is sort of unusual. Sure, I'm an English major and proud of it, but I put in my time with math, and even got some college credit for calculus. So, numbers don't scare me. Mr. Sweetie is a veritable number cruncher, having taken something called "linear algebra" which you apparently need calculus to even start to understand. Frankly, I was decent at differential calculus, but got in over my head with integral calculus. I don't even want to know about "linear algebra."

So, I've already forgotten more math than most people get to, but THE POINT IS that numbers are not scary here at home.

Apparently, numbers are scary at school. The Pony has a frustrating time with her math--which I put down to the fact that her textbook was written by a mathematician, not an ENGLISH MAJOR, which would have helped enormously. There is nothing more confusing that to read a mathematician's attempt to explain numerical concepts in--there's really no way to say it other than--"English."

Look. If numbers are your first language, that's fine, but when it comes time to introduce algebra to sixth graders, just step aside and let someone who actually speaks the language do it.

But (if you are still with me) this is actually a story about the Bunny. Bunny came home with a worksheet of division problems. About 30 of them, all 2s and 5s, so the math was not onerous. BUT. Half of the problems were in a new format. The dreaded DIVISION BOX!!
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2) 24

Does this shape fill you with terror and make you want to cry? It did the Bunny. It was just one too many things at the end of a long day.

"I don't even know where to put the answer!" she cried. And cried.

So, being the MOM--which means it's my job to FIX IT--I came up with a story.

"Imagine," I said, "That this is a little house. It has room for 24 little guinea pigs. That's all the guinea pigs who will fit in that house."

"Like Nut-nut?" she asked, raising her sweet little tear-streaked face.

"Just like Nut-nut. Now, imagine that all the little Nut-nuts are coming to the house in groups of two. How many times do you have to open the door to let them all in?"

This was capturing her imagination. She managed to consider the problem, and then offered, tentatively "Um....12?"

Exactly. So I wrote the answer on the top of the division box. "And that's where your answer goes. So, what's the next one?"
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It was 2) 12 and Bunny came through. "Six?"

Exactly! She was off to the races.

Except.

She made her sister add up all the divisors in all the division box problems, just so she'd know just exactly how many guinea pigs there were.

After that, the entire page took less than 6 minutes.