Homeschool Squirrels

When I first pulled River out of kindergarten three years ago and made the decision to homeschool, I felt the weight of teaching my children this valuable subject in which I have no talent and little understanding before we even began. Even with elementary level math, I worried about presenting it in a way that made sense, and I didn't want to mess thing up and cause my kids to hate math. When I was very young, I enjoyed math, looking forward to lessons with my mom every day, but in third grade I distinctly remember a palpable shift in my perception of numbers and equations. I would spend hours a week, seated at the kitchen table, staring at the math pages until nothing made sense anymore. I remember crying and snotting through division and while trying to memorize multiplication, playing with my pencil, making up stories in my head, poking holes in my eraser... anything to avoid finishing my work pages. For some reason, as the years went on, I felt like my value was placed i