Gladly Passing the Reins

Tonight I popped THE question lovingly to my husband.  "Honey, would you consider taking over teaching math to Max?"  Without hesitation he asked to see where we were at in our quest and agreed to take the reins.  I am practically swooning with relief.  I need a break from Max's math monsters!  He holds such disdain for the material and it wears me out at times to try and find different ways to engage him.  We've just come off of a two week break and I can't tell you how nice it was not to have to deal with math-itis.  I've lamented about this many times on my blog and have wavered between loosening up on math, to changing curricula, to playing lots of math games, to not doing any math at all.  I was very excited to purchase the first Life of Fred book on fractions and thought for sure it would be a hit; Max is super-sleuth when it comes to sensing math, though, and he immediately recognized the book as such and lumped it into the "NO" category.  I adore the Life of Fred series.  Max enjoys the stories but resists working out the problems at the end of each chapter. 

I have come to the conclusion that Max, math and I should not hang out in the same room together, at least for the time being or the rest of this school year, which ever comes first.  We coexist very well with language arts, history, literature and geography, so we'll stick with those subjects in the 'Mom' camp.  Dad and Max can play video games, paint trim, practice skateboarding and do math together.  It should be great!  Mom is going to put up her feet and grab a good book (probably some nonfiction on how to teach kids math).

My husband is planning to make breakfast for Max in the morning and work on math together before he leaves for work.  We'll see how Day 1 goes........wish them luck!   

Later.........Day 3 and all is well so far.  Max and Dad are hammering away on least common denominators in the early morning and I haven't seen any formal complaints filed from either of them.  This is great!  Three days in and they are working well together.  It's given me a breath of fresh air to concentrate on all the other stuff we're doing.  Yay!  Max and I seem to be having a bit more fun during the day together!