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From: moiram%tekcae.cax.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Moira Mallison)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: making a difference
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Date: 4 Nov 88 00:16:36 GMT
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We've talked (in other forums if not this one) about the socialization
of children toward particular careers, about how well males and females
do in different subjects in elementary school and what effects it has
on their futures, about our own experiences of being encouraged,
discouraged or ignored with respect to our own learning experiences.

Now I have a real life situation in my young niece.  Heather is 8 and is
just starting bounce back from the trauma of her parent's divorce a
couple years ago.  She has loved reading from the time she first 
learned (an escape of sorts, I expect), and has progressed rapidly to
a level 2-3 years beyond her age (though her vocabulary seems to be a
little beyond her comprehension).

But math is another matter.  She manages to keep up, but she doesn't
like it much.  When thinking about what I could do to work with her,
to fire some enthusiasm, I realized that what I needed to do was make
math fun.  The second realization was that this is a real challenge,
because *I* don't think it's fun.

Anybody got any ideas how to make it fun for both of us?

Moira Mallison