What about Math?

I picked up this book Loving+Hating Mathmatics at The Liberty science center b/c admittedly I thought I was a hater of mathmatics.  Turns out I was taught to hate it as most people are in school by having it drilled into me and being told, I wasn't any good at it.  .  This book is not a book for( or even about) homeschooling and to be honest I jumped to the last chapter about how math is taught in schools.   I wanted to read that first so I could make sure in my homeschooling I wasn't teaching my kids to hate math.
In reality math has not been joy over here in our ecclectic sometimes panicky homeschooling and it is b/c Math makes me panic.  It's not that I don't know how to add and subtract and do all the basic arithmetic, I can, but numbers get murky sometimes with their stubbornness of having only one answer and their superiority over other subjects. 
The book calls for education reform in the way in which we teach students and inspire them to love math or to accept that, just as some kids don't enjoy reading as much as others, some will never enjoy factoring. Highly acclaimed educators and mathematicians say, "that's ok" 
The book talks about NCLB and how teaching to the test is making more haters of math and this has inspired me to inspire my kids with more than just numbers as math.
The book has fabulous quotes about how society lies to kids telling them they will NEED calculus and geometry but the truth is the need is in an arbitrary exam colleges give to weed out certain students.  The highest professors admit this is mistake and admits that Doctors and Engineers are not using either of these in their day to day work.   
When i was in school struggling with Geometry my parents got me tutor and, like all teens, I questioned her about why I needed to learn this b/c I would never use it.  She said, "It's true you may never need but it's good exercise for your brain"  Math can and should be presented as good exercise b/c the more you get to know ins and outs of numbers the more they make sense.  Rote memorization doesn't make sense so is easily lost in years but once you truly get know something you understand it fully. 
I would like to highly recommend this book to everyone who might need a little math inspiration.  Let me know what you thought of it.

Overheard at the sleepover

Kid #1 Do you think school is boring?
 Kids all shrug and look around and mumble variations of " I don't know"

Then

Kid #2 answers:  Probably, b/c in school you have to learn early in the morning but in homeschool you can learn anytime.

Oak Meadow contest

Win a curriculum

If you are going to use a curriculum this one seems nice and nature based and not too rushed.