Math and girls

Over the weekend Eldest and I were thinking up ways she can pull in a little more money this summer. We decided that a one-week, half-day math camp for middle school girls might be just the thing. So I wrote a note to our local parents' list asking if anyone was interested, and we got a handful of responses. That surprised me, since one advantage of the camp will be lots of hands-on enrichment activities, exactly the kind of thing that kids no longer get in school. You'd think there would be huge demand.

Then this morning it occurred to me to post the same note on our homeschool email list. Bonanza! Within an hour my inbox was filled with inquiries. And this surprised me, too, because homeschoolers generally already do a whole lot of hands-on stuff. And middle-school girls who are homeschooled don't usually face the same social pressures of girls-don't-do-math as tweens in school.So you'd think there wouldn't be that much demand.

So we live and learn. Eldest is working as a counselor at a day camp for the next three weeks, which now turns out to be a doubly-good thing, since it will help her have a better understanding of how to run her own camp in August.