I was surprised to find that my daughter seems to have made great strides in her Maths without any intervention from us. Not so long ago, she was having trouble with the value of numerals. Her dad and I would explain about units, tens, hundreds and thousands in every way we could think of, but still the penny refused to click.  Now suddenly, Emma can read any large number before her, which means that she's also able to work quite big addition and subtraction sums that include carrying numbers and borrowing from the previous column. I couldn't believe it, because I knew I could take no credit.

Emma told me that her understanding is all due to her battery-operated Barbie Cookbook. This was one of birthday presents from last November and my dh and I both thought it was a bit of a rip-off at the time. I remember saying, "$50.00 for a dozen or so little recipes, and we could buy a whole cookbook full of them for $2.00." However, Emma had been very anxious to have one and we wanted to make her happy. Her older brother gets fed-up with Barbie's tinny voice continually saying, "Now add one cup of flour and stir..." But it seems that all that time, Emma has actually been learning the value of numbers and other Math concepts all by herself. The recipe book has a little calculator gadget included, which gets little girls to push buttons until they reach 500grams, 1/2 teaspoon, 250mls, and so on. She's certain this is what made her understand number values. So the toy that we all thought was a bit of a nuisance has actually helped make our job easier.

It's another of one those pleasant surprises I've had from time to time since we started homeschooling. Maybe Emma felt under stress whenever Andrew and I tried to show her what to do, but when Barbie shows her, the pressure is off and she's just having fun. I've decided yet again to never underestimate the possible educational value of anything in the house.