Is anyone else ever disturbed by the attempts to "make X fun!" by inclusion of cartoon characters and other inanity? I think it's a distraction; the kids just pay attention to the cartoon.<p>I know that some teachers would disagree, but in my experience, most teachers at the primary level don't really love math. Not the way I do, anyway. At the very best, you get people who liked doing rote problems, and those sorts of people just suck. The rest struggle through the lessons as much as their charges do, and they'd be lost without the teacher's guide.<p>In my opinion, the way to make math fun is to make the exercise of the skill itself more fun. Make it part of a game. For bonus points, make the game complex enough that multiple strategies can work, estimation or direct calculation or induction. And I'd like some recognition of the fact that some people are insanely good at this and others will always struggle, so create teams where different skills are useful (calculation, problem solving, record keeping, data gathering) but everyone learns the basic lessons.<p>Sooner or later you're going to be alone with the pencil and paper and Mr. 4 and Ms. 5 are not going to be there to help.