Frustrated with the textbooks

"Word problems are probably a good example. Why do sheets and sheets of inane word problems (do I multiply? do I add? why do they want to break that cookie in half?) when they occur naturally in the real world where they are full of connections and real meaning: "I want to buy this game that costs $50 and I have already saved $20. I get $5 a week in allowance so if I save it all how many weeks until I can buy the game?"; "It takes 45 minutes to drive to Grammy's house and we want to be there by 1pm for lunch. What time do we have to leave?"; "I want to buy this item for $5 and this item for $7. Do I have enough money?"; "We want to build a skateboard ramp. How much wood do we need to buy?" Don't turn these questions into a "lesson" - that would be thoroughly annoying - and would likely discourage the kids from ever asking out loud again (or listening to me if I talk through them aloud). These are just naturally occurring conversations in the course of daily life."

I'm reading this in someone else's blog and thinking, "YES! Heck Yes! Why do I have to make my kids do these dry textbooks? Savannah, my 7 almost 8 year old, can tell me how many Webkinz you can buy for $1,000 even though she doesn't even know the word "division", and would freak out if faced with an actual division problem. She also counts her money that she earns by cleaning for her great, great Aunt with the greatest of ease (and pleasure! :) She also is getting better at understanding fractions while baking, even though fractions have not yet been introduced in her math book. Her second grade math book is dry and sometimes unchallenging. It is soooo not connected to real life! In the past few weeks, I've been using the kids textbooks as more of a "map" to see what they "need to know for their grade level". I don't even like doing that..... sigh.... but my husband thinks they will "get behind", and someone is going to freak out because they've never heard about a greater than, less than sign. AArrrgggghhhh.