pIn elementary school, math word problems were the bane of my existence. I could crunch numbers with ease, but word problems were tricky because of the logical sorting you have to do to arrive at an equation Establishing what's known and what's unknown and the relationship between them was not easy for me. Some word problems tell a story where events are out of order. You have to re-order them first to grasp what was there at the start, what changes, and what is missing. Some word problems use tricks like A crocodile is 7 feet long, and that's 3 times shorter than a snake! How long is the snake In 3rd grade, that word 'shorter' tricked me into division instead of multiplication every single time. This reasoning that turns a word problem into an equation was always the hardest part for me...not the calculations, but the logical part. As a grownup, looking back, I could hardly understand why I was so lost around word problems. But then, seeing my 7-year-old son currently in 3rd grade los