This article was originally published on Hubpages in 2009. I am in the process of transferring my old articles from there to here. Welcome to Gilroy Nature Park It would be easy to stroll by the entrance to Gilroy Nature Park and not even notice it was there, especially if the chorus of quacking ducks and geese had fallen silent. This pocket-sized park consists of a pond, a meadow and a small woodland, and is home to a surprisingly large variety of wildlife including water voles, common brown bats, weasels and foxes. A Stroll Around the Park Tucked away down a public footpath which runs from Gilroy Road in West Kirby, between fields of crops and languorous cows to the golf course close to Hoylake train station, is a gap in the hedge. A simple sign, half-buried behind branches, reads 'Gilroy Nature Park'. A Haven for Wildfowl The park is maintained by volunteers, and now this (and the adjacent field which readily floods) is home to teal, mallard, snipe, black-tailed godwits, cur...

This article was originally published on Hubpages in 2010. I'm slowly transferring all my old Hubpages articles to here. Bad at Arithmetic? Did you have serious problems trying to learn basic maths in school, or do you know of a child who is experiencing this? Have you heard of dyscalculia? This condition is akin to the much more widely known dyslexia. Whereas a dyslexic has word blindness, a dyscalculic person has number blindness. Some people have both. Number Blindness This means that anything requiring numbers, such as mental arithmetic, remembering phone numbers, using a calculator or understanding the mechanics of mathematics, is incredibly difficult. If a child, for example, is doing fine in other subjects like English, history, art, geography or biology, but struggles badly with scientific equations or the times table, then there is a possibility that dyscalculia may lie at the root of the problem. As well as having obvious numerical problems, a dyscalculic may also possess...