We had the same problem as you for this same concept (singapore 1a). I took a break from using the curriculum for a couple of days and taught this concept using an incremental approach until DS could get it. My approach was like this: You have one m&m now and you ate one already. How many did you have before you ate any? Then, you have 2 m&ms now and you ate 1 already. How many did you have before you ate any of them? Then, you have 2 m&ms now and you ate 2 already. How many did you have before you ate any of them? I progressively increased the complexity and let him deduce the answers and reach the correct conclusion by himself. I also put a bowl of m&ms in fornt of him and let him play act each scenario. Also, I let him work out the relationship between (9-4=5) and (4+5=9). Once he got it, then he could easily do the same thing for 2 digit numbers. So, the issue is that the wording is hard to comprehend and the concept chokes the brain if it is not broken down into baby steps.

I consider PS K as a great big playdate for DS. Academically, my DS is getting nothing out of PS. He attends a mixed class for "advanced Kers" with 1st graders and even in the "challenging" curriculum, so far, they do arts, crafts, coloring, counting up to 20 and 3 letter words. My DS was at that level a couple of years ago and right now he can do simple multiplication as well as read chapter books. But, he does get a lot of good stuff out of PS - there are the music classes with percussion instruments, the PE classes twice a week, the art class and library hour (the PTA funds all of these from parent donations because of state budget cuts and hence the quality is great). And the things that I appreciate the most so far has been his teacher working with him for his handwriting improvement (his writing is awful with letter reversals and scrawling and I had given up that fight because it always ended up in emotional tears) and the social aspect of K - it is a big party/playdate for him for 3 hours and he gets to play with 24 kids (even more at recess time) and the sense of community as we meet all the local kids. Not to mention the stimulation of peers to excel at things which is woefully missing without the school environment. The negative aspect of PS is that he comes home with objectionable and age inappropriate vocabulary and certain attitudes that are absolutely not permitted in our home and which seems to be common amongst some of the kids in his class. So, we actually spend more time than usual at home talking to him to rectify this behavior in addition to the time spent on regular afterschooling. Good private schools cost 22-35 K in my area and we just cannot afford that kind of money. So, PS it is with a heavy dose of afterschooling.

Exactly this, in my son's class. He is attending a combined K/1st grade class as the school district placed older Kers and younger 1st graders in a combined class room. My son is reading sight words, writing letters (letter of the week), drawing pictures for the letter of the week, sequences like "start, middle, end", "before, after", number sense, counting, matching pictures with words etc. They make books each week and a small puppet with an appropriate poem. They send in homework for letter tracing and math numbers or patterns or sequences. And they also send "optional challenging homework" which DS could attempt if he were interested. Also, a "show and tell" based on a theme once a month.

We have been using it for over 8 months now. It is a great supplementary program with cute animation, great presentation, great themes etc. One thing though, it does not teach. It trains you on concepts that you know by repetition. So, sometimes, I need to sit with DS to explain concepts before he moves to another level because there is no introduction to basic concepts before you can start playing with it. For e.g. DS who is 5 did not know anything about negative numbers and since he had crossed all the stages in his grade level, he unlocked the next level and started crying in frustration because he just could not understand all the games with all the new concepts. And there is no way that you can restrict your child to a certain grade level. So, parental intervention is a must in order to successfully use it. But, it is such a slickly produced product that it is worth the money. We used the HSBC discount to get ours.

I teach Miquon math Orange book in parallel with 1A. Along with heavy usage of Cuisenaire rods. My son loves hands-on math to such an extent that we use things like cheerios, m&ms etc to make number bonds and work out small addition and subtraction problems. I suggest trying to make the effort more hands-on than just a workbook/textbook kind of experience. Also, we use SM Challenging word problems, SM Intensive practice in addition to the workbook so that we fully comprehend and run through a single topic in great detail before moving on to the next thing. That helps greatly in mastery of concepts before moving on to more challenging stuff. We are not in a hurry to get anywhere, because at this age, our goal for DS is to be able to approach a concept, understand it and solve a related problem without hesitation or trepidation. So, please try introducing manipulatives and see how it goes. As for number bonds, my DS was confused on which order to write the number in a bond in case of subtraction - I told him that a number bond looked like a tree with one root and many branches - and that the branches together would be equal to the root of the tree and never greater in value than the root. He got it immediately.

Thanks for the thread. DS is doing SM and Miquon and asks about BA all the time. I was waiting to get it next year, but it seems that others have started on it early. I will just get BA 3A to see how we like it.

It is a great thing for a small child to teach someone else. It gives them pride in their abilities, a sense of achievement, happiness and fulfillment that they were of help to their peer and it is true that "you learn better by teaching others". That being said, this should definitely be restricted to very few occasions. It should never be the responsibility of one kid to teach or lead another kid - if I were the parent of either one of these kids, I would find the situation objectionable. And what about the money the school is paid for educating all the kids in a classroom? And what about the salaried teachers involved - their job certainly seems easy from my point of view if someone else could shoulder their responsibility even partially. The school district that my son goes to implements these "peer teacher" policies, in addition to "mixed grade" classes where they stick gifted kids due to a lack of budget for gifted programs - the older kids then, "help/teach" younger grade kids during class time. They say that it is their way of encouraging "leadership abilities" and "responsibility". My DH calls it glorified "child labor" in America.

We use DreamBox and like it a lot.

DS started PS this year and already we donated $300 with much more to donate during the fundraisers etc. We are a high performance school district (and also located in California where there are budget cuts seemingly every month!) so the PTA uses the money to fund quite a bit of activities which comprise of sports, arts, field trips, assemblies and "acceleration" in academics (keep up those super high API scores :( ) Though the $$$ is a lot lesser than the private preschool DS attended, I seem to be hit up for money every week.

:iagree: My gifted child goes to PS. He is asked to do stuff that is very easy for him, but he enjoys the social aspects of school life. As mathwonk said, I do not expect my son's teacher to stimulate his mind and teach things appropriate to his learning level. He afterschools with me on an "advanced track" and I make the effort to see that he is appropriately challenged because of the acceleration effort we put in at home. That seems to keep him challenged enough. In your case, if you feel that your child cannot be accelerated at home to the appropriate level, I suggest that you find a private tutor or a tutoring center that might provide a customized teaching plan for your child.

I would suggest that you start at 3. Mine went straight onto EarlyBird B at around 3.5 years old as he found Early Bird A too easy. We took several months to finish EB B, though. Before starting SM EB, what I did was to use some Kumon counting and numbers workbooks and cuisenaire rods based activities for a while before moving onto Early Bird B (my son loved playing and building with cuisenaire rods, still does!). Then, we worked on the Miquon Math Orange book with Cuisenaire rods and Early Bird B at the same time, alternating between those depending on how we felt about each topic and the progress we made.

Thanks, Stef03. I think I will use the HSBC discount to get it.

My DS loves Reading Eggs because he finds their graphics more fun than the other online learning programs we are using. But, since I feel that he is using it mainly for entertainment value rather than to learn anything useful to him, I am loathe to pay full price for yet another online learning program (we already have EPGY and ETC online). He is well past the stage of learning things like "I am Sam" - but loves the fact that he can collect points, the graphics jumping up and down on the screen etc to such an extent that he is willing to drop his daily TV session in its place and begs me to get it for him almost every day. We have run through the 14 day trial. So, is there any way of getting a coupon for an annual subscription? I see a lot of older posts about coupons. Just want to know how to get hold of them. I think that the full price of $75 is too much for just entertainment value. TIA.

I am doing SM, with the SM IP and CWP already and supplement with DreamBox online. I have realized that at my DS's age, we do not need the certification, transcripts and tutoring help that EPGY gifted program provides. So, we will go with the cheaper EPGY open enrollment option. We will be able to enroll for it when DS's PS starts up this month as his school district provides access to EPGY open enrollment. I called the EPGY help line and talked to them. They told me that the content is same for both programs, but for open enrollment, they are not responsible for the support and tutoring help. They also told me to create another online account in order to enroll for the open enrollment if I had an EPGY gifted account online already. Considering the $$$ saved ($125/year for open enrollment vs $500 each quarter for gifted enrollment), I can buy any other number of other enrichment curriculum or online programs.

Do you think that she would like Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series? I recently saw a whole bunch of those books in our local costco. Also check out Enid Blyton's classic mysteries. They might be hard to come by, but quite entertaining.

My 5 year old DS is sadly lagging in geography exposure. He is eager to learn and we have informally taught him various US cities and states whenever we watch sporting events on TV by telling him which city and state the teams are from and by teaching him to spell the names of those cities. He has read some books on volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, rivers and oceans. So, he has those concepts down already. But, it is time that I spent some effort on formal geography and I am the kind of parent who is unable to improvise (as far as geography is concerned) and would love to follow a curriculum or textbook so that I know what to teach. I would love some pointers on what is available out there and what your experiences are. Any help is deeply appreciated.

Not at all going as I planned. First of all I underestimated how much of a toll a sports summer camp can take on a 5 year old's energy level. And then, we have elderly in-laws staying with us for 3 months so that MIL could recuperate from an illness. Though we love them dearly and are glad to have them with us, they are utterly bored and sedentary and our house is very small. So, they interrupt all and every summer schooling activity I do with our son as they think a 5 year old needs to entertain them and there is no need to "force feed" schooling in the summer time for a 5 year old. I bear with it and go on despite their interruptions, loud TV watching and even louder and long phone calls (they are hard of hearing too). My DH jokes that my son will end up with the best concentration levels for a 5 year old in our county if he persevered through all these distractions! So, this is what is actually happening: 1. Math Plan was to have started SM 1a. We finished Singapore EarlyBird B. We are halfway through Miquon Orange Book. Did not even crack open the Singapore 1A books yet. DreamBox has not been visited for a month due to lack of time. 2. Reading - SOTW 1 a few times. But, made great progress with SOTW audiobooks. I am so glad to have them. 3. Finished the whole series of "Let's Read and Find Out Science 1 & 2" - even the experiments at the back of each of those books. But made no headway on the BFSU book. 4. Piano practice going well as I keep that as a main priority for summer. 5. Korean Martial Arts - suffering as the sports camps make DS too tired to do well in the Martial Arts class. Need to delay his belt testing. 6. Language - FLL 1 going at moderate pace. Gave up on ETC temporarily. Will take it up in the fall again when we will have more time. 7. Kumon workbooks - languishing. Will dust them up in the Fall. 8. Arts and Crafts - a few cutting and pasting activities so far. One lesson I have learned - never to buy any more curriculum until we use up some of the stockpile I have :)

I would say, go for it. It is a form of carschooling and it uses the travel time as well as keeps everyone busy during the commute while learning! We have put SOTW-1 on an ipod for my DS to listen by himself whenever he wants to and he absolutely loves it. He has his own favorite sections, and quite often, pauses a story to find a grown up to ask what a particular word means or for a deeper explanation. He retains a lot even at his age. We do read SOTW to him occasionally. He then goes back to that chapter on audio and tries to correlate what we read to him with the audio track. We will repeat SOTW when he is older, but I am glad I bought the audio CDs.

We use Miquon math and Singapore Math Earlybird combination and like it.

Korean Martial Arts - $160 per month (excluding testing fees etc) - not negotiable as it is DS's favorite thing ever and he is aiming for a black belt. Swimming - $75 per month (a life skill, so mandatory in our house) Piano - $200 per month (DS enjoys it so much and has a great rapport with his teacher, so not looking for a cheaper option) Summer Sports camp - $200 per week - I am not in my youth and don't have energy to throw the ball around, and DH is always away due to work so cannot contribute to sports, so enrolled DS in summer sports camps to learn the basics of his favorite games. Chess camp - 1 week - $175 - one time expense only as he will be playing at home with parents in the future. Curriculum purchases as well as workbooks for afterschooling - approx $450 per year (some were impulse buys and not strictly necessary and some purchases came as sets and will last us for multiple years, so can be amortized over 2-3 years) We have drastically cut some activities in 2012, and frankly, I am heaving a sigh of relief - these were Gymnastics (@$60 per month - for the past 3 years, but DS has lost interest now), Soccer (@$18 per week for the past 2 years), Intro to Art classes (@$65 per month for the past 1 year- some small motor skill development issues, so not making any progress there). Educational Apps for ipad (used to be impulse buys of around $20 per month, but recently cut almost to nothing). More than the $$$, I grudge the time and effort spent in driving a kid against traffic to so many places, reaching on time and waiting outside to pick him up. That is a killer for me as I am a working mom and the schedule simply drives me nuts.

My son just turned 5. When he was 4, we started with some workbooks (mostly Kumon) and then when he mastered the numbers upto 100, we moved to Singapore Math EarlyBird A which he finished in a few months and we are now on SM Earlybird B and will move on to the next level over summer. We added Miquon Orange book with cuisenaire rods when he was closer to 5. We use household items like Duplo blocks, M & Ms, hotwheels cars, pennies etc as manipulatives. Cuisenaire rods are the only manipulatives we have bought so far. We also use DreamBox math online once or twice a week for a different format as well as rigor. This has helped accelerate him quite a lot and in a fun and entertaining manner that it keeps him coming back for more "mommy math".

I do exactly this! And it works!! I also make the stickers fun - for example, DS and I make a treasure island poster and color it and stick it on the wall in his room. And I get a book of pirate stickers from the dollar store and he gets one sticker for each book completed. He places it on the appropriate place on his poster building an imaginary pirate story as he goes. For e.g. the girl pirate got the binocular sticker today while the bird from the boy pirate flew and perched on the coconut tree yesterday! When he earns 20 stickers, he gets go to TJ Maxx or Michaels craft store with me (we live close by) and pick out an inexpensive toy or book from there.

Thanks a lot for all the thoughtful responses. You made me re-examine my attitude - my son's afterschool care is part academic (30 mins) and then mostly unstructured. During the unstructured time, the teachers might read books to all kids or play scrabble or be outside in the sandpit or play structure or do impromptu yoga or soccer or painting - but they are doing things as a group and playing together. And, now that I think about it, yes, this can be considered as an equivalent of playdates or unstructured playtime as he is doing it with his friends from school. Right now, my kid has stamina and motivation and my initial thought was to make use of it while I can because the teen years might prove different! Thanks also for the tip on Bedtime math. That is very easy to implement. I also like the "Verbal Math" book that I bought from a suggestion on another thread and I am going to implement it on our car rides rather than go heavy on workbooks as someone mentioned above.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, my DS goes to afterschool care and comes home later. We are thinking of dropping both Gymnastics and Soccer this year (they are carryovers from his toddler years). I have overscheduled DS and I know it :( But, he really loves going to those activities and he has bonded with his coaches and always gets upset when I suggest that he drops some of them. Which is why we never end them. I tried doing activities on weekends and that is even worse as we are unable make a long trip, attend birthday parties or go on a field trip on the weekends because of the activities. Which is why all his activities are clustered on the week days. I will try to figure out how to make my family early birds so that we can get some "before schooling" done :)

My DS is very bright and I feel that he is very bored with regular school work. He actually asked for afterschooling as he wanted mom to "help him get smarter". So, starting from October of last year, we have afterschooled where I accelerate him in math and reading and sometimes light history and geography too (or just art if he feels like it). He practices piano for 30 minutes and then he works with me for an hour for academics or art every evening. We go to Tae Kwon Do classes thrice a week and swimming, gymnastics and soccer one day each. But, that is all the afterschool play time he gets (all these activities are with coaches in groups and not unstructured with friends). Though he thoroughly enjoys his time afterschooling with me, a part of me feels guilty when looking at neighborhood boys shooting hoops in the front yard with friends or skateboarding or biking in the sidewalks. We really do not have time for those things if we were to afterschool. And playdates are non-existent as I work full time. So, my question is, does afterschooling cut out the "play" in a young child's life? Or does everyone else manage the play-afterschool balance in a better way than me?