I've been after schooling ds7. He switched schools this year and found himself bored with Saxon 3 so I continued with Singapore Math at home (which is what he was studying in his former school). In the beginning I was just planning on supplementing and going with the flow with the school and give him Singapore Math 3A-3B. Surprisingly, he breezed through SM 3A and 3B, and eventually through SM 4A and 4B. He loved doing the workbooks so much that even on early Saturday and Sunday mornings when I would go to his bedroom, I'd find him already awake and working on them on his own. I think it took him about 5 months to complete 3rd and 4th grade. Now that we're on to Singapore Math 5A, he seems to slow down a bit and sometimes even a little less interested. Generally, he does well in the beginning of the chapters when it's all numbers, but when it comes time to doing the word problems, this is where he slows down and loses interest. He can do the easy straightforward type of word problems, but has a really tough time with the challenging ones. Although he's always been pretty advanced in math, he is an average reader and he has the comprehension skills of a 2nd grader. To give him a break and keep him interested, I moved on to the next chapter, which in this case is introduction to algebra, and he really loves it and doesn't want to go to back now to doing the word problems on fractions. I think he will also enjoy the next few chapters on multiplication and division of decimals.
I think one of the strengths of SM is the word problems so I don't necessarily want to do away with them, but what do I do if the word problems seem to be too much at this point? Do I slow down the math and keep going through the problems over and over and over again until he gets them? Do I skip around in the book? Do I switch math programs ( I did order Beast Academy books recently... still waiting for them to arrive in the mail)? What are your expectations from a young child doing the word problems in SM as they move up? I don't want to turn him off, he seems to still enjoy it (just not so much the challenging word problems) but at the same time I am worried about him having gaps or not getting the most out of SM. My husband, who is a little more tough on him on math, thinks that he shouldn't be advanced if he cannot get the word problems. He thinks it's pretty meaningless to move him up when he hasn't mastered them. Curious to know what some parents here think and have done with their kids.