Working 2 years ahead in math.

[IceFairy]

DS will be 6 this summer and would have been right at the cutoff to make K in PS. He finished 1st grade math in March. I decided to move to Rod and Staff 2. He has NO trouble with the concepts presented but it WAY more written work than he is used to....and its tiring his hands for other work....plus the time is triple what he is used to doing. Would you break up the lessons, doing 1-2 a week for a few months to ease in? I really think thats the best route, but for some reason I am hesitating. Any reassurance or advice would be great :-)

[EKS]

My advice is to find a rigorous program that doesn't require as much writing or as much time. If he stays two years ahead, the writing issue is going to be an ongoing problem. The other option is to scribe for him, but at some point you have to extricate yourself from that process. I found Singapore to be an excellent choice for my son who was 2+ years ahead in math at your son's age. RightStart would be another good choice.

[SnegurochkaL]

Hi, My son is 6 also and he is working about 2 years ahead in math also. He is done with SM1, working on SM2/3, Russian math 2 and Beast Academy. He is not fond of writing at all. Singapore math does not require a lot of writing nor Beast Academy. In our family I help him to do a lot of writing otherwise my ds will be solving everything in his head which he does most of the time. I agree that RS requires little writing but if your son is advanced in math, RS might go a little slow for him. We are doing RS games which is a lot of fun and reinforce the concepts had been learned earlier.

[Clear Creek]

The teaching time in R&S 2 is the important part; the teacher is only supposed to assign the worksheets (or portions of the worksheets) that the student needs practice with. As long as you are focusing on the concepts and practice given for class time in the TM, he should only need a little bit of practice in the workbook...definitely not all of it.

[jenbrdsly]

My advice is to find a rigorous program that doesn't require as much writing or as much time. If he stays two years ahead, the writing issue is going to be an ongoing problem. The other option is to scribe for him, but at some point you have to extricate yourself from that process. I found Singapore to be an excellent choice for my son who was 2+ years ahead in math at your son's age. RightStart would be another good choice.

 

 

 

This, and also you might want to look at Dreambox Math as a supplement.

 

Also, by third grade PS kids transcribe their answers from textbooks to paper. That's really hard for a six year old to learn to do, but not impossible. For us, it took a lot of me teaching my kid how to organize his work in a notebook. That was a skill in itself.

[WyoSylvia]

My ds had the same problem and we did "rice writing." (I think this idea came from HWOT.) I filled a large pan with rice and he would just draw the answer in the rice with his finger. He really liked it and it allowed him to work as quickly as he liked.

[mathnerd]

My son is accelerated in math 2 years ahead (he is almost 6 yo). We use Singapore math and Miquon - both of which are great choices as mentioned by a PP - we do MEP too which is harder for him because of the small spaces he has to write in. My son has a pencil grip problem which hurt his fingers if he writes a lot - so I scribe for him when it gets intensive. I have tried using stampers and asking him to stamp the correct numbers for answers, printed out number stickers which he could stick. But it all involves too much work and I finally decided that me scribing was what it takes to accelerate him. But, as he nears 6 years old, I have found that he can write a lot better. Now I have hopes that by 8 years old, he will be more independent in writing work.

[Crimson Wife]

Singapore has a new online program called "Math Buddies" that you might want to look into. It's something I am considering for my DS after he finishes his current Singapore books.

[AK_Mom4]

We did lots of work aloud and on the white board when DD was little. She had far less problems writing the answers using the white board and her hand did not get as tired. This let us continue on at the right pace for her until her written output caught up physically with her math level. Now at 11, she has no trouble copying problems and all on paper for long assignments, though we still use the white board quite a bit for diagrams and working out complex problems.