Hi Isabel,

I have an 11 year old that sounds a lot like your son. He used to count until we got to preschool and then tell me the minutes (by dividing by 60). The preschool was about 15 minutes away. smile

We've had teachers who understood and teachers who didn't over the years. He was in a GT magnet for elementary, but many of the teachers just wanted to follow the calendar.

He never liked Dreambox, because you have to go through so many "boring" things to get to the good stuff. He loved Prodigymath for a while, and we've used IXL from time to time. IXL is a bit drier, but you can select what you want to work on without working through other things; ie, you can skip to multiplication, area of a circle, etc.

The other thing that has made school tolerable is music. If that's an option for you find a way to get him into lessons, piano, violin, trumpet, choir, whatever.

You have my deepest sympathy on the manipulatives, and the "but I'm not sure he understands counting theory". Ugh.

One more thing. Try to find a sympathetic admistrator who can help guide him to the right teachers. We were lucky in this to have a coordinator who understood (and believed in) innate math abilities and made sure from 2nd grade on that he had teachers who were flexible and who were willing to let him work at his on pace, at least part of the time.

Good luck!