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How do you START teaching addition, etc to a pretty much wholey VSL (DS4) who gets things as a whole? Hints please. He memorizes numbers like phone numbers as a group, and has no problem with that. And he can write it down; so it's not totally a group in his head, I think??? He learned counting by two's with marshmallow bribes..."you can have as many as you can count to." He gets things in aha moments. His reading is much the same. He can sound out words but prefers to read known sight words first or guess on the non-memorized ones;so he is kind of stagnant at just under 2nd grade level. I have "Upside Brilliance...VSL." Will it tell me in there? I haven't gotten far enough into it yet. I am looking for more instant gratification/answers. Thank you!

I don't know, but i am very interested in answers to this. DD is very VSL as well, she is the same way with reading. She knows how to sound things out but preers to read known sight words and words tha she recognizes, although she will ask, i will tell, and then she knows...i am wondering abut math as well.

Hands-on, as you did with the marshmallow counting, is what I'd recommend. Anything they can manipulate and move around has worked well for my probably-VSL kids. My kids actually like using paper and pencil a lot, too, so don't rule that out. Seeing it on paper or in a book can work for some visual learners.

But be patient. Since it comes as an "aha" to these kids a lot of the time, they aren't always the ones who are way ahead in achievement at these young ages, but they can jump way ahead all of a sudden. Fits and starts seems to be pretty common.

I hope you get more help than mine. I'm reading with great interest!

Always appreciate your tips! DS is not a workbook kid; but who knows, things have been changing so fast lately. He gets the adding part but can't recite it to me, yet.

I wouldn't do workbooks. Just pencil and paper. Let him write a problem for you to solve, then you write one for him to do. My 5yo LOVES that game.

I always walk through how I solve his problems with him as I solve them--and some are complicated!--so that he hears and sees what I'm doing as I do it. It seems to work reasonably well.

That's a good idea! Thanks, Kriston. He'll like that a lot.

Oh, and sometimes I get part of the problem wrong on purpose so that he has to correct me. He likes that, too.

But arithmetic really came to him virtually all at once (except division) right around 4.5yo. Before that, he was counting, but nothing exceptional was happening that I could see. When it blossomed, it came on fast. This was helped by toys/games like Bakugon and Pokemon. The cards require adding, subtracting and/or multiplying (depending upon the game and the cards they get) to play, so he was highly motivated to figure it out. By the time he was 5yo and a couple of months, DS5 was multiplying 2 digits in his head.

This may be utterly irrelevant for your DS, of course, but it's something to think about. A lot of GT kids really like that sort of mathy game.

I know someone else really into them. I didn't know what they were all about though. cool Is there a specific Bakugon or Pokemon card game, or is there only one of each?

There are lots of Pokemon cards and Bakugan balls/cubes, so you can spend a fortune on them if you're not careful. But there's only one game of each. All Pokemon stuff works together, and the same with Bakugan stuff.

Be prepared, though. You'll hear more about these things than you ever cared to if your DS is into one or the other, and you may wind up cursing my name for suggesting it! It gets oooooold!

Oh, and they are battles. Bloodless battles, but battles nonetheless. If that bothers you, it could be a problem.

Also, I don't allow kids to battle for keeps (so that they lose their Pokemon cards or their Bakugon) and I monitor trades. There's a 10yo in the neighborhood who was preying on DS5 last year. Grrr... It's good to make that sort of rule upfront.