I found that through the years my dd9 (going into 4th grade) has been consistently about a year ahead of the math curriculum at school even with no outside math, simply because I answer her random questions. After a couple of years of her learning almost nothing in math at school I began advocating for her to have more advanced math at school. I won a small victory by convincing our district GT coordinator to purchase a few ALEKS licenses for the elementary PG kids for the summer. My dd is working on ALEKS as I type. (I asked her to do one section tonight since she has been busy all week and not had any time to work on it. After she finished the required section she wanted to do a few more because "ALEKS is fun.")
I decided that my dd needed to work on math outside of school because I felt it was unacceptable for her to go long periods of time without learning any math. She needs to exercise that part of her brain too. I guess I really got motivated after observing my dd's class one day. During the math lesson on fractions my dd was called on to answer or volunteered to answer many of questions that the other students had difficulty answering. She did this while sitting with her back to the overhead projector and reading a book. After witnessing that there was no way I could deny her need for more challenging math. I also came to the conclusion that whether she was one year ahead or three years ahead in math the grade level curriculum would always be boring for her so I could not justify denying her the enjoyment of learning more challenging math any longer.
