After reading the "Life of Fred" thread, I bought the first Fred book to read to my son. He is 5 and preschool ends next week. I was looking for some fun things to read over the summer to keep him stimulated before kindergarten starts in the fall.
We received the first book yesterday and my son kept begging me to read more until we had finished 100 pages- in one sitting. He wanted to read it first thing this morning and we are now almost done. While I'm glad that he loves it so much, I feel a bit conflicted and wanted to check in with others here.
I worry that if we blow through several Fred books this summer that I'm setting my son up to be extra bored in kindergarten next year and that will translate to behavioral issues.
Unless your school considers things like grade skipping and single subject acceleration, it is likely that your son will be bored no matter what you do, so I suggest letting him pursue his interests in math.
My oldest son is highly gifted in math, and my younger two children may be gifted. They all attend Russian School of Math, and I can see from the RSM homework assignments that the material is more advanced than what they do at school. Our local public schools, in an affluent Boston suburb, are so good that they don't need to consider subject acceleration in elementary and middle school /sarc. So the role of public school math classes for our children is mostly credentialing rather than learning -- in high school they should get A's in the algebra-to-calculus sequence to get into good colleges. They will rarely be learning something new.
