Thank you for all the thoughtful responses. Our approach is similar to what many of you have recommended. We read widely (everything from Little House on the Prairie to The Adventures of Penrose- which he loves). Lately he has been into reading home improvement manuals and I bought the Fred book intending to read it like any story book because I was sick of reading about fuse box repairs.
My son son told me that he loves the Fred book because we always read books about math concepts or people but we never do any math problems. This isn't true, of course. We are always doing math while baking or drawing plans to make something or waiting for our food in a restaurant but I was happy that he was so excited about doing math. I'm also worried about turning him off or setting him up for boredom.
My son is at a play based preschool (Reggio) and will be attending a project based elementary school with an emphasis on math/science/tinkering so I hope that it will keep him engaged even if he does know most of the math they will be teaching for the first couple of years. The classes are very small and I hear from current parents that the school does make a real effort to differentiate so I am hopeful that he will get the stimulation that he needs.
