Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Oh dear, second grade math

My 2pworth is that you should be impressed. I think there's often a lot of arbitrariness in when a particular topic gets taught, so a child doing a single thing at age X that is normally taught at age X+4 isn't necessarily impressive. However, when a child can do a whole range of things normally taught at a higher age, especially picking them up "in seconds", something unusual is going on. My guess is that there are a lot of children of people on this board who can do the actual things you listed (factors, area, perimeter etc.) at that kind of age, but many of us have consciously introduced these things - given that your clever DS's maths seems to be a bit of a surprise to you, an interesting question is what else he may be able to tackle, given the chance! Is he still thriving at school? What does he think of school maths, is he being adequately challenged there, do you think? As you'll have seen, there are several threads here on online things for mathy children to enjoy, many of them free, so maybe he can explore some more while he has to be off school. (Sorry about that, btw - having a child with serious allergies must be so worrying.)