My daughter, who is very capable in math but is NOT advanced, is also bored with the EM curriculum. Why? Because when she *does* get something, she still has to do it with very little variation again, and again, and again, and again.... Not just this year, but next year, and the next.
A friend of mine is an education consultant tasked with supporting EM in a nearby district. I once asked her what there is to love about EM. (I want to believe it's a good program, truly.) She told me that many kids will fail at math because they can't cope with rote memorization and drills, and EM offers another way. I didn't say anything, but I can't help but thinking that having to write out 20 seven-digit numbers using words for homework is its own kind of pain, too, especially when you've been doing it for a couple of weeks at school, and you did it quite capably the year before too. Knowing how to read numbers is essential, but writing them out longhand is tedious and unnecessary once the skill has been acquired.
It's really, really hard to convince a kid that an assignment like this is worth doing.
