So DS5 has flown through third grade math (doing online ixl). He has everything down pretty solid, except we haven't covered fractions and percents yet beyond the basics. He can now add, sub, mult, div as fast as I can, is good at basic story problems, patterns, money, time, decimals,(any size number for everything) etc...he just has a really good number sense. Yesterday, he clicked on 8th grade sequences, and I watched as he immediately got this problem (4, 6, 9, 13, 18, x, x). This was the first problem of this type, so it wasn't that he'd seen the pattern before. I didn't pick up the pattern as fast as he did, so he explained it to me, by saying you just add one...I didn't know what he was talking about, but since he had typed in the correct answers, I knew he did. He then showed me more clearly. So the point is though, is that he is solid and fast with this level of math. The problem he is having is transitioning from this stuff, into problems that require multiple steps, first add, then subtract, or balance one side of the equation first. I think it is an asynchronous issue, as most kids have three or four years to develop the patience required for these types of problems. What do we do at this stage - just wait a few years for his pencil and stamina to catch up to him? How do you gently build this ability, when he has already zipped though all the "years" that help in building this ability?
