Thanks for your replies. I signed up my child on the spot to attend classes with this instructor. What is most impressive is that what I saw in these classes flies in the face of the assumptions that American public and private schools make about how much math a 5-7 year old can handle - which is very little (even the so called "highly accelerated" programs). There was this instructor with about 8 kids who attend K-2nd grade in local schools and the kids were so engaged, happy and cranking out mental math answers (and some written math sheets too) for long periods of time - they were mostly working on 3 digit numbers and 4 digit numbers. Many were in the program for less than 1 year. There were 2 second graders who had been there for a year and they were doing more advanced stuff.
In contrast, my son's highly academic private school that follows saxon sends home 9+1 kind of stuff as homework for second grade math. I saw children in this class who had no fear of big numbers and were equally well versed in addition and subtraction. This instructor was a "Dan" (similar to black belt levels in martial arts) of a high order and she has her own curriculum - she was teaching simple division to the first graders (I use the word simple because the Divisor was still single digit). The kids were happily putting up their hands to get their turn to answer first. And as for the the timed anzan worksheets (one whole page of operations) - for a 2 minute timed sheet, the kids were finishing in 1m 40s - 1m 53s. Watching this class was an eye opener to me.
Madoosa, you are right, I was absolutely astounded when I was shown a video of the local Anzan competition. I have several friends at work who grew up in Japan and they use Anzan to compute complex stuff in a field of work that is highly data driven and a lot of data manipulation is needed. Which is what sent me on my research path on the Soroban and Anzan. I am very convinced now that this skill will help my child for a lifetime.
Nautigal: I was recommended this textbook for teaching Soroban at home by a friend. I am not trying it as my child will attend weekly classes with an instructor. But,I thought that it might help you:
http://www.nurtureminds.com/Year-1-textbook.htm