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Help!

My five year old has been driving me crazy with requests to do math, and really enjoys it. After reading the kindergarten curriculum at the school she'll be going to and realizing she was already beyond that I gave in and bought a homeschool curriculum, which she absolutely loves doing. We'll probably continue afterschooling with it once she starts school.

My quandary is that she is both novelty seeking and perfectionist and she hates to be challenged. And the books I've bought are a mastery curriculum. How can I tell that she's bored by repetition or if she's just turned off by something too difficult? I want to give her a good rounded thorough understanding at each level, but not turn her off with boring drill.

Also, would you bother with pushing/practicing/offering memorization of math facts? I don't know most of my multiplication tables, I calculate with tricks. And she's not even at school yet, does it matter? But her computation speed is low because she calculates 4x3 each time. She's only fast when she can skip count for multiplication (2s, 5s, 10s, 100s).

I think my question is; do I make her go through the whole chapter on each type of calculation or go ahead and buy the next grade level without really knowing if she's grasped all the arithmetic parts yet?

We don't know if she's gifted or just really interested in math yet, obviously, the school does a screening test during the first year.

I would not push speed at that age; it comes with brain maturity. Our public school does timed addition/subtraction tests in grade 2 and timed multiplication tests in grades 3 and 4. My DS showed ability to compute very early, and his speed increased naturally over time.

Memorization just turned up as a byproduct of interest for our DS. Partly because he watched Schoolhouse Rock, and partly because he had a calculator as his transitional object from age 3-4, he just absorbed it. Certainly by the time those timed tests kick in at school the facts have to be memorized, but I do think that (a) she's likely to memorize them on her own when she's developmentally ready and (b) pushing it before then can be a huge turnoff.

For a 5-year-old, I'd be inclined to go for depth of understanding, playing with numbers, and enjoyment. You can get tangrams or pattern blocks and do elementary geometry, play shopping games, all sorts of ways to cultivate this without its becoming high-pressure work. If you can make the memorization into a game, it won't hurt her, but it's probably not the most urgent concern.

DeeDee

I think all of DeeDee's ideas are right on -- and that you shouldn't worry about drilling/speed at this point. Here's an additional, slightly different approach: There's a couple of places online that assess where kids are at regarding different categories of math, and then work on them from there. So, no need to repeat stuff she already knows, and no need to skip out on the stuff she doesn't know. I haven't tried any of these, so can't make any recommendations, but I know a lot of kids like learning this way, and it can be pretty low key if the amouunt of work done (games played) is kid driven:

Math Whizz - http://www.whizz.us/parents/index.html-- $19.99/month

Smart Tutor - http://www.smarttutor.com/home/homeschool.asp -- it's English AND math, but has less math categories than math whizz. -- $17.99/month with free 2 week trial

DOMA (math assessment) and Unique Math - http://www.letsgolearn.com/lglsite/Unique_Math/educators/ -- Same content as Smart Tutor (but only math), but different assessment, and you pay a flat price for the whole year. I think the Homeschool Buyer's Coop has a special on this right now.

Plato Learning has individualized math, too, but a) it's hard to get and b) it's not a full curriculum at this age.

ALEKS has a program, too, that starts at 3rd grade math level.

Hope that helps.

A man and a woman had a little baby.
Yes, they did.
They had three in the family.
That's a magic number.

---
Schoolhouse Rock FTW!

Another vote for not pushing memorization of facts. I do teach tricks, though.

We've been doing EPGY Open Enrollment ($45 for 3 months), and while I find that DD needs more support than the program wants her to have*, and disagree completely with the way they set up some stuff, it does a good job of moving quickly through concepts you already understand. We've been using it for about 3 weeks, and at this point, I wouldn't say that I'd use it as a comprehensive curriculum, but it's great for working ahead when the same material is likely to be reinforced to some degree at school.

I think all of Clay's ideas are right on, including the one about DeeDee's ideas. Memorization will most likely happen on its own for a math-interested youngster, and even if it becomes a problem later due to a learning disability or something, I'd tackle it then. The main thing is that your child learn to like math.

I just wanted to add that I wouldn't hesitate to let her zip ahead in any area she's interested in. As long as each new set of ideas is presented with the proper foundation, different areas of math can be learned at a different pace.

My five-year-old son is currently using the IXL website, which is decent for the price as a supplement to our other materials. He still hasn't completed the first grade tasks, mostly because they are full of things like converting between baking measurements, reading analog clocks, etc. that I don't consider to be important for math learning at all, though they depend on basic arithmetic skills (I just taught him the latter today, but not because I thought it was important to his math development). Meanwhile he has gone up to the fifth grade in some other areas; he's all over the map. As long as he's happy and learning correctly, I'm happy.

I wouldn't force memorization either. I let my own child use a multiplication table for conceptual math. And then let him play computer games to drill the fact. He has them down now at age 9 through no effort of my own. For the record, we homeschool full time.

Here's a website with a bunch of math games. Timex attack was a big hit at our house too.
http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/

What curriculum are you using? Many curriculum have placement tests if you think you may not be working at a high enough level. We used Singapore with my child and I didn't force him to do many repetitive type problems. But we spent lots of times doing multi-step and word problems which I think really cement the concepts and teach organizational and logic skills. At age 5, I wouldn't force anything and if she lost interest I'd back off totally.

I just thought of this: my kids have loved playing store with this type of toy cash register that includes a real calculator in it.

http://www.diapers.com/Product/ProductDetail.aspx?productid=22751

It came with some fake cash and a credit card. You can talk about how buying two of something costs twice as much, what price is reasonable, what if it's on sale, coupons/subtraction, all kinds of money ideas, during pretend play. We got a lot of play mileage and a lot of math mileage out of it.

DeeDee

Thanks, everyone. I'm very glad to hear an unanimous vote for no math facts. Like I said, I don't know mine, and so they seem very very dull to me.

Kimck, we're using Singapore too. She loves the pictures, and loves having a math book (she asked if she could take it to school with her... uh, no). But I feel silly buying the next few grade levels just for more geometry and measuring and graphing.

Do I sound crazy if I say she's more interested in doing complicated things with small numbers than simple things with big numbers?