My son's 1st grade teacher gave him a 2nd grade workbook for math homework today. This will be a *substitute* for (not in addition to) the regular h/w. Yesss!

DS6 has been bored and distractible since the beginning of the year, and initially we got nowhere asking his teacher to give him more challenging work. Then, earlier this week DS stayed home from school with a cough, and I gave him some more advanced math work to do (based on the Aleks site -- Grinity's suggestion, I think) and sent it to school with him the next day to show his teacher (thanks, ColinsMum, CAmom and others). She said he was so proud to show her what he could do. And now the new workbook... DS is stoked.

Not a complete solution, but definitely a step in the right direction!

Congrats!

That's fantastic and, most definitely, a good step in the right direction.

That's awesome!

Yay!

Yippee!

Thank you for sharing. I'm glad you have made some progress. I might follow that example at some point.

"Gosh, what will he do next year?"

I think it was something similar that got us the higher level work and eventually the 5th grade math class for DS7. I couldn't stand the silly homework he was bringing home (and neither could he), so I gave him pages of stuff from online and he would take those to school too. His teacher started sending home extra things for him, and said don't worry about doing the others because she only gave them to him out of habit.

Good luck!

Good point, Nautigal -- I have wondered about that. Truthfully, the 2nd grade stuff is not very challenging, but its value is psychological, in that DS feels like he is being listened to at least. I'm sure he'll be done with it soon and then we'll have to scramble again, but for now it's nice to have a break and an improvement in his attitude toward school work.