yeah, we have a ds10 who is abysmally slow most of the time in school assigned math, especially when time is emphasized. The multiplication, etc., aren't much of an issue when he has a serious math problem to really challenge him.
Yes! If she had some giant multi-digit multiplication problem that required knowing every fact family, she'd breeze through it gleefully. Yesterday's "why I want to be homeschooled" essay included "I would not have to take timed tests."
it does present a lot of challenge to get people to see he has some considerable math ability, but it may not be the huge stumbling-block to all other math that some teachers make it out to be (inability to care about/complete a time math fact sheet).
I personally don't consider DD to be intuitively mathy, just quick to learn. (I remember reading something about people who get to grad school in math, only to discover there's a difference between "is good at solving textbook math problems" and "is a mathematician," and that math grad school is meant for mathematicians. DD IMHO is likely to fall into the first category, not the second.)
But yes, one of her mama's arguments against a subject acceleration is that she wants to be sure DD has a solid foundation in the math facts before moving on, and all those blank worksheets are not helping. OTOH, we sent her to third counting on her fingers to subtract and completely unable to reliably subtract with borrowing, and she did fine. I can't imagine a year of subtraction fact drill would have improved things.
mom would drop me off at the library on a saturday afternoon for *hours*, and it was just the coolest thing
I remember when my mom went back to work (when I was 13 or so), any my choice for the summer was to sit in the un-air-conditioned house and watch soap operas on one of the 3 over-the-air TV channels, or to ride my bike the 10 miles to the library. So I'd ride there every day in the morning, read books in the cool all day, and she'd pick me up on her way home.
