I've been (also lackadaisically) encouraging DS to work on his multiplication table memorization this summer at the suggestion of the GT coordinator at school. He'll also be working on 4th grade math and she suggested that it is the point at which they really do need to have these basics down in order to work on the more advanced concepts. Our problem is that DS is fairly mathy and will just reason out the answer every time. He does this pretty quickly, so it hasn't effected his ability to do more complex problems very much. But, he could be faster, and it would cut out an extra step of figuring where he could make a mistake. Yesterday his dad was talking to him about it at lunch and he seemed more willing to do a math computer game today. He hates making mistakes on it though.
We're going on vacation in a little over a week, so I'm going to try to load up on multiplication activities for the car. I'm also going to set reminders for myself to encourage him to work on the computer in the meantime. We just get engrossed in other things and I forget to offer it as a suggestion of something to do.
Good luck and let us know if you find something that works.
