Welcome Heather! Your DS sounds quite a lot like mine (now 8) was at that age - the early self-taught reading and the phenomenal memory, with maths that seemed less startling (mine wasn't musically exceptional; he does nicely with piano now, but is no prodigy there). Warning: the next thing was that his maths took off, and now it is clearly his greatest strength area. I have heard, and seen some anecdotes to confirm, that early self-taught reading can actually be a sign of mathematical ability to come: it's code-cracking, and arguably to do that essentially unaided requires more in the way of real mathematical ability than anything demanded in school maths lessons, so it makes some kind of sense to me! Will be interesting to see how your DS goes, but I will say: make sure you give him plenty of maths exposure (problem solving I mean, logic puzzles and the like, not long division unless he likes that!).
Can't help with testing and online schools specifically but what others have said seems sound. I'll respectfully disagree with the suggestion that you look at Ruf, though, because as far as I've ever been able to gather it's not remotely evidence-based; people like it if it seems to fit their child, but even then they don't really learn anything, and often it doesn't. JMO.
Last edited by ColinsMum; 04/05/12 11:49 AM. Reason: corrected typo, so that it doesn't look as though I can't spell ;-)
