Some background:
DS11 has never been the one to want to do worksheets or any kind of after-schooling when he was younger. We didn't push. Although my eldest enjoyed doing extra things when he was the same age, I sensed that to push the younger one would possibly jeopardize his love of learning. He was *that* resistant.
He was identified as gifted in Kindy, has done very well in school, but sometime during second grade, he shut down in math. Still quite competent, just mostly hated the timed tests. I'm not sure the number of computations in a minute ever increased that whole year. He was resistant to memorizing multiplication. He *knows* them but not because he learned them by practicing over and over. He wouldn't have any part of that. His fifth grade teacher said he wasn't the fastest math student she had (in doing computation) but he wasn't the slowest, either, and he was always accurate.
In the explore test, as a fifth grader, he scored at or higher than 75% of eighth graders who took the test.
He gets concepts quickly.
He's skipping 6th and going into 7th grade and taking compacted 7th and 8th grade math. Sounds wonderful. But I'm trying to fill in a couple of holes, and he groans when I mention it, bring out the math books, etc. Says he hates to do problems. I have Challenge Math, Life of Fred series (which he enjoys reading...just not the computation) and several worksheets printed for practice. He really would rather not, thank you very much.
He did say he'd rather do word problems than "ordinary, boring computation."
How do I get this kid to love math? Is it laziness? He's not a lazy kid so I don't think that's it exactly. But I'm hard-pressed to know what it is.
He did say he didn't like the way his fifth grade teacher taught math and therefore he stopped liking it as much. But he won't elaborate, so it's not helpful information.
Any advice would be appreciated. Perhaps I should back off completely and trust that he'll figure out how to fill the holes in himself?
Last edited by KADmom; 07/03/13 02:56 PM.
