Howler Karma, my concern is this. Pace of grade 6 math is ridiculously slow for him. Accelerated 7/8 will be better, perhaps more in line with his natural comfort level but what IF he can still, because of ability, move along faster?
Now I don't think faster is always better. But how do we, as advocating parents, analyze the course content as well as our child's abilities, and decide that our gifted child should NOT move along faster, even though they might be able to? When do we know that faster IS better?
I think tbh, the key thing to realise is that none of the concepts in school maths as usually taught are hard. If your DS is seriously mathy, he is never going to be challenged by the kind of concepts and questions on them that are typically used to test schoolchildren. For this reason, I think "pace" through the usual syllabus is not always the right thing to be looking at - this isn't where the challenge comes from anyway. Obviously spending time on basic presentation of concepts that are already mastered is a waste of time, whatever the pace; if he's faced with a syllabus where there'll be some of that and some new stuff, going faster may help by having him waste less time on the old stuff. But even if Alg 1 is totally new to him, it is not likely to solve the problem, because it isn't hard enough.
If he doesn't get the chance to work on hard problems, he's sunk whatever base material he's being presented with; and if he does get that chance, it doesn't matter so much what base material he's being presented with!
I wouldn't worry too much about the criticism of Khan, as long as your DS is keen. I've watched some of it, and while it has a point, I think it has a much more valid point for typically-mathy children than for very-mathy ones. Just so long as your DS knows who to ask - whether that's you or someone at school - any time he does have trouble, and so long as he gets hard enough problems to expose any lack of understanding, he'll likely be fine.
