I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying. She spend a great amount of time doing the math.....she is not allowed to "skip" it nor would I ever allow her to do so. She has "mastered" the skills in that she is quite competant at the actual equations, it is just that she still has to use manipulatives. My understanding is that this is more developmental than cognitive.....but she is still required to do ALL of the math...the fun stuff ONLY come AFTER she has done the boring stuff. I strongly believe that it is more important for a child to understand what 72 divided by 8 means, rather than memorizing an obscure number that fails to give her understanding of what she is doing. So my question is not about skipping math....but rather the continued use of manipulatives.
Terri
