My DS just turned 4. Here's a list of activities he's found stimulating over the last year: learning about calendars; playing with analog and digital clocks, both toy and real; marbleworks; leapfrog discovery sets, including world and US maps, solar system, and anatomy; learning about coins and making change, and playing with a toy cash register; playing with measuring devices, such as rulers, thermometers, measuring cups, pressure gauges (tire and water), and scales; being read to and learning to read; playing with the hundreds of settings on our keyboard piano; magnatiles; growing a vegetable garden; and cooking with me (especially making bread dough in clear plastic storage containers, because he can watch the volume of dough rise.)
Also, about 6 months ago, we got a subscription to Dreambox. He chooses to play for an average of 20-30 minutes a day. Watching him work through a math curriculum has taught me that there are A LOT of steps between grasping addition and mastering all aspects of addition. Even still, it only took six months for my DS to work through kindergarten, first, and most of second... At some point, I stopped wondering what he would learn in school and settled on homeschooling. It's daunting, but I fear I just wouldn't hack it at advocacy.
