Hi!
I am swinging with Geomag for christmas
though he'd would probably prefer Star Wars things. I liked all of your ideas! We do the 'sum game' and the 'secret number' game already. I feel torn about teaching him things that i know he will cover in school because of the increased possibilty of more bordem. I liked the idea of tessellation... i think he'd like that mixed in with patterns.
Interestingly DS is not that big on science. He asks me occasionally things like 'why do leaves fall off the trees?' (And the answer 'becuase it's Autumn' wasn't good enough.)and 'why is the car foggy?' (condensation) and 'what is fog?'.
DS has been in the school since April. His teacher last year was good they even let him in with the reception kids for maths but decided he couldn't go with Yr1 this year. DS understands multiplication and division but he can't do the with any numbers (i delayed telling him about them for as long as poss.), he is much better at + and -, though he has been doing them longer. They are supposedly already doing the differention with him (so they told me) but DS says that they only do easy maths. He isn't brilliant at writing and often reverses letters; this frustrates him alot and his perfectionism shines through in this area. It is an area of challenge for him but not one he cares about!
He is at a state school, there is a brilliant looking private school nearish to us, but there is no way we can afford the fees (plus we have a DD). HS is something i wanted to do before we realised he was bright but i got convinced that it was a bad idea - now i'm not so sure.
Thankyou for your ideas
