Jool: The only thing that I will add to your above comment is that, on occasion, kids who find math easy sometimes stop paying attention to the particular details needed to complete the problem accurately. My DS, who was also fine with doing simple addition in 1st and 2nd grade even though he knew multiplication, etc., was use to being able to breeze through math problems with barely a glance at the sheet. Homework took at most a minute to do after school. He could literally speed read the entire sheet and just right in all of the numbers at once.
I think this developed some bad habits, that we are now beginning to see in 4th grade. He continues to speed read through problems, even though the problems are getting slightly more complex. This leads to sloppy errors in calculations for problems that he could do in his sleep. Actually, I see this in other areas besides just math. He is so used to floating through unchallenged that he pays very little attention to details on most assignments. Why should he? He has been able to get the right answer on almost all assignments with very little effort.
If I could go back and do it all over again <wishful daydream>, I would try to make sure that he was more challenged in K, 1st, and 2nd so that these habits did not occur. Cathy and Jool... you are both in a much better position than I am, since your grade skip occurred earlier. But you may still need to watch out for the same effect.
Last edited by ebeth; 10/14/08 03:14 PM. Reason: typo
