Help!
My five year old has been driving me crazy with requests to do math, and really enjoys it. After reading the kindergarten curriculum at the school she'll be going to and realizing she was already beyond that I gave in and bought a homeschool curriculum, which she absolutely loves doing. We'll probably continue afterschooling with it once she starts school.
My quandary is that she is both novelty seeking and perfectionist and she hates to be challenged. And the books I've bought are a mastery curriculum. How can I tell that she's bored by repetition or if she's just turned off by something too difficult? I want to give her a good rounded thorough understanding at each level, but not turn her off with boring drill.
Also, would you bother with pushing/practicing/offering memorization of math facts? I don't know most of my multiplication tables, I calculate with tricks. And she's not even at school yet, does it matter? But her computation speed is low because she calculates 4x3 each time. She's only fast when she can skip count for multiplication (2s, 5s, 10s, 100s).
I think my question is; do I make her go through the whole chapter on each type of calculation or go ahead and buy the next grade level without really knowing if she's grasped all the arithmetic parts yet?
We don't know if she's gifted or just really interested in math yet, obviously, the school does a screening test during the first year.
