Yes, you've hit the point spot on, Colinsmum. The problems they give are so much more complicated.
But I have an easy situation (in maths!); he's very mathy, I'm very mathy, it's easy to keep it fun.
Our problem is that she's mathy and my husband is mathy, but she and I are very visual-spatial and he thinks that using manipulatives is for non-mathy people. He will do all the teaching in a few years, but I think math-phobic me is better with the basics. It's like fluent readers forgetting they used to use phonics and trying to teach kids with whole-language. For example, she had not caught on to the tricks for mental arithmetic like making tens/fives and estimating. Until I sat down last week and showed her with manipulatives, then we did some problems written down and now she can do them mentally. I think he has forgotten how he got to his feel for numbers.
I think if I had introduced such problems then, he'd have ended up learning how to do the problem types by rote, which I'm sure is what many children do, but it's surely less good for mathematical development than encountering them at a point where numeracy is ingrained enough that you can confidently solve from first principles.)
I was showing her how to simplify fractions the other day using multiplication tables, but I think she was rote learning it.
Luocounu, I know she'll be fine whatever, but she gets such a kick out of new cool tricks!
