OH incogneato - are you my long lost sister? I'm having the exact same issues w/ DS. I've always been a year behind him with math. I took someone's advice not to teach him math b/c he'd be bored in school - well he was bored anyway, and i've spent years trying to play catch up. I'm just looking at math curriculum today. The next level up - he is conceptually already through more than half of it and we haven't even started. And there are many, many concepts in Level E (two levels up) that he is ready for or needs in his everyday life.

Glad that helped, and sorry to confuse your child's gender, I got mixed up in various people's discussions. Another thing to consider is thinking about the long division algorithm as a computational thinking exercise. Have your child write out the algorithm abstractly with variables instead of numbers and then see if you can solve problems with it when you plug in numbers like a computer program. Or if you're up to it actually write a computer program together that does long division only using simpler operations. But it is tricky to do this sort of thing if you don't have a strong math background, so some help might be handy here. I'm a cs prof, so I'm always interested in ways to get students understanding computational concepts earlier in
life...

All of these things will help cement concepts and increase abstract thought, which is fun, but there *is* some benefit to drilling in stupid, boring problems (mainly speed). It might be useful to teach a bit of a science lesson on how the brain works. If your daughter understands how practicing division problems (and practicing other skills) builds faster pathways between the neurons in her brain, so that she can do the problems without as much conscious thought, she might be more receptive to that kind of learning.

Hey, all, I'm just back from a week in Wyoming. It is beautiful there! I'm catching up on some of these posts and am wondering what Modular Arithmetic is? Curious, could you write out an example of what you mean by "long division algorithm as a computational thinking exercise"?

By the way, I'm feeling pretty good about the decision to go with the private school. Now to just sort out some details and scheduling issues (and money, of course!).

Here's an article about modular arithmetic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_arithmetic

You can also think of it in terms of remainders. For example,

5 = 2 mod 3 because 5/3=1 remainder 2.

Welcome back, squirt!

I think of time as the easy, English-major-friendly example of mod: the 24 hour clock is a sort of mod system. We don't say 23:00 (unless we're in the military), we say 11:00. 23:00 = 11:00 mod 12.

Does that help?

Now I know why I went into Immunology......

I have no idea what you mean, said the English major...

I switched my major from biology to math because I don't like memorizing stuff.

Interesting...I don't like memory stuff either but I went into Immunology. I guess it depends on the field.

Well, for what's it's worth, I was a Computer Science major with a Math Minor!!