Homeschool World Forum

Yes, he sounds very normal. I am the oldest of ten kids, and I have often observed that each child has his or her own learning style--some are way more active than others.

The way I see it, you should continue to encourage your child to learn in a method that best suits him. Think about it, 90% success rate--that is VERY good!

To me, it sounds like you have a little Carl Friedrich Gauss--one of the worlds greatest child prodigies and mathematicians--in your hands!


Keep up the good job, and God bless!

That's about what I figured. I don't have much experience with boys learning, though, because I pretty much ignored how my brothers learned when we were growing up. We do have math ability in my family (my dad is an engineer) and he's always been good with numbers. I've never really thought of him as a genius, though. Who knows, though, right? My main thought is that he's enjoying his math and learning it well and that's always a good thing.

Thanks, again!

I've seen it where some teachers allow their 'antsy' students to stand at their desk while working. For whatever reason it can alleviate the fiddling in the chair issue.

My son does not sit still during any school work. I use to get very frustrated with him and then I realized that when I make him sit still and be quite, it is harder for him to concentrate but when he is moving all around he can actually tell his dad what he learned that day! I think it is normal for kids that age to want to move around.

I know a homeschooling mom (who just happens to be a former schoolteacher) who got her young son one of those big exercise balls to sit on while doing his schoolwork. He can bounce to his heart's content. It works great!

My daughter hates numbers and anything to do with Math so much that she simply gives up on even the simplest of sums and that too right at the very beginning itself. To some point, I can understand how she feels since I had a sort of a math-phobia myself when I was in elementary school and had this sort of firm conviction in myself that Math was simply not meant for me, it was beyond me. Thankfully, I had this super-awesome teacher in middle school who just turned things around and I started loving the subject.

When my daughter begins to get restless while solving math, on the pretext of giving her a break, I call her into the kitchen and give her her favorite cookie to munch on. And then, our special 'cookie game' starts - wherein she needs to count how many cookies are remaining in the jar each time she takes out one (I make sure the jar is transparent and small so that the cookies can be counted by looking at them from outside). Also, whenever I am in the process of baking cookies, she loves counting how many there are in the tray, back and forth (that is primarily how I started teaching her the multiplication tables).

Your son is pretty old for these types of activities but I'm pretty sure there would be some fun activities in math you could use to get him to enjoy doing stuff. If that doesn't work out, here's a way you could make do with his short attention span; give him a cookie/chocolate treat every time he does the stipulated number of problems correctly, so he knows he is going to get a treat from mommy every time. I'm sure you'll have a better time and he'll do his sums at double the speed!