I've been working on Level A with my 4.5 year old for the past month, and I really think it is wonderful! Conceptually, it really makes so much sense to me.

But... I'm getting a little worried because so far, my son does not like it very much and resists doing most of the activities. He understands it easily, and even seems to find the abacus somewhat interesting theoretically, but he seems bored with the lesson activities.

I'm sure a large part of it is that he doesn't like the idea of lessons in general, but I'm starting to worry that the slow, incremental pace of the program might be frustrating and tedious for him.

Here's some background: Although he has never learned to translate place value into numerals, Nathan has had a basic conceptual understanding of place value up to 1000 for about a year, because I had showed him some things with base ten blocks and he really seemed to enjoy that.

He is pretty advanced for his age. For example, a few weeks ago I realized that on his own initiative, he has memorized, in chronological order, all the names of the prehistoric time periods from the formation of the earth to the present. He also decided on his own to make a very accurate clay model of the digestive system, and can accurately name all the organs. Keep in mind he is just 4 years old, and does all this without any prompting from me, only motivated by his interest in these topics.

He is the type of person who, when introduced to an interesting concept, wants to know and do everything about it RIGHT NOW. When we did the "comes after" game, he insisted that we keep going. He wanted to count all the way up to 1000, but we ended up stopping in the 300's due to time constraints.

When I showed him quantities 1 - 10 on the abacus, he immediately wanted to see and do all the numbers up to 100. (He wanted to keep going after that, too, but I had to explain to him that there were only 100 beads).

He seems to have a need to intensely explore every interesting concept he encounters, and wants to push on to the limits of his understanding as soon as possible or else he loses interest.

So, basically he is a very bright and intense boy, and this program seems to be moving too slowly for him. From looking at the scope and sequence, even the Level B seems to move slowly, working with only one or a few quantities at a time etc.

I'm concerned that the incremental approach might be frustrating for my son. I've even thought about changing to Math U See since it has a mastery approach that focuses on one topic at a time. However, I am such a big fan of the conceptual basis of Rightstart, that I don't want to give up on it. The visualization/grouping approach just makes so much more sense to me than counting.

I wish there were a program that combined the mastery approach to lesson progression with the rightstart approach to math!

Is there anything I can do to speed up the program to get my son interested again? Or to modify it so as to fulfill his need to fully explore the depth and breadth of a concept as soon as it is encountered?

Should I skim over some of the activities that don't seem to interest him? Should I change to Level B? Should I just do the 'Activities for the Alabacus' book with him and treat the curriculum as a review/practice/supplement? Should I skip over the peripheral topics and move quickly through the core quantity/place value activities (returning to the other topics at a later date)?

I know there is no rush because he is so young, but I feel that he is developing a negative feeling about math because of his dislike for the lessons. I've considered that perhaps I should just stop the lessons completely and try again in a few months, but I don't think this aspect of his personality is going to change, so I will have to deal with this at some point.

Please help!

Thank you,
Ellen

Dear Ellen,
Thank you for your post. You are right when you state that maybe you should move to Level B. You can start with the lessons around lesson 20. Yes, do feel free to speed up the process and do a few different lessons at a time. With your son's intensity to move beyond what you are showing him related to the abacus you may want to consider looking at the text Activities for the ALabacus because than you can explore all of the addition at once etc. The only problem with this text is that it's not a full comprehensive curriculum like the RightStart curriculum is therefore missing the geometry part as well as other concepts.

You can certainly combine lessons and do more than one lesson a session. However, from what you are saying Level A is too easy for your son.

Feel free to give us a call on the customer service/information line, email or post any other questions you have.

Thanks for giving your child a RightStart in math.

Sincerely, Rosine