At this point in life most of his education is robotic learning. But let's also have a dose of reality, SOME robotic learning is needed, especially at early ages (he's nine).

Yes: We Do want him to have higher learning skills, not just robotic learning. So give me YOUR thoughts on the time it should take for the times table. at least until he dissects a frog in the gifted program! :yuck: it's my job to beef him up on math/science. He also does well on standardized tests, so he was accepted into the gifted program (to start next term). His teacher loves his 'vast knowledge' and 'mature sense of humor' (Blame his professorial dad and I for making continual fun of his 'vast knowledge' at home before our conference with his teacher at which the 'mature humor' comment came out). (was the one in his class to know what 'guerrilla' meant versus 'gorilla'). Via his social-scientist dad, he knows a lot about history, politics, world affairs, etc. not my genetics! ) He arrived to our house from a classic low-achieving/high-risk school (hence the bad writing and poor math), but he also soaks things up like a sieve (aka he memorized the Gettysburg address for his dad recently). Does this sound reasonable? I'd like to know what others think. I set the goal of five minutes for the latter version (his handwriting is also miserably slow. How long do you think it should take for him to fill out a RANDOM 12x12 table (with the numbers randomized in order on both top and bottom)?

How long do you think it should take him to fill an ordered 12x12 table? Of course he's still essentially adding to fill in the columns, but at least he's also getting better at our random inquiries (showing some recognition/recall). Right now it takes him 8 minutes to fill out the 12x12 ordered table accurately (down from 18 minutes with ~90% accuracy earlier this week). you know where they set up a table with the numbers 1-12 across it and down, and he fills in the result of the multiplication? See '. While we're going out to get the flashcards she recommended this weekend, I also set up the challenge of the basic 'times-table grid'.

We were told by my 4th grade stepson's teacher that he needs more practice to beef up his multiplication/division (up to the standard 12x12=144), since he seems to understand the concepts of higher math (they're starting more complex 'long' division), but often goofs up the answer because he doesn't seem to know the basic facts.

All times tables up to 12