6 yo learning style

[MacRoniCheese]

6 yo DS is quite keen on doing the more advanced work in maths and the extra difficult puzzles he's given by his teacher, and he does them easily. But if it's memorisation of a table, he finds it quite boring and struggles to finish his assignment. I think mastering the basics is quite important before moving on to the more advanced things.

Also, when he learned to read, he would read the words he knew, then sort of guess by context the ones he didn't, and then finish the sentence. Eventually he figured out all of the middle bits and is now an excellent reader.

Is this common for 6 yos? I'm not quite sure how to help him. (Or if he needs help?)

Why does it matter? He's six.

Give him puzzle books and reading books and leave him to it.

He loves puzzle books and reading and does those loads at home but struggles to finish his assingment sheets.

So does he struggle with memory tasks?

When you say memorisation of a table? Do you mean, like a list of food and weights or names with height, weight age . That kind of thing?

Practice memory games like pairs etc.

How certain are you he's an "excellent reader"?

Can he actually read nonsense words like "Blough" and get the "ough" sounding like OW as in Cow? Or "steane" to recognise the EA digraph...or "trole" for the O-E spilt digraph?

You can easily teach times tables at home; there are plenty of resources for that.

Thank you. We’re not in the UK anymore so I’m not sure how the work compares. But for example, he receives worksheets that teach basic maths. There’s an image of a carton of 10 eggs with a X number covered, and he’s meant to write down how many are covered. That sort of thing. He gets a bit bored and impatient with this, and often won’t finish it or just starts writing the numbers too big or with extra lines. but it seems important for learning basic maths? Whereas the more difficult worksheets (pattern recognition in puzzle form) are much more appealing and he does these with ease. I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do to help him with the former or if this seems average for a 6 yo boy and to just encourage him to persevere. Or could this be a sign of ADHD and we should be seeking extra evaluation?

@RhubarbThumb i haven’t tested his reading but on his school exams he was assessed as a year 6 level.

He's totally normal! Please don't worry at all. Don't just learn times tables by rote though, try to get him to understand that it's shorthand for "groups of" and make it visual.

Totally normal for a kid to get bored by some aspects of the lessons.

Has he got an app for learning times tables that makes it fun and competitive? There are lots of good ones.

Check his reading with nonsense words