Still looking for the right combination

Tony has this thing about math. He could spend four or five hours working on getting it done. It's not that he doesn't understand the concepts or finds it struggle; Angelo and I think Tony is bored.

I've tried putting math first in our schedule so that it's done and out of the way. Didn't quite work. So now I've put it at the end of the schedule. The way I have it set up now is that the "smaller classes" are done first so that in two hours (if he is diligent) he could be half done with school for the day. By lunch time, he would have only one class left - math. Then, from 1:00-2:20 he would work on math. When break time is over at 3:00, Tony would then work on homework until Alex leaves.

The deal is that he needs to be done with his assignments before he goes outside for break time. That means he rushes his math and gets the problems wrong. As a result he has to go back and do the work over again, and it is frustrating to both of us.

So, it is time to try something else. This summer I had him work on some pre-algebra problems from a book I have. He seemed to enjoy that. Now I'm going to cut some of his fourth-grade work and in its place I'm adding some pre-algebra problems. The amount of work will be the same or slightly more, but hopefully the boredom will diminish and productive work will increase.

I'll let you know.