chicken little,
yes! math in p4 is a drastic jump from p3. i surrender at P3 level and can see my husband struggling with p4 math. some he knows how to work out, but he is stuck at simplifying it and explaining to the kid.
jolene,
my boy is now with Icreativelearner. it is a small group (1:6, 3 including him is from his school

) 2 hrs session (small group, so more ex as compared to mindstretcher). each session they'll do all components of the paper including parts of paper 1. i like it that the teacher will have a worksheet teaching what is noun, adjective and dunno what other stuff, but is relating to grammar rules, as my grammar is rather poor. the teacher is quite experience and will entertain my boy's questions even at her rest slots before the next class starts.
we waitlisted for 3 mths, so quite lucky as i heard usually waitlist has little chance and people usually look for alternative instead of waiting. One of the most impt reason we opt for this is also it is a suitable time slot and location (near inlaws place) for us. mindstretcher does not have the slot we wanted. and no vacancies for their writers' toolbox (i waitlisted for 1yr!)
bebe75,
my boy is still using pencil in sch. he prefers to use pen and i let him use pen at home. he writes neater using pen while for pencil, sometimes cannot even see the word.
the product of 2 numbers, i also only know guess check method. my husband told him to estimate first in tens eg 30x30equal900, and 20x20=400, so number is between 20-30. then he divide by 2 (assume mid of pg 20-30) ie use 25x26 and work from there.
not sure if got shortcut method anot....will be a time saver!