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Advanced Math Help
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My son is 7 and technically in 2nd grade. We have done a lot of living math and I have used the free download First Lessons in Arithmetic and recently purchased the entire 1-6 Math Mammoth series to use to “fill in the gaps”.
He loves math and excels in it. My problem is that he has is bored with most math now because he says he already knows it, and he is the type that once he learns it he needs no review and becomes frustrated with constant review. He is easily in the 4th level/grade of Math Mammoth’s books.
I don’t mind him being ahead (we still just say he is in 2nd grade) but I am at a bit of a loss as how to challenge him. I went through school being bored because it was so easy and I would hate to do that to him.
He has been playing chess since he was 5, and obviously has a very logical and scientific bent. (Just don’t ask him to narrate!)
I would welcome any recommendations from you all on how to challenge him and really give him something to do in math, and not just bore him with busywork.
I am thinking to just go ahead and skip to the 4th level and let him go, but I feel like he needs more than just some worksheets that are harder.
I am NOT a math person at all. He certainly doesn’t get this from me.
He did love “Tha Cat in Numberland” book. The concept of infinity and the algebraic equations gave him some meat to chew on. He did the Greg Tang books and they were interesting to him because of the puzzle solving aspects.
I have the Family Math book too. We do 2 days of “lesson math” and 2 of “living math” and 1 of math games right now.
Recommended resources would be greatly appreciated, as well as advice.
Thanks,
Tara
I don’t know anything about Math Mammoth (we use MOTL), but you should be able to use any math curriculum at whatever pace he is capable of and interested in. If there are unit tests or something like that you can always use them as a pretest, and then just go back and cover anything he didn’t already know. That will help you make sure nothing is missed, rather than jumping forward a few years.
Rather than just moving faster, though, I would also find other ways to use that logical, scientific mind. Logic puzzles, or games like sudoku, etc. are great. There are lots of math puzzle and game books published these days. Another idea is to use programs like Scratch ( http://scratch.mit.edu/ ) which is a programming language designed for kids, requiring and developing logical thinking.
You could also use something like Khan academy to let him explore concepts he is interested in.
Here is a link to an old book of math games that you might want to investigate. I haven’t looked at enough to know what age or level it is geared at. http://archive.org/details/amusementsinmath16713gut
This is another site I want to explore – it says it has math games, activities, crafts, etc. http://www.mathcats.com/
Basically I would just give him opportunities to explore math and have fun with it!
Joanne
Have you tried any of the sample lessons on the Teaching Textbooks web site to see if that style of instruction would interest him? My 10YO (4th grade) is doing TT7 because he does very well at math, too. The first half of the year was quite a bit of review, but now he is getting into some challenging topics.
If he is in TT4, you could let him move at his own pace with the lessons, since it’s obvious he’s not going to get behind. I have my DS doing 1/2 lesson/day (approx. 20 minutes) to keep the lessons short and to try to avoid and frustration from trying to grasp a new topic.
I’d recommend chess like you’ve already started, logic puzzles, Sudoku, and encourage him to apply math to real life situations, even if he hasn’t had the official teaching yet. Ask him if he can figure out how much paint you would need to cover the living room walls. See if he can figure out how much gas it’ll take to make it to Disneyland. Let him go through math as quickly as he is up to. I second the recommendation for considering a intro level programming language. Try related science topics like magnets, electricity, circuits, physics applications. Find positive outlets before he either gets bored or decides to build a bomb. 🙂 Deductive logic is especially attractive and also related to programming. Those are some of the things we tried to sop up that extra mathy energy.
I don’t suspect I’ll ever be in your situation… but have you looked at the materials ath The Critical Thinking Company? http://www.criticalthinking.com/index.jsp
My daughter is probably “average” in math, but she did not like the Math Mammoth worksheets very much. She has enjoyed the Life of Fred elementary series so far and Miquon math. Both of these are “thinking” math courses as opposed to just “calculate the answer.”
Best wishes!
Thanks for the ideas ladies! I’ll look into them and see how it goes. He does have a circuit board and tinkers with it. He also has several science kits and often has experiments sitting on my kitchen counter.
I had to laugh at the thought of my bored little boy building a bomb when just last week I heard him scrambling around in the dining room and went in to find a test tube spewing some foamy red stuff all over.
The programming looks promising. My brother was like this and he was building computer programs by the time he was 12. These math/science folks scare and yet fascinate me lol!
Tara
He might like the “Life of Fred” series if he likes living books about math. I haven’t read them or seen them, so I may be way off…
I honestly think he would love RightStart Math – but you would need to do the placement test with him and I’d probably talk to them at the company too… I love the different ways they do math – it fits my math oriented head (how delighted I was as an adult to find a math program for kids that do math in similar ways to how I did math). I also agree that computer programming might be a good use of his logical thinking…
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