I think that educational apps and educational TV shows are on a dramatic rise, which might give children the decoding skills and, depending on what they look at, the focus and memorization skills you're talking about. I'm interested to see how this trend plays out in your school there past third grade though. I don't think that app-driven ABC skills necessarily tie straight in to the complex brain coordination that's needed for reading advanced stuff with fluency. My very unsubstantiated and very biased opinion is that this could well be a hothouse effect -- the slow and steady growers will find themselves more robust and long-lived in their academic lives than the quick studies. At my son's school, we don't have much early academic pressure overall. Kids do only moderately academic preschool, if anything, and expectations are fairly low for kindy. The kids that I know have been doing lots of educational TV and games were terrific kindergarteners but are definitely slipping in first grade and I start to worry about their self-image as they go on since their reading skills are not keeping pace with expectations. Kids that I know were more interested in sports than screens have made slow but steady progress in first grade, moving up through the "pack".

Gil, here is the worksheet the OP was working on. Yes, the last option was mistyped and should have been 3^2 x 2^6. http://ba-cdn.beastacademy.com/store/products/4A/4A_Workbook_Exponents_81-84.pdf Given that I haven't taken a student to this level of Beast yet, I just want to point out that this practice material is given to kids who've been playing with different number systems, perfect squares, and learning the meaning of exponentiation -- but who have not yet seen factorization and probably have not been asked to do a lot of computation with exponents just yet. That's why an approach that might be obvious (if a bit brute force) given that specific background, isn't as obvious to a student like yours who has a lot of other tools in their toolbox. I wouldn't say there's one "AoPS mindset" that must be adopted but yes, using common sense to eyeball the equivalencies between the two columns does seem to show a certain facility with the numbers and the concepts involved.

Aaah! Don't let Keith Devlin hear you! :lol: http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_06_08.html http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_0708_08.html http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_09_08.html http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_01_10.html http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_01_11.html (Fortunately RR solves this little dilemma neatly: http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Videos/external.php?video_id=21)

It looks to me like that chapter has a LOT of work with powers of 2 and 3 to work up to that section, and BA 3 expects that the times tables will be memorized (especially the squares). I think that with that foundation laid, the connections are supposed to be somewhat intuitive. You don't have to have the vocabulary "find the factors" to be able to jump from (the previous page) 2^4 x 3^6 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 = (2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3) x (2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3) = 108^2, to 18^2 = 18 x 18 = 2 x 9 x 2 x 9 = 2 x 3 x 3 x 2 x 3 x 3 = 2^2 x 3^4. It's just another application of the associative property.

Yes Beast Academy is generally considered challenging and covers material not seen in other programs. From the introductory material: "Some of the topics in this book go well beyond what is typically taught in a third grade math class. Don't worry if you don't understand every lesson in the book the first time. You can always come back later to review some of the more difficult sections." Look through all the pre-assessments to see where your child would fit. And look at the sample pages to get a feel for the challenge level. Note that there are 4 books per year, A-D, so just doing 3A and B wouldn't be a complete preparation for 4A. FWIW I just don't tell my kids that the number on the front of the book has anything to do with grade level. Maybe because they're small and gullible but they work in the number 3 books and they're fine with it. By the way, congrats on making the decision to give your kiddo more interesting math! Anyone who is getting straight As in 4th grade math deserves to play with math problems they can really grapple with for more than 5 seconds!

The Borac competitive math books are under $6 each. You could get a decent amount of problem-solving traction (and off-the-beaten-track math) out of any one of them, or (shifty as it is) just do the look-inside and see how many problems you can work out. Just be warned that the skills build in each section so if the preview skips the first few it might not be a real taste of the practice book.

The curriculum is designed with minimal output, because it's meant for kids whose ability to think about deeper concepts might develop before their ability to write a whole lot about it. I have the whole first level, but since we are using it for afterschool and didn't get it until February or so, we have only gotten through the parts of speech section of Grammar Island and the introductory section of Building Language. So far in Grammar Island, what the kids *do* is engage in really juicy conversations about how we use the words we do. Occasionally they parse a sentence or a handful of sentences, or make up a silly story from a silly sentence made of lots of different parts of speech. Looking ahead, once the student is done with Grammar Island they can do Practice Island which is a four-level analysis of one sentence a day, and they can start Sentence Island. Sentence Island has a lot of writing prompts in the back of the teacher's edition for students to practice their understanding of sentence structure -- usually by flipping it on its head. The prompts might be too creative for some kids, I think my little guy might be just whimsical enough to try them, and I really think and hope my DD will be all over it when she's ready to do the work instead of just listening in. :)

With my kids I have been pulling syllabication rules out of AAS2 and Uncovering the Logic of English, as well as trying to work through the...third? McGuffey reader.

Here are a couple of recent threads on this topic: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/507852-how-exactly-do-you-accelerate/ http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/506620-the-nuts-and-bolts-of-compacting-curriculum/

Your state's educational system sounds like a trial by fire. :( My district is already Title I by the skin of its teeth (34.5% free/reduced-price lunch).

Whole grade skipping isn't something I'd considered for my kids, as they are socially "young" to me, but that's interesting to note that just requesting it helped the administration take your child and your request more seriously. Thanks, all. I've also been reading up about advocacy on the Hoagie's site. It sounds exhausting. I keep finding myself asking, "Why would you even go to those lengths, just homeschool." But homeschool isn't an option for everyone, and there is something to be said for paving the way to make ability-appropriate instruction available to all kids in the public school. If everybody with an accelerated kid bails out, where does that leave the next kids who come up? I'm going to volunteer in my son's class today and I usually get a few minutes to chat with his teacher. I don't like taking her time if I didn't pre-arrange a conference but maybe with a light chat I can feel her out for what she thinks will be the opportunities available for both my kids in the next couple of years.

Oh, I thought the OP was talking about the serious mattress-sized inflated air mattresses! That's what we use when we car camp now, we gave gotten to be serious wimps in our "old" age. But the kids get foam pads or Thermarest or extra blankets for padding under their sleeping bags and are happy as clams.

That is really good to know! Ours is a Title I school and EPGY would probably be head and shoulders above the incessant IXL practice my poor son is subjected to! I don't know how involved the principal is actually. I do see him roaming the halls, having meetings with the teachers, etc. so my gut impression is that I feel like he'd have an overall vision for the school and be able to give me some idea of what has been done before for accelerated kids like mine? It's a good question though. I don't know what kind of testing! Our neighboring district with a bigger student population uses CogAT and MAT to determine placement in GATE.

Thanks for the input so far! That's interesting to consider testing privately before asking anybody for anything. I really was kind of hoping to avoid the expense. Last October, legislation was passed in my state that requires that every district provides Highly Capable students with differentiated instruction from K-12 as part of their mandate to provide all students with access to a basic education. The timeline required that all schools have a written plan in place starting with the 2014-15 school year that outlines what services are offered and how access to them is determined. So my thought was that I would start there: what is being planned, and how can I get my children considered? I figured it would be a good angle, since it means that the school can access extra state funds to provide these services -- I'm not asking for the moon in a cash-strapped district then. Unfortunately when I was researching this legislation today in order to reference it, I found that there has been a hitch in the funding and it's not clear if districts really will be able to access extra state money for Highly Capable kids. :\ I'm actually very leery of testing, but I thought that if the school was going to do *something* to get a benchmark on them for Highly Capable placement purposes, then I would also have a little more ammunition on my side for continuing to advocate for them -- or to pull them out entirely. At this point I am feeling way too close to the subject to be able to objectively determine if my kids are gifted enough to need accommodation or just bright and able to adapt to the classroom. I feel like I need a third party to give a little perspective.

I know, I know. The vast majority of y'all are here because you did not find that the system worked for your kids. But I feel like I have to explore all the options for mine, and so I'd like to hear from those who stuck it out, at least for a while, advocating for their kids and who perhaps got some accommodations in place. I'm gearing up to write a message to the school principal to evaluate what options are going to be available for us going forward as my son enrolls in second grade next fall and my daughter starts kindergarten, and I just don't have any idea what to expect. My stomach is in knots, frankly, trying to figure out how to strike the balance between being THAT parent and getting my kids what they need. Before third grade I don't even care if I have to keep afterschooling, I love teaching them! I just don't want them getting totally turned off of school because of boredom and unreasonable expectations. One of my reasons for talking to the principal is to see if it's possible they'll offer testing for my kids. Knowing something, anything about their relative strengths would be a huge part of the decision-making process for me. What have you experienced? Bonus points if it was in a small district so busing to another school was not an option.

I think this is exactly what ananemone was saying. I don't fret about my son spending time to practice karate even though I don't expect him ever to be a karate instructor or Olympic competitor or anything. Because not only does he enjoy it, there are skills embedded in the activity that will grow him as a person. I think ananemone was trying to point out that it's okay for our kids to have rock obsessions or Hogwarts obsessions that don't grow into careers. Because the whole experience of finding an interest and pursuing it to the best of our ability is inherently valuable, from Dungeons & Dragons or Minecraft to astronomy or fiddling. A child with an astronomy interest *could* grow into a professional astronomer, and a child with an intense practice of fiddling *could* grow into a professional fiddler. But if they don't, it's not a waste or a failure, because there is value in having something like that in your life whether it's technically your career or not. So the same guidelines should be applied to builders of card houses and players of online Hogwarts. That intrinsic motivation can't be faked, so give the kid the reins and hold on for the ride!

My grandma was born in 1916 and passed away in 2007. She was an orphan though, and without a mom to teach her she taught herself to cook only after she was married, by reading the Fannie Farmer cookbook. :) She made Spicy Franks (hot dogs in a thickened ketchup sauce over egg noodles) and butterscotch Haystacks. :)

It seems to me a pretty common complaint of homeschoolers is that parents feel particularly uncomfortable teaching writing. So it doesn't necessarily surprise me that parents would have a hard time divorcing composition skills (vocabulary, logical structure, grammar) from handwriting skills (which depend on fine-motor development and a "logic-stage" kind of synthesis between creating words and moving the hand to generate the letters that spell the words.) My son can create a multiple-paragraph expository report that holds together in a logical way and stays on topic, so I feel like his composition skills are a bit above first grade level. Like many professionals in writing and other fields, he uses a transcriptionist. ;) He also needs quite a bit of work in grammar, and his spelling is only slightly above his peers, but I see signs that just like in math, he doesn't need much practice to solidify concepts, so I'm going to call him a bit advanced there too. Similarly, his handwriting is average to barely above average, and he struggles with reversals and letter formation, but it only takes one time being instructed for him to adopt better letters (eg. his h became a D'Nealian h as soon as the classroom did a practice sheet on that letter) and he brute forces his way through the reversals by using mental tricks or searching out models to help him. But yeah, writing is generally probably not quite as far advanced as his math and reading...it's a bit hard to quantify. :) Of course, my kid is probably not gifted either, or not very, so maybe it's not even relevant!

They're having a sale on novels this weekend! :) Not on curriculum though.

Have you looked at the sample pages available online? I'd recommend it. Reading and thinking through the balancing weights section, and the associated practice book pages also provided, were what gave me the best taste of what the books were like. (My son was able to complete that section at age 6 with a LOT of support and no small amount of crying. It took until he had the maturity that seemed to come around his 7th birthday for him to be willing to buckle down and really work through both the book and the practice book.)

I don't think there's any way of knowing if one way is better than another! We do what seems right with what we know and when we know different we do different. I expect my kids to crumble and lose motivation if asked to do lots of practice in basic computation, using more difficult tools but not using more complicated thought processes; you expect your kids to crumble and lose motivation if they're asked to do lots of heavy-lifting thought processes before they are even allowed to start multiplication; as parents we probably have some insight and we may well be right about our own kids! Time will tell, but chances are, all our kids will probably do okay regardless, since they have parents who want them to be their best selves. ;)

I love your analogies, Gil, very clear! I've never held the main AoPS books myself, but we've looked at a lot of excerpts online and when I started reading to my kids from the first chapter of Pre-Algebra it was love at first listen. They kept demanding to do more of the problems. :p I showed them the pages and asked if this kind of book looked like fun or if it looked overwhelming and they both agreed it looked super fun! It seems to be exactly appropriate for them, though they're such different kids. (DD5 definitely burns in the sun of difficulty, but still she keeps trying to go out now and again. DS7 got a good burn when he was 6, but it seems to have kick-started his base tan, and now he can stay out longer and longer and even seeks out the sunny places when it really would be just fine to hang out in the shade a bit. ;) ) It's taken a good amount of grooming, but DS now sees more value in perseverance than in getting things right immediately. DD still preens if she gets a workbook page all correct, and pouts if something doesn't go her way, but we're building up to giving her work she can sink her teeth into. "Mathematics isn't meant to be easy, it's meant to be interesting!" A funny thing about option A and option B...option A is how I parent. :) I didn't spoon feed them, they fed themselves starting at 6 months. I didn't help them climb playground equipment, they figured out how to navigate ladders and things before 18 months while I stayed several strides away and pretended to look the other way. When they play together, I don't intervene unless the noise is getting on my nerves. So maybe that's why my kids and I embrace an approach that has you feel your way slowly and awkwardly when things are new, in order to have greater confidence, balance, nerves, flexibility once you get a bit of practice under your belt? Interesting stuff! :)

Could you elaborate? This learning style stuff always fascinates me, I think because my kids are a little different from each other and I'm still trying to dial in the best way to work with my DD.

This. I wish I didn't feel this way but I dooooo!!! My opinion about reading comprehension questions, especially for emerging readers, is probably not helpful so I'll refrain. :\

Sure, and maybe you want to use a less elaborate and less expensive program like MM for him to practice if he doesn't need the teaching. It makes sense to me! Gifted kids can be a horse of a different color and you just have to find what works! Speaking of not understanding how they see things...I had a couple funny posts to Facebook before DS was really able to verbalize his methods. :) Here's one (it was a little over a year ago so he was not quite 6.5, and I think he was doing Life of Fred math...we had to "fix" this approach, which caused a hitch in his multi-digit subtraction, but now he's once more fluent but with a decomposing the higher value units approach... Kindergartener is working on subtracting 805 - 7. "The 8 becomes 7. The 10 becomes 9. And then what's 2 less than 10?" Me: "Um...is that really relevant? Er...it's 8." "OK! So the answer is 798!" Me: "It...oh! Yes, I suppose it is!"