Good decision. If he did not like beast academy than AOPS pre algebra could be a challenge.

Happy New Year Everyone, My DS 6th grader (in Canada) is doing Math AOPS Pre Algebra after school, over the weekends and holidays and sailing smooth through it. I want to take your opinion if it will be a good idea to introduce some science enrichment without putting too much load on him. Or whether is this even necessary? will the regular school curriculum be sufficiently rigorous for teaching him Physics and Chemistry if he wants to go to Engineering later? If I must do any enrichment, I rather like to do early enough so that load can be distributed. One view of handling this was to engage him to any video/online based course that would indeed shift his TV/YouTube/Games time to something more useful. Good thing is that he is very interested in Science explorations discovery kind of material as he watches those quite a bit on YouTube. Enrolling him in a course might channelize his curiosity. Does any member has any view on Conceptual Academy ? They have quite some video based course for each grade from 7 to 12. Only problem I see is that corresponding text books are very expensive and not easy to find at least here in Canada. https://conceptualscience.com/instructor-faq/ I would appreciate any other perspective, input or suggestions. This forum is so helpful . Kudos to all of you. Cheers

a late comment but my son is doing AOPS Pre-Algebra. I did not even tell him that videos exist. I am afraid that if he watches videos first that will take away the entire discovery approach of AOPS. in OP's case Math Mammoth seems like a good fit which is instructions based ( Written to the student in a simple direct way). We ditched Math mammoth because it was too simple and too many similar type of problems. Each kid is unique so you need to align the curriculum to the kid. In my case, I am expecting my son to do pre algebra in one full year (10 months after school work and 2 month summer vacation). I think he will face some challenge in Introduction to Algebra book. I saw that book looks complex. I think with half of AOP pre algebra done, my son knows more math than me now. I did math till Calculus in 90s. I can't sit and explain him things any more.

Thanks for your feedback so far. I am encouraging him to continue with his current pace. Yes, I understand Prealgebra is indeed tedious. I saw the book in terms of pages yesterday , the first 6 chapters is almost half the book in terms of number of pages v/s remaining 9 chapters.

My son who will be 12 years old in March 2024 started AOPS Prealgebra mid April this year 2023 after completing beast academy . As of today he will complete 6 chapters which took him 7.5 months to complete that included 2 months of summer vacation months when had full day at home for himself. on school days he does some math everyday after school and some over weekend. He does it completely himself. He works through the problems and then verify answers with the solution manual. He likes the curriculum and to my satisfaction he is not getting many of the problems wrong. Most of his method and answers are correct and matching with what is provide in the solution manual. perhaps part of him being too slow is his excessive writing. I created a thread for that to take some feedback so please have a look at that thread to have an perspective. https://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/728643-aops-pre-algebra-is-my-son-writing-too-much-text/#comment-9458592 Since the feedback, I have advised him on a few tips to accelerate pace in terms of writing crisp and clear and concise and he has implemented a few steps in that direction but I dont think with his pace, he will progress much on this curriculum because prealgebra is just start and a lot of books to go through until Calculus. Prealgebra book has 15 chapters so now I have given him targets. Roughly 2 chapters each month that should complete the book by mid April 2024. Seems like achievable but we will see. Wanted to take some of your opinion. I want to give him the advantage of doing it all by himself. School does not follow this curriculum and the math they do at school is not even close to what he does in AOPS. I just monitor his progress a bit but do not get involved. He is honest and on random check, I found that he doing the problems and checking with solution manual is very honest behavior. Oh , and he does every single review problem and challenge problem. Did not skip even one. I do not want to discourage him because he likes this course. Should I just let him do what he is doing or try to do any corrective measure? AOPS classes are a no go because I know he will not match their pace anyways. Some of the institutes in Canada follow AOPS but a watered down one ( they dont do review and challenge problems) so currently I think he is doing good by himself not sure how sustainable it is. Any feedback or options are welcome. Thanks in advance....

Introduction to Algebra AOPS book - is that correct? By 8th grade do you mean beginning of 8th grade or end of 8th grade?

No, he does not copy from the Solution Manual at all. I know that. He only opens the solution manual when he has completed his own solution and wants to verify. Together we have an agreement that we will stick to the philosophy of AOPS that you learn by solving the problems (specially the hard ones) yourself. Also that he has to read the solution manual completely even if he solved the problem himself. I was only worried about the pace. Because he writes so much, he has taken full 2 months to complete 3 chapters of Pre algebra and filled 2 Legal pads completely. I think not every chapter is long like chapter 3 so in that case, I will just let him work at his own style throughout summer. We believe he should have no issue till chapter 9 as all these topics are augmenting what is taught in BA . Chapter 10 is Angles so getting involved in Geometry will be good. Thanks for your feedback so far.

My son 11 years and 4 months old is doing self paced AOPS Pre algebra from the book. Before that he did BA online level 3 to 5 ( we skipped level 2) in total 2 years. From school perspective he completed level 5 and will be going to level 6 in Sep but you might be knowing school levels do not compare with his learning through beast academy and AOPS at all. He has just completed chapter 3 of Pre-Algebra and he has not encountered any difficulty so far. All the Review Problems and Challenge Problems are also solved by him. I have to admit that I do not check his work. He self checks it from the solution manual. If the answer and the method of the solution manual is same as his own he gives himself a tick mark.. I somehow think that he is writing too much text and that makes his pace a bit slow for my liking ( I am comparing my own style in 80s and 90s and can be wrong. We did not used to write so much in Math until later in grade 11 or 12) . What do you guys think? Any feedback is welcome. I have attached some of his work for the last few Challenge Problems from chapter 3 - Number Theory that he did last week. Should I advise him to summarize his response rather than such elaboration? Or should I just leave him as is? Thanks in advance....

Hi all DS just turned 8 this month and is in grade 2 . We follow MM Blue series. He has done Multiplication 1 and Division 1 . If I go by light blue , these chapters will be covered by grade 3 end. Then I picked up Introduction to Fractions ( ranges from grade 2 to grade4) . He will finish this by his grade 2 end. No problems. I want to enhance his Problem solving skills specially word problems. I did some research on the forum and want to put him on combo of Process skills + CWP. Two questions 1) Going by his skills, I am assuming level 1 of these two books can be avoided? Those who have used these please suggest. I am thinking to start with level 2 of these both 2) I heard these Singapore math solves problem using Bar methods . I never used bars in my life . worked on equations right from childhood through engineering. Want same for my son. Do you thnk these books can restrict his ability to work on equations going forward. Thanks

I recommend Math Mammoth . It is written directly to the student. Other thing about Math Mammoth.... It is taught in a very no nonsense way . No cartoon .. no colours no nothing. Math is Math... there is no point pretending to make the subject interesting by some other means than what it is. Whatever I am in my life is due to Math. I was not very good in Physics... Chemistry so so... Math made my way to Engineering and I can relate to MM as if my childhood teachers are teaching me... Only thing you need to be bit careful that there is a lots and lots of exercise. If the kid feel confident only with a few, you can safely skip some...

OK Thank you for the feedback. My insistence to him to write was partly due to the fact that I misunderstood the book's ask. I naturally thought that him writing it was the way to go. Him resisting the writing is not like crying or anything. He would just say "Oh... do I need to write this all now" and I would say " Try and I will help you"... and then he is ok . It is me who is now thinking that if book is not asking for more why make him do more. He is ok and enjoys once into it. Here are some pictures of what he produced ( I have made some corrections but not many.. I can list those down) . Quality might not be very good so please bear with me. I am open to feedback. You guys have been great.

OK then I am doing it completely wrong it seems. DS is 7 year old and in grade 2. The reason I chose WWE1 for him is because this was a new thing for us and I did not want to start with Level 2 book. When I read the text to him, he normally answers all the questions correctly and because I did not know that I was supposed to write his narration , I am asking him to write and he is coming up with fairly ok kind of 5 or 6 sentences sometime even more. Mostly he captures the critical part of the story so that is good. Some difficult word's spellings are wrong which I correct afterwards. and every 3 or 4 days we revisit those errors. The book says " What is the one thing you remember from the passage?" . I guess the author literally just want the child to verbally tell only one thing in complete sentence and wants the instructor to write it. Then similar to a couple of sentences that he copies from the book every alternate day , he will copy his own sentence ( perhaps along with the the other two sentences that he does in the copy-work) And here I am making him write 7-8 sentences on his own. He does resist and does not want to write but when I insist, he does write good sentences. Do you think to make full step by step use of the book , I should change my style and stick to the how book suggests. am I pushing it too much? Boy is writing complete sentences always along with the capitalization and punctuation that he learnt from his mom last year from grade1 generic book. I think we should have done WWE1 last year but in current situation, should we will continue course with WWE1 and complete the book? The stories are very god and well thought after.

Hi all, I bought FLL2 and WWE1 .. Enjoying WWE1 a lot but I have a question. After reading the passage to my DS, I ask questions which he answers. Then after I ask him” What is onething you rememerfrom the story” but then I ask him to write those things that he remembered and then I correct his sentence. just yesterday I noticed that the book says “ Record students answer in the student page as he watches” so is it the student who is supposed to write or the instructor? can some WWE users please clarify?

I am going to use Blue series as main curriculum.

Hi all, I have a question. Has anyone used Review workbooks from Math Mammoth? These are for Grade 1 to 7 https://www.mathmammoth.com/review_workbooks/ I am going to buy Blue series as main curriculum and these review workbooks are advertised as good compliment to the Blue series. Are these worth buying? Can any one who has used these please comment? P.S. - Math Mammoth is running a 25% discount till Dec 1. Please check their website if you want to buy anything.