My kiddo placed 3 rd for his grade. It was his first competition and went in without any prep since sample questions were not given. He was so proud of himself he went to bed last night with the medal around his neck. I was very surprised he placed but he has made it a habit of surprising me this year.

It was so beautiful it made me cry. Thank you for posting. If you don't mind me asking how old is your DS and how long has he been playing ?

What a beautiful thread - thank you for posting.

We had the same experience with DS2 who just turned 7. His WISC IV FSIQ was 117 ( VCI 114, PRI 119, WM 116, PSI 97). His WJ III achievement scores were Broad Reading 130 , Reading Comprehension 124, Broad math 155 and Math reasoning 146. The psych who did the testing said she rarely sees such high Math scores for such a young child. She didn't explain the discrepancy but suggested doing the Stanford Binet IQ test which we refused. She was confident he would score much higher on that because it wasn't timed. So I am not sure if the same reason would apply to your DC - perhaps the timed sections hampered her scoring ?

Have you tried using the videos on Khan academy (and AOPS to a certain extent) ? DS loves to watch them and they are free. We try to watch videos on the topics he is currently working on/having trouble with and then do a few problems there. They have step by step instructions on how to solve incase the child has trouble with it.

@bold - I need to keep reminding myself of this !! I agree with what you say - there is no harm in giving it a whirl. If it works good else that's good too. I am happy as long as he is having fun.

Thanks for your very informative advice Ruth in NZ. I have always wondered how I can teach my kids persistance. My older DS just gives up if he cant figure out a problem in the first few minutes. He is disheartened easily. So if I were to ask him to do the AoPS pre algebra book by himself he would probably just give up. He needs someone to guide him but I hope by the end of the book he is able to be more independent. He started alcumus recently and I can hear his groans and moans each time he gets something wrong. But he is getting better at it hopefully he builds stamina over time. My younger one I am not sure yet if he would be able to presist thru it. Mainly because of his comprehension skills and the look of the book. We got the text book last week, DS2 took one look at it and said " that is one biiig book". I could see that he was very concerned that he was expected to work on this book in a few months. We assured him that he will start work on it only when he is ready for it . He happily works on Beast academy but this one does look like a high school book. It will be interesting to see how it progresses. I guess I have to look into improving his comprehension skills. Talking about the PreAlgebra book how wonderful is it? I am an Engineer and I am so jealous I didnt have such a book growing up. I couldnt put the book down for hours after I got it :)

Congratulations to you and your DD :hurray:

LOL I so relate to this we have faced this at our home as well. The drama of "Its too hard" is played out here as well - arguing how difficult it is for a 6yo to understand 3rd grade questions. These days mine is trying to write what he thinks is "cursive" I let him just so that he completes his work and This makes him happy. So a little bit of give and take to keep peace.

I am interested in hearing from more people about this. My younger DS has a similar problem but its the opposite- he always wants me to sit with him and read thru the problem and explain what they are talking about. I am sure he can understand the SM 3 word problems but he often asks me to explain. If I send him back to work on his own its often work that is subpar - steps not shown or even just doing some random thing. Making him redo multiple times is not really helping he is my strong willed one.Hopefully its just a phase.

Thank you Crimson Wife. We have been thinking about it as well. It costs such a lot here to get IQ testing done so we have to save up for it. Hopefully by summer we can get it done.

Thank you for the suggestions they are much appreciated. I especially liked the suggestion of trying the first three chapters of the book. We should be getting the text book soon once I have a look at that I should be able to decide if he is even ready to start AoPS this spring. He is doing BA 3A right now but not on a regular basis we should probably get it in his schedule. Yes, I will make sure he takes the pretest before he attempts to start PreAlgebra 1. I agree the course would be too much with all his other activities. After I started this thread Dh and I discussed it and decided to let him just try to sit thru the class with his brother who is already signed up. If all goes well we will sign him up for the next one. But I expect it will be tough on him to even to sit thru a 90 minutes class especially since the timing is not good for him. The best bet seems to be to let him work thru the book with his tutor whom he adores. Thank you ladies for helping me think thru this issue. I am so glad to have such a support system. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank you for writing about your DD's experience I expect Ds2 to go thru something similar . He will definitely take the pretest before March. I agree with you that the class would move too fast which is why I haven't signed him up for the class. The class is from 7:30 thru 8:45 which is too close to bed time. I am glad to hear that your Dd is able to work on the AoPS book though. I think that is the route we will end up on.

I am worried about this too especially since our school district has banned subject acceleration after adopting comman core standards. I will talk to the school soon and see what they have to say. But I expect to get all children are bright pushbacks from them. Our district does not start AG identification until the 3rd grade. My Ds2 seems so normal to me that it's hard for me to accept that he can easily work on math that is 2 grades ahead.So to have to be pushy in advocating for him is quite a task for me.

Thank you for your responses. Yes we expect him to be done with at least SM 4 by Spring next year. He is almost at the end of 3A now. DS1 is on SM 5 right now so he is signed up to take the spring class of PreAlgebra 1. The suggestion from the tutor was to let him sit in for the classes with his brother and then work with the tutor on the concepts taught that week. There might be going back and forth which would be a good thing. I am hoping it slows him down quite a bit but I am not sure if he is ready to think his way thru a problem which AoPS claims to do. I mean he seems to lack the maturity for that. We do Life of Fred as bed time stories and recently started on Beast Academy. He loves to read life of Fred on his own too.

My younger DS who is 6 and a half years old is a very bright and happy child. he loves school and does not complain of it being boring. My older Ds was bored at schol so we hired a math tutor to work with him at home as enrichment. That worked out great for him. The tutor noticing the younger one hanging around offered to work with him for 10 mins after DS1's class just so that DS2 wouldnt feel left out. The 10 mins started streching to 20 and then nearly an hour within a couple of weeks. The tutor even bought him work books all on his own dime until finally I had to insist on paying him for the time he was spending on DS2. This was around 5 months ago. DS2 is currently doing Singapore math 3A (and Challenging math 2 )and breezing thru it. His tutor who is a retired math professor I must add thinks DS2 will be ready to take the AOPS Pre algebra 1 online course with DS1 in spring. I think its a huge step and am not sure if he can handle it .His tutor will work with him on the AOPS pre Algebra book too and assures me DS2 is capable of handling it. I feel we are going too fast but decided there is no harm in trying it out to see how it turns out. This child by the way happily does 2 digit addition in his "advanced" first grade math class. Anyone else have a child this age who took that course ? How did it go ?

You are right about that dmmetler. Last year in 3rd grade most of the time was spent either testing or preparing the kids for testing. DS had atleast 4 types of tests last year and I remember they spent weeks in school learning how to use the bubble sheet for each test.Our school has great test scores and now I know why! I dont think DS has taken tests that are are over an hour at a time tho so it will be interesting to see how he does on the last section.

Any kind of prep will be helpful so thank you for the Scholastic suggestion Halcyon. i was planning on having him go thru the sample questions on their website this weekend. Hopefully the format of the questions will be similar.I wouldnt call my DS a perfectionist, he is ok if he makes silly mistakes like not adding up the numbers right but if he cant figure out how to do a problem in the first few minutes he just shuts down saying he can't do it. I am hoping AoPS will help with this attitude . 2 hours is a long test - this will be a good learning experience for him and me :-)

Have you tried Udacity.com ? Their introduction to Physics course was nice. Does she know typing already? There are plenty of free online sites including one offered by BBC.

I feel so relieved when I read such posts - my older DS makes these little squeaky noises from time to time driving his younger brother nuts. And yes he prefers to "not show his work" because his teacher "is smart enough to know the steps to arrive at the answer".

Thank you for the encouragement ladies. Much appreciated! This is my anxious one so I am trying to make him feel comfortable about taking this test. I keep repeating that it is going to be very hard and he just needs to do his best.

Thanks ladies. I actually have a DS 9 not DD9 as mentioned in my first post . He hasnt used a calculator for math learning so far so that is a good idea to get him acquainted with it. He is pretty good with bubble sheets considering that they spent a good part of third grade getting ready for standardized testing. He is not at Singapore math CWP 6 yet - he is starting out on CWP5 hopefully he will not shut down during the test if its too hard for him. I should have probably just waited a year before singing him up.

DD9 has been registered to take the Explore test thru Duke TIP. I was wondering if we needed to prepare for it. If yes what materials do you use and recommend ? He attends a public charter school and is accelerated in Math because of afterschooling. He is not accelerated in Science so I am wondering if he needs some prep for that. Thanks in advance

Thanks for posting. Is there a list available of books that are part of a set ? I mean which are the books we get in the set meant for 3-4th graders ?

Thanks for the feedback. Yes I was not planning on using it for independent learning. We will either work on new concepts together or he can use other resources. We are currently big fans of Khan academy as well. I think it has more to do with collecting the oh so exclusive Sun badge than math itself :-) My younger oe has thought himself how to read the clock and 5 times multiplication without really knowing what he was doing so things are going good right now .