Good math curriculum for a kid who loves math?

[courtney.byrum]

My 5 yr old DS loves math and is currently at grade 3 in EPGY. I'm trying to find him a good math program to use with him to keep his interest going.

 

Math Mammoth looks interesting and I'm going to have him do the placement tests to see what lvl he is at there. I checked out Teaching Textbooks a bit too - are they behind at all? He got everything right on the math 3 placement test and I think he'll get the majority of math 4 right as well and that doesn't seem quite right when in other things he's squarely in 3.

 

I'd love some recommendations. I've considered Singapore but am not sure how he would like it.

 

He's currently in 1/2 day K at ps but we will most likely homeschool next year using k12 CAVA but I'd like to get him some more math he enjoys now.

[Crimson Wife]

Have you looked into MEP (can download materials for free) or Miquon? Those plus Singapore are the curricula typically recommended for kids who are gifted/advanced in math.

Not main curricula but he might enjoy:

Challenge Math series by Edward Zaccaro

Hands-on Equations by Dr. Henry Borenson

 

Things to keep in mind for when he's a bit further along:

Life of Fred series

Art of Problem Solving materials

[courtney.byrum]

Thanks! I'm looking at Miquon and MEP now. Do I understand correctly that MEP Year 3 is roughly equivalent to Grade 2?

 

I might just order one or both of the 3rd grade Miquon workbooks to try it out.

[Crimson Wife]

The British years are one ahead of the U.S. grades. MEP is an advanced curriculum, so many folks start even one level further down than that.

[Ummto4]

Don't ditch the math mammoth yet. This curriculum is also challenging. But it's very teacher friendly and painless to teachbecause the way it's set up. It's also very good in explaining things in picture and in concept-development.

Very clear.

 

It works very well for both my math whiz daughter (a K) and my average son (a 2nd grader).

 

You can adjust the pace with the math whiz kids to be quicker and also you don't have to do all the problems in MM. MM is cheap, too ... MM has a lot of sample pages -- just print off some pages and try them out with your dcs.

 

FYI: I also use MEP to challenge both my kids-- but only select/unique problems.

 

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Zoo Keeper]

I'll give another vote for MEP or Miquon; one of my sons is very mathy and he loves exploring with the Miquon materials. The MEP is excellent for challenging and stretching the brain too.

[Stacy in NJ]

If you're using it as a supplement, you can just get the textbooks and forget the workbooks.

[MissKNG]

What about Horizons math?

 

We are using Singapore right now and will start Horizons K in February. Horizons goes through 6th grade, I believe. It spirals and has a fast pace. There was a thread about it somewhere here and most people agree that it's at least 6 months advanced compared to most other math curriculum. We supplement with The Critical Thinking Company math books.

[courtney.byrum]

Thanks for the further recommendations everyone! Since Miquon and MM are so cheap I think I'll grab a workbook from each and see what he likes. I have considered just the textbook for Singapore as well so it's nice to know that works for some people.

 

What about Horizons math?

 

We are using Singapore right now and will start Horizons K in February. Horizons goes through 6th grade, I believe. It spirals and has a fast pace. There was a thread about it somewhere here and most people agree that it's at least 6 months advanced compared to most other math curriculum. We supplement with The Critical Thinking Company math books.

 

He loves his CTC math books :) He keeps the 1st grade(lvl B) one in his room and the 2nd grade(lvl C) one goes to things like dd's dance class with us.

 

I'll have to check out Horizons again as well. I only briefly looked at K there and nothing else.

Edited December 20, 2009 by CourtneyB

[Annie Laurie]

What about living math- math stories and picture books and lots of games and activities? Books like Family Math and the website http://www.livingmath.net would be helpful.

 

My dd loves math and has tested several grade levels ahead in the subject. She has enjoyed Miquon, Singapore Challenging Word Problems, and RightStart math.

 

She actually found the regular Singapore text and workbooks boring, but that's because she's highly hands-on. I'm not sure she needs things laid out for her so much as in RightStart, but she loves doing things for math, instead of just filling in workbooks, so it's her preferred program anyway and we just do several lessons a day and work ahead. I plan to start incorporating more living math for her, because she loves the exploration and discovery, and needs the incremental steps and explanations less.

[Caribbean Queen]

 

Since your son is in school, he may be doing a lot of worksheets already. He might like 'math enrichment' in the form of games. The book Family Math has good ideas for homemade games.

 

My son likes to do mental math. He doesn't like to do a lot of hands-on math activities. He isn't crazy about math games. He loves Singapore Math text books.

[MissKNG]

He loves his CTC math books :) He keeps the 1st grade(lvl B) one in his room and the 2nd grade(lvl C) one goes to things like dd's dance class with us.

 

I'll have to check out Horizons again as well. I only briefly looked at K there and nothing else.

 

 

We are CTC fans too! I have a question...DD is working through the Level A book and I have Level B waiting for when A is done. I was looking through B a few weeks ago and thought dd could comfortably complete the first half of Level B now. What about Level B and Level C? Is there much of a content difference between those?

[nmoira]

We haven't found one program that meets the needs of DD the Elder (just turned 8). She did Singapore Math (IP in lieu of workbook, plus CWP) through two-digit division in 4A, then jumped to Life of Fred (Fractions and Decimals & Percents) and decided she didn't want to go back to Singapore. She wasn't getting enough new material. I could have worked around this by following topics sequentially through the years rather than working through just one book at at time, but I didn't want to spend the time coordinating it. So instead spent time... well, now we're using a mish-mash of materials for middle school math, essentially buying time until algebra. Here's some of what we've done, and some of what we have in the pipe:

 

LoF: Fractions and Decimals & Percents

Venn Perplexors A-D

Can You Count in Greek? (highly enjoyable)

Selected MEP units, including codes and ciphers

It's Alive, and It's Alive and Kicking (found a very few errors in solutions)

Logic Countdown, Logic Liftoff, Orbiting with Logic

The Cryptoclub

Becoming a Problem Solving Genius

Challenge Math

Brain Maths (puzzles, from SingaporeMath.com, we have found a few errors in the solutions)

Mathematics 6 (Russian Math, selected sections and problems; this text is a thing of beauty)

CWP 5 and 6 (slowly working through the series)

Alien Math (working with different number bases, looks very cool)

Piece of Pi (looks OK)

LoF Pre-algebra books as they come out (DD loves Fred, the first, Biology is out now)

A Game of Logic (Lewis Carroll)

The Snake and the Fox: An Introduction to Logic

 

I'm up in the air about IMACS middle school math program. I was hoping to use it, but haven't yet set aside enough money to purchase the first few units for evaluation. The downside is homeschoolers cannot purchase answer keys, so I would have to do all the problems myself. It looks fantastic.

 

Far Future (2 or 3 years, quite possibly bits and pieces, and timing depends on science sequence):

LoF, including statistics (primarily as a teaching tool)

Art of Problem Solving

Modern Algebra: A Logical Approach Vol 1 and 2 (if only for proofs and problems)

Geometry (Moise/Downs)

Gelfand, various books

mathematical logic (still looking)

business/finance math (maybe only a short unit or two)

[Dana]

 

I'm up in the air about IMACS middle school math program. I was hoping to use it, but haven't yet set aside enough money to purchase the first few units for evaluation. The downside is homeschoolers cannot purchase answer keys, so I would have to do all the problems myself. It looks fantastic.

 

I've worked through Bk 0 Ch 1 (Operational Systems) and am partially through Bk 0 Ch 2 (Integers). I'm still needing to write a test for Ch 1 (blech). In integers, they use a "hat" system to represent negative numbers. This is done to distinguish the negative sign as an additive inverse. I'm showing my son negative numbers now, so I don't know how it'll work with him when we use the new notation, but it really does do a good job of helping solidify the concept of inverse.

 

I do have all the EM books, so if anyone does start getting them and working with them, please PM me (or start a thread on it) and I'll be happy to compare answers (and share tests if I get some written).

[gandpsmommy]

My dd has loved Righstart and Miquon. She didn't care for Singapore.

[Terabith]

If your child is in kindergarten and doing 3rd grade EPGY work, he's pretty significantly accelerated. Why not just keep going with EPGY?

 

If you want some more math variety, I would do MEP (challenging and free), or Singapore (colorful). I'd also look at Challenge Math.

[lgm]

He might enjoy the PC game Pit Droids and any of the Logical Journey of the Zoombinis games.

[courtney.byrum]

If your child is in kindergarten and doing 3rd grade EPGY work, he's pretty significantly accelerated. Why not just keep going with EPGY?

 

If you want some more math variety, I would do MEP (challenging and free), or Singapore (colorful). I'd also look at Challenge Math.

 

Oh don't get me wrong, we're going to continue doing EPGY I just want some other things he can do as well. He went from just starting K lvl to 3rd grade lvl in 2 months but I assume he's going to slow down soon, we'll see.

 

He loves workbooks and worksheets though so I want to have things on hand that he can do. In K he gets next to nothing for math since they are only working on counting (to 20 this trimester, 10 last trimester) so he does all his 'learning' at home.

 

I basically just want options - maybe things I can send to school with him so he has some more appropriate math work he can do there.

[courtney.byrum]

We are CTC fans too! I have a question...DD is working through the Level A book and I have Level B waiting for when A is done. I was looking through B a few weeks ago and thought dd could comfortably complete the first half of Level B now. What about Level B and Level C? Is there much of a content difference between those?

 

The 1st grade book was all stuff he could do but we decided it would be good for him to have an 'easy' book to work from. The 2nd grade one does introduce more but not again it seems to be stuff he can pretty easily do for the most part. It looks more fun to me though (I loved math workbooks as a kid, guess he gets it naturally) than the lvl B one.

[courtney.byrum]

He might enjoy the PC game Pit Droids and any of the Logical Journey of the Zoombinis games.

 

Never heard of them, off to look them up!!

[courtney.byrum]

We haven't found one program that meets the needs of DD the Elder (just turned 8). She did Singapore Math (IP in lieu of workbook, plus CWP) through two-digit division in 4A, then jumped to Life of Fred (Fractions and Decimals & Percents) and decided she didn't want to go back to Singapore. She wasn't getting enough new material. I could have worked around this by following topics sequentially through the years rather than working through just one book at at time, but I didn't want to spend the time coordinating it. So instead spent time... well, now we're using a mish-mash of materials for middle school math, essentially buying time until algebra. Here's some of what we've done, and some of what we have in the pipe:

 

LoF: Fractions and Decimals & Percents

Venn Perplexors A-D

Can You Count in Greek? (highly enjoyable)

Selected MEP units, including codes and ciphers

It's Alive, and It's Alive and Kicking (found a very few errors in solutions)

Logic Countdown, Logic Liftoff, Orbiting with Logic

The Cryptoclub

Becoming a Problem Solving Genius

Challenge Math

Brain Maths (puzzles, from SingaporeMath.com, we have found a few errors in the solutions)

Mathematics 6 (Russian Math, selected sections and problems; this text is a thing of beauty)

CWP 5 and 6 (slowly working through the series)

Alien Math (working with different number bases, looks very cool)

Piece of Pi (looks OK)

LoF Pre-algebra books as they come out (DD loves Fred, the first, Biology is out now)

A Game of Logic (Lewis Carroll)

The Snake and the Fox: An Introduction to Logic

 

I'm up in the air about IMACS middle school math program. I was hoping to use it, but haven't yet set aside enough money to purchase the first few units for evaluation. The downside is homeschoolers cannot purchase answer keys, so I would have to do all the problems myself. It looks fantastic.

 

Far Future (2 or 3 years, quite possibly bits and pieces, and timing depends on science sequence):

LoF, including statistics (primarily as a teaching tool)

Art of Problem Solving

Modern Algebra: A Logical Approach Vol 1 and 2 (if only for proofs and problems)

Geometry (Moise/Downs)

Gelfand, various books

mathematical logic (still looking)

business/finance math (maybe only a short unit or two)

 

Thanks for the info. I'll have to look some of these up to see if he'd like them. We're just starting the homeschooling journey for next year so I've got time I hope.