Those of you whose dc have progressed quickly in math, can you plz give details?

[HappyGrace]

I can see I am holding math-adept ds7 back from where he should be in math but don't know how to do it differently.

 

I see on here people that have their 8yo in 5th grade math, etc.-what did your progression look like? (ie-what did they do in what grade, what curriculum, did you skip problems or sections if they understood it, etc)

 

Mainly I'm trying to see how you move forward more quickly so they don't get bored but w/out missing concepts.

 

And how did you make sure they were solid on multiplication facts (or did you?) before moving on?

[HappyGrace]

Thanks, Wendy-very helpful. What about mult facts? (which may not be as big a deal as I am making it-he learned the 0-5, and 10's and 11's in one day on his own using Math Wrap-ups.) But did you make sure they were solid before moving on? Or did they become solid as you moved on?

[Crimson Wife]

I can't speak to the acceleration part because I've deliberately chosen to slow my DD down so that she is only 1 year ahead in math, but in terms of the times tables, I re-arranged the topics in Singapore 3A/B because my DD needed more time to memorize the facts.

[EKS]

My son is 9 and doing Thinkwell Prealgebra. The plan is for him to do half (or more) of Jacobs Algebra next year.

 

He was only a year ahead until the end of 1st grade. Then he started speeding up. At the end of 2nd grade, I deliberately sped things up so that he was going double speed through Singapore by only doing the workbook when he needed it. We worked on math facts the whole time. Just a few months ago we jumped ship halfway through 5B to Thinkwell Prealgebra because Singapore was getting repetitive (my son already knew how to do everything before it came up in the book). Thinkwell is giving him a review of arithmetic and an introduction to algebra. He loves Professor Burger.

 

We continue to work on math facts. I also have been giving him one "hard" arithmetic problem per day to do. I plan to have him do a review of arithmetic with ALEKS next year alongside Jacobs. I will probably intersperse some Art of Problem Solving books with the traditional sequence.

 

As an aside, my older son followed a similar pattern and started algebra in 5th grade. The difference was that I was far less confident about things because I had never taught math before. Now, having taught math through algebra II, I know what is important for success at that level.

 

I would be sure you're using a curriculum that allows for easy compaction. Singapore and MUS are examples of this while Saxon is not. Be sure to review periodically to be sure that things aren't getting lost over time. If they are just add back some practice alongside new material. For example, right now I'm giving my son big, hairy long division problems, just one a day, because he has trouble with doing them accurately all the way through.

 

Also, you might want to look into supplementing with something like Singapore's Intensive Practice or Challenging Word Problems books or Challenge Math.

Edited March 4, 2011 by EKS

[Halcyon]

My son is 8 and is in SM 3B and midway through LOF Fractions. We have also purposefully slowed him down by giving him lots of different sorts of problems and workbooks-I have no problem introducing other concepts through LOF or Zaccarro, but by doing all these "extras" it keeps him pretty much on level with SM. So, in short, he does CWP, IP in SM, and then LOF, some MEP and Zaccarro. He could absolutely do SM 5 work now, but we choose to introduce those concepts through other curricula and keep him on level with SM so as to assure ourselves (mostly me) that he has no gaps.

[HappyGrace]

This is really helping me visualize it-thank you!

 

Feel free to keep 'em coming! Thanks!

[kiwi mum]

My 10 year old is just finishing up Geometry. We pulled him out of school half way through 1st grade and had done some second grade math at home prior to that because he was bored at school. I did a placement test with him and he tested into 3rd grade math at that stage so that is where we started.

 

He is a visual spatial thinker and once he is introduced to a concept he needs very little practice on it, so he ended up testing out of chunks and finishing the 3rd grade (workbook) program by the end of 1st grade.

 

We changed programs for 2nd grade and I put him into level 4, which I assumed was 4th grade but it turned out to be a program that went straight from level 6 to Algebra. Also, it wasn't divided into daily lessons so we just did the next thing. I put a limit of 45 min per day on math or else he would have done it all day.

 

It took him just under two years to work through levels 4-6 plus the first two Life of Fred books. He did not have his times tables solid until he got into LOF and was needing factoring, common multiples etc. Then he could finally see a need to memorise them and it only took two weeks.

 

He started Algebra just before he turned 9 and finished two Algebra programs in less than a year. He started Geometry in September and only has about three chapters to go. I'm still waiting for him to hit that wall that people talk about hitting if you progress too fast.

[Sahamamama]

:bigear:

[abbeyej]

My oldest moved quite quickly. He did Horizons 1-6. Most of that time he did 2 lessons per day, and I would sometimes cross out half the problems within individual sections if I knew they were review and he didn't need that many problems. (Often the deal was that if he missed any in the first half of a section, he would have to go back and complete the crossed-out part.) He also did Singapore, but there are so few problems in Singapore (even if you add in CWP and IP) that that was easy to layer on top of another program.

 

He finished all of Horizons, several of the Key To books (fractions, percents, and algebra, I *think*) in 5th grade (age 9). So we did Algebra I (Algebra: Structure and Method, book 1, Dolciani et al) in 6th grade (age 10), and now he's doing an Honors Geometry class in 7th.

 

Along the way we also threw in various supplements like Number Devil, Zaccaro's Challenge Math, lots of games, and he participated in Math Olympiad for about 3 years.

 

We also did 5 minutes of drill per day for a couple of years. I think that made a tremendous difference for him. Sure, it wasn't "fun" or "challenging" like the conceptual work I gave him at other times of day, but I found that when he was doing 5 minutes of arithmetic drill per day, he could get through more *other* work *faster* than if he didn't have those five minutes. That small investment could shave off about 1/3 of the time it took him to get through all of the rest of that math each day.