How have you accelerated elementary math?

[Rivka]

If you have a child who is advanced in math, how have you handled acceleration through a curriculum? Do you skip books, skip sections, skip individual items, do more than one lesson a day, revise lessons so they are spread out over less time? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and experiences.

 

My K'er will be six next month. We skipped K math (or, I guess, did it informally when she was younger) and started out with a mix of Miquon Orange/Red and MEP 1. She is just about to finish MEP 1b. This morning during breakfast she remarked that 24 + 24 is 48 and asked me to give her more two-digit addition questions. Apparently she has worked out how to do regrouping, because she had no problem working out 36 + 36 and 28 + 23 mentally.

 

Looking at MEP 2a, I'm guessing that we could go 60 pages in (out of 80) before we'd hit questions that she hasn't already figured out how to solve. I wouldn't want to just skip that far, though, because in my experience MEP puts a lot of depth into what appear to be deceptively easy questions.

 

I'm tempted to go through having her pick one question/section on each page that looks interesting to her, and having me do the same (picking something I think would be valuable to her). MEP typically has 4-5 sections per lesson, so this would be working through at about double speed. Does that sound reasonable, or would you recommend a different strategy?

[EKS]

Generally speaking, I have had my son do more lessons but fewer practice problems. We also do math year round.

[Jen in PA]

Generally speaking, I have had my son do more lessons but fewer practice problems. We also do math year round.

 

This.

[Crimson Wife]

FWIW, I prefer to go "deeper" rather than faster. Singapore's Intensive Practice books are excellent for this.

[Halcyon]

FWIW, I prefer to go "deeper" rather than faster. Singapore's Intensive Practice books are excellent for this.

 

This. We try not to accelerate his primary curriculum, which is Singapore, but rather add in MEP, LOF and other things to deepen his knowledge or provide fun "glimpses ahead" of topics he will cover down the line in Singapore.

[MaMa2005]

Generally speaking, I have had my son do more lessons but fewer practice problems. We also do math year round.

 

Yes, :iagree:. Since we finish Grade 5 Horizons this spring, I will spend the summer reviewing, in depth, Grade 5 before moving on. If anything is still a little shaky, we will continue a review in the Fall and then move on to Grade 6 in the spring.

[ShutterBug]

I prefer to go deeper rather than further ahead as well.

 

For us, I've found the best balance with using two full curriculums to keep a balance between mastery/spiral and conceptual while keeping him working 2 - 3 grade levels ahead and then supplementing with fun extras.

 

I've heard some families say that they require a certain percentage correct...say 50% or 75%...and as soon as that is achieved they move on. That's crazy IMO.

 

As I mentioned, we use two full math curriculums and supplement with things like CWP, Math Perplexors, Math Olympiad questions and games like Krypto. We also do math year round.

 

Ds moves through our Math U See curriculum pretty quickly and could easily knock out each level in a couple of months and whip through them much quicker than he has if I'd allow him to.

[abbeyej]

I guess we did various things over time... When ds was 5, I went to a local home school shop intending to buy Miquon, but they didn't have the books I needed, and the shop owner ended up selling me on Horizons instead. They're in no way similar, lol, but it turned out to be a great fit for us. Ds flew through the first and second grade books in a few months. We just did 2-3 lessons a day. When he got to the third grade books, I added in Singapore (starting with 2b) and we did Singapore and Horizons for a while. Generally he did two lessons a day in Horizons (around the 4th grade book I started crossing out the second half of some sets of problems, when he got the first half completely right) and a few pages in Singapore (the textbook + workbook or CWP or IP).

 

I found, somewhere in there, that by investing 5 minutes a day at the very beginning of the school day in arithmetic drill, he could get through more work faster than if we went a week or two without drill. I think a lot of people consider drill unnecessary for math-oriented kids. I just found that his daily "vitamin" of drill work kept him quick and accurate so that he could spend his energy on *concepts* during the rest of the day.

 

We threw in a number of supplements over the years too. Penrose the Mathematical Cat, Number Devil, Challenge Math (Zaccaro)... Ds did several years of Math Olympiad (and even if you can't do a team, the books of practice problems are great brain teasers for kids working at an upper-elementary math level)...

 

Ds finished Horizons when he was 9. We'd thrown in some Key To workbooks during the last year (he'd had a little trouble with percents, so we'd done those and the algebra ones as well).

 

Thinking back, at 5 and 6, I think we did math for about 30 minutes a day. By age 9 I think he was doing an hour a day most days, but sometimes up to an hour and a half. He started algebra about the time he turned 10 and geometry about the time he turned 11. We've slowed down to about 1 course a year at this point, and I'd say he's still spending about an hour a day on math, occasionally a little more.

 

ETA: I forgot to mention math games and such that we played over the years. Right Start math card games were fun when he was in the early grades. We also love Muggins even now. Cinq-O was fun too -- and just making him keep score whatever we were playing.

[Rivka]

FWIW, I prefer to go "deeper" rather than faster. Singapore's Intensive Practice books are excellent for this.

 

I keep thinking about switching to Singapore. Not because there's anything wrong with MEP, which my daughter and I both like, but because of the Singapore mystique. Do you think it would be possible to do IP and CWP without doing the main curriculum, or are they too closely linked?

[MBM]

At that young of an age, I'd just make sure she's rock solid in the fundamentals. Besides Singapore and MEP, the Kitchen Table Math series sold at the Art of Problem Solving (AoPS) website could be a good addition.

 

Arthur Benjamin and Theoni Pappas have math books for children that go a little deeper and show interesting ways of solving problems, but they're more for middle school.

 

My son participated in MathCounts which is for middle and junior high students. Loads of fun and excitement. Math Olympiads, like Abbey mentioned, might be worth pursuing, too.

 

You will also want to learn more about the AMC math tests which your daughter can start in fifth (I think), but reading about them now can help you map out a plan of action. The first time I heard of these was one month before my son took his first AMC8. As a result, he wasn't able to prepare for it as well as he would have liked, but he did okay anyway.

 

Do a search for math rings to see if you are fortunate enough to have one near you. Some are for young children.

 

Math camps are a wonderful way to develop math interest more fully and deeply. Some are geared toward kids aiming for the USIMO (International Math Olympiad), which Kathy in Richmond's son did, while others offer more of a smorgasbord of math topics. If your child should become interested in competitions, Awesome Math Year-round might be worth looking into.

 

Kathy in Richmond (who posts on these boards) is heading up a new math camp this summer called Epsilon, which is for younger, gifted children. She is just a wealth of information when it comes to guiding children who like math. Maybe she'll post some advice for you, but if not, you might want to read some of her posts.

Edited March 15, 2011 by MBM
adding more information

[catz]

I've heard some families say that they require a certain percentage correct...say 50% or 75%...and as soon as that is achieved they move on. That's crazy IMO.

 

Whoa?! Really!? I must be super mean mom because my kids have to go back and fix wrong problems. We might get a really heavy word problem now and again we do together on a white board. But in general, we don't move on until I think concepts are really solid and every assigned problem is correct and understood. We've been on the same section in NEM 1 for a week (we're about to move on - yay!). And then some other sections take a day. We never do more than one a day though even if it takes 15 minutes. I might just throw out more LA art work that day.

 

We use Singapore and various components. Tried LOF but was not a hit here. We've played in Zaccaro and some other similar books.

[Jenny in Florida]

We never used anything fancy or expensive for math when the kids were elementary aged. Our usual "curriculum" for math was workbooks from the bookstore (or, when they were very young, even the dollar store).

 

What we found was that most of these materials spent a good 25% of the pages at the beginning of the book reviewing the previous grade. So, at the beginning of each academic year, we'd go to the bookstore, sit on the floor and look at the workbook for the next grade and the grade after that. If my kiddo could go to the last few pages of the earlier book and answer a reasonable percentage of the questions, we skip ahead to the next book. Since the beginning of the later book always reviewed the material from the book before, my kids were able to catch up just fine.

 

We never tried year-round schooling. But I always had the kids reviewing or working ahead a little over the summers. So, they didn't lose ground like kids do who take off three months in a row. They were always ready to hit the ground running in the fall.

 

For what it's worth, I wasn't trying to accelerate them, just to keep them from getting bored.

[zaichiki]

Generally speaking, I have had my son do more lessons but fewer practice problems. We also do math year round.

 

:iagree: Yep. (Though we're not VERY advanced in math over here.)

[Spetzi]

I have not used MEP, but I've done many things to accelerate.

 

I have compacted lessons, tested ahead (if you get 100% on the unit test, you probably don't need to complete the unit), skipped a grade, didn't do "pre-algebra" for a year, but spent several months on reviewing elementary topics through problem solving and learning about statistics, completing two full (or nearly complete) math curricula. We've gone broader and explored other math topics and methods.

 

My primary concern is making sure they have full understanding of the topic and can apply it in higher math. I had to adjust my thinking because I was a new homeschooler and kept wanting to do every problem in order. It's not necessary for some students and I may have 'held him back' a bit until I got more confident that he knows the material and he knows what he doesn't know. His self-understanding has been a huge help to me as I assess him.

 

My advice would be to keep trying. Present the material in a variety of ways, present new material to see if dc can figure it out (very gratifying) rather than spoon feeding as many curricula do. Keep trying and keep up the challenge. If you find a skill is shaky, it's easy to go back and reinforce, if necessary. Remember, you work closely every day so you aren't going to realize one day that she doesn't know how to divide. :D

 

Best of luck!

[poetic license]

I keep thinking about switching to Singapore. Not because there's anything wrong with MEP, which my daughter and I both like, but because of the Singapore mystique. Do you think it would be possible to do IP and CWP without doing the main curriculum, or are they too closely linked?

 

I'd really like to hear from others on this, as we are doing MEP & MM but I want to add in the IP and CWP from Singapore later on.

[Rivka]

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I think that until we encounter really new material I will concentrate on the parts of the MEP lessons that go deeper, require more application, or have interesting puzzle-solving elements, and skip over the more mundane drill sections unless she starts to get things wrong.

 

I want to make sure that I'm giving her some opportunity to find things easy and fun and breeze through them, but not enough that she gets accustomed to the idea that math shouldn't require work. She is a perfectionist and we have struggled with reluctance to try things she may not instantly master.

 

I will also consider supplementing with Singapore IP/CWP, although glancing at the samples it doesn't immediately look like these go deeper than MEP. It would be good to get some experience with the bar method, though.

 

Thanks again!

[rootsnwings]

FWIW, I prefer to go "deeper" rather than faster. Singapore's Intensive Practice books are excellent for this.

 

This is what we do too. :) We also supplement with MEP's online interactive worksheets, a semester behind what we're working in Singapore. HTH

[LMD]

Do you think it would be possible to do IP and CWP without doing the main curriculum, or are they too closely linked?

 

I think you could do them without the curriculum. I just started DD on singapore this year, and wasn't sure whether to go straight to 2A or cover 1B - she got 80-90% on the 1B placement test, but some of it was quite laboured - especially the word problems that singapore is renowned for - so I decided we'd work through the 1B IP book instead of the whole 1B workbook before going on to 2A. DD had never seen anything of the singapore curriculum (or really any formal maths above miquon) before this but has had no problem with the IP book at all. We're about half way through it now, and DD is excited about 2A.

 

FWIW - we also supplement with some miquon and MEP. And DS1 is enjoying MEP Reception. I think they're pretty complementary. :)

[aly9712]

I second the "dig deeper" idea. We enjoy the challenging word problems from Singapore Math and the extensive problems too. There are also some online sites - right now we're using beestar.org (the math one is free)

[sewpeaceful]

Tested out, compacted, and work through the summer. sometimes we have to slow down and do more drill to master facts, but we clip along at a good pace.

[StephanieZ]

We. . .

 

1) We pretty much start off with 1st grade level math around K, or age 5, (mastering basics informally and/or with occasional workbooks for fun prior to age 5).

 

2) We use Miquon and Singapore simultaneously until done with Miquon, then shift to just Singapore.

 

3) We do math nearly year round, taking 8-12 weeks off when travelling, but never more than 4 weeks at a time, so there is very little forgotten.

 

4) We just move to the next book when we finish one. I roughly schedule one exercise per day (for each curriculum, so two total each day when doing SM & Miquon both), and this tends to have the kid scheduled to finish a year's worth of math in maybe 6-7 months. With the occasional 10-exercises in 1 day b/c of some easy subject and an enthused child, things often go much faster.

 

5) I never have skipped levels, but I have condensed lessons (doing just evens or odds or whatever) on occasion if something is really basic and repetitive.

 

6) I always play expectations by ear, and adjust for each child. . . generally aiming for 20 min/day of math for ages 6-8ish, 30 min or so by age 9ish, and 40-60 min/day when they are hitting pre-alg.

 

7) The curricula I use do not have lengthy teaching materials. I can 'teach' a day's worth of SM or Miquon in a few minutes at most, often less than 2 minutes/day. . . rarely more than 5. . . so, our curriculum choices have lent themselves to rapid progress. If you get hung up in following a time consuming script, it could take a lot longer. . . but then, I feel very confident teaching math and my kids are natrually math whizes, so this approach might not work for everyone.

 

8) I add enrichment (i.e., Intensive Practice books) as needed. . . Typically I use an IP level a couple time during elementary years. I had my 8 yo do IP 3 recently between finishing PM 3 and beginning PM 4. Although it is supposed to offer extra challenge and depth, it was, for her, actually really easy, but she is just a smarty pants. LOL, I think she benefits from the lessons I've learned with her older siblings, so she has an extra easy time in all subjects. However, even though it was conceptually very easy for her, it did give us a couple months before moving on to the next level, and so offered extra opportunities to reinforce concepts, drill facts, etc before moving along. For my kids, doing CWP & IP every year would just be a time waster, IMHO. They just don't need all that repetition. IME, the CWP & IP problems are comparable in challenge to the harder word problems in the wkbk, but it's not like it's a whole different level of challenge. . . So, if *all* the wkbk stuff is easy for the kid, IP & CWP will likely be fairly easy as well. If the harder wkbk problems are still a challenge, then using CWP &/or IP can give you a chance to change that (make it so they are all mastered).

 

IME, for my particular kids, I have found that doing a level of IP between 3 & 4 and then another level after 6 is ideal. I play this by ear for each child, throwing in an IP level if they seem to need extra practice and/or are having *any* difficulty with the PM materials. . . It buys us some extra time as well, which is handy when the 9 yo is accelerating towards algebra and I'm just not ready to face it. LOL. (Key To Geom and Algebra books are another good slow-em-down-with-constructive-extras resource.)

 

FWIW, all my kids have progressed very quickly and successfully using this approach.

 

HTH

Edited March 17, 2011 by StephanieZ

[Karenciavo]

Ds8 is following the path abbey took with her son. We go fast and deep. Sinapore is our main text, we use IP and CWP with it as well as Horizon. Tomorrow he will finish Singapore 4b and we will move on to life of Fred fractions. We review facts in various ways most days or play math games. We spend at least 1 hour on math, some days more. I like using more than one math program because the variety of teaching styles helps with understanding.

[Mandy in TN]

At that young of an age, I'd just make sure she's rock solid in the fundamentals.

This.:iagree:

 

For what it's worth, I wasn't trying to accelerate them, just to keep them from getting bored.

This. :iagree:As long as a child is solid with fundamentals, there is no reason to squat at a particular grade level. There are much more interesting ways to go broader beyond basic addition/ subtraction, multiplication/ division. If you must slow down for some reason, do it beyond alg1 where there are interesting things to explore. Boredom is an interest killer.

 

3) We do math nearly year round, taking 8-12 weeks off when travelling, but never more than 4 weeks at a time, so there is very little forgotten.

 

4) We just move to the next book when we finish one.

 

5) I never have skipped levels, but I have condensed lessons (doing just evens or odds or whatever) on occasion if something is really basic and repetitive.

 

8) I add enrichment

These. :iagree:

 

HTH-

Mandy

[joannqn]

Initially, I made my son do every problem on every page. We skipped the tests. He completed Saxon 1, MUS Alpha, and MUS Beta this way.

 

For MUS Gamma, he begged to do it over the summer. I didn't have a workbook for him so I wrote all of the problems for one or two worksheets on the white board for him to do. I didn't require the rest of the worksheets.

 

For MUS Delta and Epsilon, I allowed him to test for mastery. We used only the test pages for all but a couple of lessons.

 

For prealgebra, we did most of the pages over the course of about half a year.

 

I've been stretching algebra 1 out to cover most of the year. It has five more lessons than the previous levels. But I'm finding that most of it is easy for him, so I've been allowing him to skip certain questions and/or worksheets.

 

I've also taught him binary (and all of the other bases) for fun and added in math olympiad. He's also taught himself how to use both a Chinese and a Japanese abacuses. I've just started showing him things like Serpinski's Triangle, Tessellations, math mysteries, and we've been playing various games that they use at the math salon we went to.

 

We're moving into Art of Problem Solving next year.