Suggestions for making math wider and deeper for my 8yo ds?

[2squared]

We are heading into another school year, and I am wanting something more for my rising 3rd grade, 8yo ds. He has always been very strong in math, and I think he's finally ready to focus more on academics.

 

I will have him working through RS D this year at a fast pace, but I want enrichment materials that will be fun, challenging, and independent for him. It has to be independent or nearly independent since I am spread quite thin already. If you have game ideas, my 10yo dd may be able to join him. She's not very competitive nor as quick at math as he is, so they don't always mix well.

 

What enrichment would you add for a very active, competitive, math-focused boy who loves puzzles, all things number related, and challenges? FWIW, he ceilinged (is that a word?) out on his math standardized testing last year.

[dbmamaz]

Some things we've enjoyed: Primary Grade Challenge Math - on amazon. Aimed at gifted kids, cartoon characters (including Einstein), each chapter has 4 levels of problems - 1, 2, 3 and Einstein.

 

if you have some sort of hand-held thing to put apps on, we just ran through Dragon Box, which is puzzles based on algebra.

 

You could also try the singapore challenging word problems - we havent done that because my mathy rising 4th grader doesnt much like doing problems - we do most math out loud still, because his writing is very far behind.

 

Finally, you could look at Beast Academy, but they are still being published and its a full, challenging curriculum. He will probably get ahead of their publishing schedule.

 

Oh, my son also likes doing the practice problems on Khan Academy - you have to log him in using a facebook or google account, though. It gives you rewards for completing things, but its gotten to be more of a slog - they keep adding more and more problems trying to make it a full curriculum. but my mathy kid will sometimes just watch math videos there.

[TracyR]

You could try out Khan Academy, they earn points for answering questions right and can 'buy' avatars with them. My oldest likes it.

[Chrysalis Academy]

I second the Beast Academy idea. There are lots of spinoffs, games, challenging problems, etc. Whether you switch to it as his main program or use it to deepen his math learning and add extra challenges, he should be at a good stage for it, I think?

[Dolphin]

Life of Fred! Totally independent. My son loves it.

 

Beast Academy is great, he needs more help with it, it is much more of a 2nd curriculum.

 

Horrible Ray has them, and I think there are some Horrible Maths books on his site. We haven't tried those yet.

[dbmamaz]

Murderous Math books dont have any problems in them (or very, very few). Its a british-humor filled (including some jokes some americans are offended by) explanation of math. But we've only done a few - arithmatricks and 'bits'. Funny and good review/preview, but not necessarily challenging imo

[Chrysalis Academy]

Life of Fred! Totally independent. My son loves it.

 

Beast Academy is great, he needs more help with it, it is much more of a 2nd curriculum.

 

Horrible Ray has them, and I think there are some Horrible Maths books on his site. We haven't tried those yet.

 

:iagree:yes, if he's mastered long division, he could jump into Life Of Fred Fractions and work through it independently. I don't know whether I'd have a kid jump into the upper level elementary books and do them independently - it might be kinda hard to figure out how to connect with the story & style. But Fractions was written before the Elementary series, and it is intended to be done independently, and there is a nice explanation of this at the beginning (for the parent and for the student). It's a good way for a kid to self-teach both fractions and lots of other ~4th-5th grade math concepts.

[boscopup]

Is he willing to puzzle over a hard problem without help? My son is ahead of grade level, but he isn't willing to do really hard stuff without my help (really, moral support), so challenging stuff has to be with me at elbow or at least in the same room. Sometimes all I have to do is read the problem out loud or ask, "What should you do first?" and he'll figure it out, but sometimes he just needs me there to do that kind of thing.

 

He does do LoF Fractions independently - never needs help with that. We did Primary Grades Challenge Math together, as it often used concepts he hadn't been formally taught yet (though we haven't done it recently, so he might be more independent with it now). He does parts of Singapore IP and CWP independently, but needs me present if it's a really hard problem. :)