JohannaM Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 Anyone else doing Math Kangaroo this week? My DD is really looking forward to it! Johanna Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 My DD is as well. She really hasn't prepared at all this year-I think she's in it mostly for the T-shirt ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black-eyed Suzan Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 My son is, too! This is his first time participating. He's never been nervous about performing well in a competition, but he is for this one. I wonder if it is developmental? I've been assuring him that Math Kangaroo is just for fun and to just do his best, etc. How are your kids preparing? We've just done the practice problems for his level and the next level up and practiced with the answer sheet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 We are doing it for the first time this year. We haven't done much specific prep other than the practice problems on the website. I also have a nasty case of strep so hopefully I will be better before Thursday and no one else gets sick! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MASHomeschooler Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 My daughter is doing it for the third time and my son for the first. We've also done no prep beyond the sample questions and the answer card. My daughter has my son excited to see what toy they get this year. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diviya Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 My two daughters are doing it for the first time this year. They've done sample questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted March 19, 2014 Share Posted March 19, 2014 Both kids did it last year but DS had a meltdown during the test so this year only DD is signed up. Math isn't her strong suit but she says she finds MK fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 DD just went in. This year's t-shirt is light blue ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diviya Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 I'm sitting outside waiting :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 Dd really enjoyed it and is excited to see the answers. She feels like she did well. It was a long drive for us and they started later than planned so it was a longer trip than we anticipated but it was worth it because she came home and enthusiastically shared her solutions and strategies with dh and I. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 DD actually finished all the questions this year and she said that she only guessed on one. So she's feeling a lot better about this year's results than last year's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tress Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 I couldn't find 10 homeschool students (in my whole country) to participate as a group, so my kids can't participate. They are very dissapointed :(. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 It took DD longer this year than last year, but she feels good about it. She was a little disappointed in the frisbee, though-she wanted another stuffed kangaroo ;). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 She was a little disappointed in the frisbee, though-she wanted another stuffed kangaroo ;).Ditto for my DD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 Dd didn't participate last year but she would have preferred a stuffed animal if she had a choice. She had fun playing frisbee with other participants. She finished before time was up and had time to check her answers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MASHomeschooler Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 Mine both enjoyed it and thought they did well. They are happy with the frisbee, but our host school was not; they announced that it would not have been their choice, and that no one was to play with them there. We are currently on Western time, so they were able to take their test booklets home. My daughter carefully circled her answers on her booklet so we were able to go through them, and she missed 2. My son, despite my having suggested they do that and reminded them to work things out on paper (when appropriate) rather than trying to do it all in their head, wrote nothing down - when I asked him about it, he got a big grin and said, "Yeah! That way I can take the test 2 times!" :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 Our host school was a a church/private school where apparently they do most of their work in Polish? It was interesting. Anyway, they had the parents wait outside the building in a courtyard so the frisbees were a hit since the kids were actually outside. Dd brought her book home as well and we think she missed 2. She figured that our herself when she reviewed the test on the way home. She didn't write down answers but remembered them. She also didn't really use her scratch paper because she said the actual math required was easy and didn't require writing anything down. I'm curious about the demographics at other locations. I live in a big city and this was the only location. There were probably around 60 or 70 students pretty evenly mixed between girls and boys. More students in the younger grades and less in the high school age group. Other than one or 2 kids from the host school who appeared to be Polish my daughter appeared to be the only student who wasn't of asian or possibly indian descent. This made for an interesting few minutes when the host teachers who had thick Polish or Russian (not sure which) accents attempted to start calling the students names for a roll call. One of the parents actually raised his hand after the first few names and suggested we just line the kids up by level and let them check their own name off the list. Apparently this location hosted last year but they still seemed a little disorganized and started over an hour late. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 Our demographics were similar. Most of the kids knew each other going in. I think DD was the only homeschooler. Like last year, some of the kids had done the EXPLORE with her last month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MASHomeschooler Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 Our site (largest in our state with 135 kids) was also pretty even boy/girl, and had much smaller numbers in the higher grades. The interesting thing was that grades 2 and 4 had a huge showing - 2 full rooms each, while 1,3, and 5 had 1 each, and then one half-full room for 6-12 combined. My best guess is that the coordinators teach grades 2 and 4 and hyped it up to their students? I'd say participants were about 90% Indian, with the rest about half Asian and half Caucasian. I think that may be similar to the demographics of that school, though, and I think most of the participants are students there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 21, 2014 Share Posted March 21, 2014 I think most of the kids were from public or charter schools in the area. I don't think there were any other homeschoolers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Yeah, I'd say that it was mostly South Asian, a few East Asians, a sibling pair whose dad talked to them in some sort of Slavic language, and DD. I didn't recognize any of the other kids but DD took it at a test center about an hour from our home (all the closer locations were full) so it's possible some of them were HSers.Last year the participants weren't quite so heavily skewed South Asian. Everything in the Bay Area academic-related always has a lot of South Asians participating but the demographics of MK this year did seem even more skewed than typical. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 I was just a bit surprised because I live in a very large and very diverse city. Unless we are attending a specific cultural event (i.e. Greek festival, Chinese New Year festivities, etc) I hardly every notice a what would be considered a majority of any particular demographic. Even at those types of events the crowd is diverse. This was just unusual. It seemed like parents grouped up with 1 or 2 other parents they knew but it didn't seem like the majority of people knew each other. I wonder if like MASHomeschooler said that it was a promotion issue. Maybe there was some sort of community outreach/promotion to get the word out only in a particular area of our city. Also, I commented to DH when he was not enjoying trying to figure out the answers after we got home that there was a big cultural difference. Most of the parents after the competition eagerly sat down with their groups and tackled the problems. I didn't get the impression there was any pressure on the kids to perform (they were all playing frisbee at this time) but that the parents (mostly dads) were excited about trying to figure it out. DH is very bright and has lots of talents but is not that enthusiastic about math. I suspect had he been raised in a home that enjoyed math he would have excelled at these types of competitions. I'm pretty sure I would have if I knew they existed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spring Flower Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 We are new to the whole "gifted" scene and we have only homeschooled so I am not familiar with the usual demographics of the crowd. Our location was either Asian or Indian. We were the only Caucasians in a 70+ group of students. Is this usually the case at most academic competitions? There were only two test locations in our whole state (we're in the midwest) so I expected a little more diverse crowd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grover Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 I wish they'd do this in our country... it sounds ike fun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 We are new to the whole "gifted" scene and we have only homeschooled so I am not familiar with the usual demographics of the crowd. Our location was either Asian or Indian. We were the only Caucasians in a 70+ group of students. Is this usually the case at most academic competitions? There were only two test locations in our whole state (we're in the midwest) so I expected a little more diverse crowd. This is the first time we've every experienced this. We haven't really done any gifted events. We've done trimathlon, several spelling bees and the geography bee. We did not experience the same thing at the other events. When we took the explore test it was a smaller group of 3rd and 4th graders but it was much more diverse. Maybe it is just this particular competition. I didn't mention it before but dd didn't notice the lack of diversity which I find amusing. She has medium brown skin & curlie hair because my husband has dark skin & I am Italian so it's not like she really stood out like I did but I found it amusing she didn't notice since it was so obvious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 I think that one difference may be that MK seems to be largely either schools or private tutors, doing it for their kids first, and then the community as a whole. The regional coordinator here runs a tutoring program, and I got the impression that almost all the kids there were her students. Duke TIPS info, OTOH, comes home from school with kids with high test scores. DD tested through a homeschool administration in 1st and got CTY information along with her test scores, and several of DD's PS friends got a lot of pressure at school to take the EXPLORE this year because of high test scores. DD's former school advertised the % of their kids who took the TIPS tests in 7th grade. Regardless, DD enjoys being able to do it in the group, and I kind of like chatting with other parents who have kids who like math competitions. I had a nice talk with a woman about math instruction in India vs in the USA and was telling her about Singapore Math and AOPS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohannaM Posted March 22, 2014 Author Share Posted March 22, 2014 Also, I commented to DH when he was not enjoying trying to figure out the answers after we got home that there was a big cultural difference. Most of the parents after the competition eagerly sat down with their groups and tackled the problems. I didn't get the impression there was any pressure on the kids to perform (they were all playing frisbee at this time) but that the parents (mostly dads) were excited about trying to figure it out. My DH was having fun trying to figure out the answers too! Our group was mostly Caucasian, but that reflects the demographics of the smaller Midwestern town we live in. I was relieved to see the blue shirts, Last year's pictures showed showed bright yellow! Johanna Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Regardless, DD enjoys being able to do it in the group, and I kind of like chatting with other parents who have kids who like math competitions. I had a nice talk with a woman about math instruction in India vs in the USA and was telling her about Singapore Math and AOPS. I wish I had more of an opportunity to talk to some of the parents. There were some good conversations going on but I had a wiggly fussy baby with me and couldn't really join in. The one lady I talked to for a few minutes had a 4th grader at a magnet school. When she found out I homeschool she asked what testing we've done. I told her we just did explore and she hadn't heard of it. Then I mentioned Duke TIP and she said the school sent her a brochure but she didn't read it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsutsie Posted March 22, 2014 Share Posted March 22, 2014 Ours is tomorrow! DS is putting a lot of pressure on himself this year. Last year he won Gr. 2 in our City, and made Canada's top 10. Poor guy even asked me for some omega oils to make his "brain function better tomorrow." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daijobu Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I am late to this conversation, as usual. I too was glad to see the light blue t shirts, instead of yellow. I miss the little stuffed kangaroos from a few years back. Unfortunately, the students who registered at my site were way younger than my own daughters, so it wasn't very fun for them. I'm thinking about hosting a closed/private site for older students only, or just stopping altogether if my kids are just outgrowing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raptor_dad Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 We are in the upper mid-west and one the sponsoring locations in our area is also a Polish church school. We have never done MK but some or all(?) years the prize for the the seniors with the highest scores and longest participation has been a trip to a Polish math camp. The national site is vague... only saying "college grants and mathematical summer camps in USA and outside USA." but this could explain the ethnic bias among participants. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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