Math extension for summer before 5th grade (not my kid)

[Tanaqui]

So I watch two kids in the hour gap between daycare and mom's commute.

 

This year my own 11 year old is doing school in the summer. Due to circumstances quite beyond her control, we're a little behind from where I want to be before she starts 7th grade.

 

Meanwhile, I feel bad about the 9 year old I watch being stuck in daycare with his preschool-aged brother all day long, and I thought I'd pick them both up early, do some school stuff with the older kids while the younger one goes to a free drop-in preschool play program in a local park, and then do something fun (but educational!) in the afternoon. Museums, tours, picking edible plants with Bill the Wildman, whatever. And one day a week we'd do it with a third kid in tow, my kid's BFF who is in remedial summer school the other four days. (Darn it, I knew I should've sat on that kid and made her study when she started staying over at our house every weekend. I just didn't have the energy.)

 

I don't really want to spend money on anything that the rising 5th grader does independently. I'm not paid that much for watching the two of them. I could just start him on the 5th grade math I already have, but he already has trouble being bored in class, so I don't want him to be too far ahead when he goes back to school. However, neither I nor his mom want him to lose any of the remarkable progress he made last year. Reading is easy, I can just have him read. Science and social studies are easy, I can teach the two kids together. Math... not so easy. And math is his best subject, so I definitely don't want to have him do nothing but plain review.

 

So I'm not sure what it is I want here. I want something that will stretch him, but that he won't be learning in 5th grade math anyway, and that doesn't cost much money. What am I looking for? Even if you just give me a math sub-topic to google, that's more than I have right now.

 

(It is entirely possible I'm being way too overambitious. You don't need to tell me that. I know.)

[Farrar]

Could he do something on a computer program, like Dragonbox?

 

Maybe something where he covers a fun topic? Maybe he could have an ongoing math project? Like to change the scale of a picture? Or to make his own tessellation (there are some good instructional videos for that)?

 

Maybe he could do a math read, like The Number Devil? Or, you know, if he's a good reader, he could do worse things than to sit with a pile of Murderous Maths books and read them for a spell all summer. And many of them have "assignments" to try out where you can try to solve the problems in them.

 

I can think of other things, but all of them cost something. I mean, Dragonbox or buying some books does too, but it's pretty little.

Edited July 4, 2017 by Farrar

[Tanaqui]

Could he do something on a computer program, like Dragonbox?

 

Can't be trusted to stay focused on a computer unless I'm right on top of him... and honestly, during the summer, the computer time at the library is zilch, so that's a double no.

 

Maybe something where he covers a fun topic? Maybe he could have an ongoing math project? Like to change the scale of a picture? Or to make his own tessellation (there are some good instructional videos for that)?

 

That's not half-bad. A video would hold his attention, and then we could go elsewhere.

 

Maybe he could do a math read, like The Number Devil? Or, you know, if he's a good reader, he could do worse things than to sit with a pile of Murderous Maths books and read them for a spell all summer. And many of them have "assignments" to try out where you can try to solve the problems in them.

 

He can read quite competently, but the way he carries on...! That's why I'm looking to use math, of all things, as his little reward for suffering through reading for a whole half an hour, every single day. (I'm so mean.) But I can try him on Murderous Maths, we already have the books and even if we didn't, that's what the library is for.

 

I can think of other things, but all of them cost something. I mean, Dragonbox or buying some books does too, but it's pretty little.

 

Yeah, I might be able to cajole some money out of Mom for this, she cares a lot about his education... but if she had more money, she'd've put him in day camp with kids his age instead of daycare. (Actually, there's lots of low-cost day camps in NYC, and free ones, but they book up fast.)

 

Anything on the computer is right out, anyway. She's not going to pay for that, and neither will I if it doesn't carry over to my own kiddo.

[debi21]

Putting aside computer programs and apps, some different kinds of options would be something like math circle type investigative problems (i.e. fun topics like Farrar mentions but you can get books for ideas like the one on the Berkley Math Circle), brain teasers (like Martin Gardner or similar), competition math questions (you could use MOEMS, MathCounts, Math Kangaroo, etc, and probably get some free sample problems), challenging workbooks like Singapore's CWP or books from Zaccaro, Borac, Ellison, or an unusual curriculum like Beast Academy or MEP maybe.

 

There are also cool ideas out there on lots of math teachers' websites, but that always takes a lot of searching for me, and then I lose them, so I don't know if the time expenditure is worth not buying a book.