AOPS Prealgebra - Is this pace too slow?

[Asker123]

My son who will be 12 years old in March 2024 started AOPS Prealgebra mid April this year 2023 after completing beast academy . As of today he will complete 6 chapters which took him 7.5 months to complete that included 2 months of summer vacation months when had full day at home for himself. on school days he does some math everyday after school and some over weekend. 

He does it completely himself. He works through the problems and then verify answers with the solution manual. He likes the curriculum and to my satisfaction he is not getting many of the problems wrong. Most of his method and answers are correct and matching with what is provide in the solution manual. 

perhaps part of him being too slow is his excessive writing. I created a thread for that to take some feedback so please have a look at that thread to have an perspective.

https://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/728643-aops-pre-algebra-is-my-son-writing-too-much-text/#comment-9458592

Since the feedback, I have advised him on a few tips to accelerate pace in terms of writing crisp and clear and concise and he has implemented a few steps in that direction but I dont think with his pace,  he will progress much on this curriculum because prealgebra is just start and a lot of books to go through until Calculus.

Prealgebra book has 15 chapters so now I have given him targets. Roughly 2 chapters each month that should complete the book by mid April 2024. Seems like achievable but we will see.

Wanted to take some of your opinion. I want to give him the advantage of doing it all by himself. School does not follow this curriculum and the math they do at school is not even close to what he does in AOPS. I just monitor his progress a bit but do not get involved. He is honest and on random check, I found that he doing the problems and checking with solution manual is very honest behavior. Oh , and he does every single review problem and challenge problem. Did not skip even one. 

I do not want to discourage him because he likes this course. Should I just let him do what he is doing or try to do any corrective measure?

AOPS classes are a no go because I know he will not match their pace anyways. Some of the institutes in Canada follow AOPS but a watered down one ( they dont do review and challenge problems)  so currently I think he is doing good by himself not sure how sustainable it is.

Any feedback or options are welcome.

Thanks in advance....

[kirstenhill]

I think given that he is doing this after school + summer, the pace is great.  I have had three kids go through the AOPS PreAlg book as homeschoolers.  One essentially took a calendar year of actually working on it to finish, and did every problem (not counting a 3 month break we had due to a big move).  He was only about 10.5 (fall of 5th grade) when he started, then finished right before turning 12 (again, part of that time was a total break).   The next kid was a bit older, and had done a little bit of outside work between BA and AOPS.  He started in the fall of 6th grade, but I let him "test out" of the first few chapters by doing only review and challenge.  Then he picked up from there doing all problems and finished by the end of 6th grade.  My third kid doing AOPS is dyslexic and I scribe for him, so it's less of a fair comparison.  He started even younger (half way through 4th grade) and finished half way through 5th grade.  But then we took a break before starting AOPS Intro to Alg, because he just needed more maturity.

I wouldn't worry about projecting ahead and thinking he won't have time to finish the whole series - any amount he does do will definitely put him "ahead" and having done more challenging math compared to peers who only do typical school math.   Even in the Intro to Alg book, we discovered that my oldest DS had already covered about 2/3 of the topics covered by our Alg II classes in public school.  He was able to sit for a "test out" exam for Alg II Honors with only a minimal amount of extra study from a different text book.

By high school, your DS may have more of his own ideas of how he wants to spend his time (either be self-motivated to continue spending time outside of school studying math, or maybe spend that time on a job or extra curricular activities).  High School also opens up other options - special programs, test out opportunities, dual enrollment classes, etc - things that might not be possible at the middle school level. 

Edited December 4, 2023 by kirstenhill

[quietgarden]

Since he is in school, I think this pace is great. My eldest completed AOPS Intro and Intermediate Number Theory courses and their Counting and Probability as AOPS live courses but she did them over the summer and I know at least one of them kept her very busy - maybe close to 20 hours a week. One summer she did two of them - Intro and C&P I think - and it was like a full time job and some weeks maybe more. But she is a kid who lives for that stuff. 

My youngest is in Beast now and it takes him about a year to complete a course. But when we get to Pre-Algebra and Algebra, I will let him take as long as he needs - my goal is a rock solid knowledge of Algebra. As my daughter's AP Calc teacher said, 'if you have a problem in Calculus, you really have an Algebra problem.' My youngest likes math a lot and is good at it - as is anyone who can thrive in a Beast course. But kids are different and not everyone has to live for it. He can just like it.

My middle child never did AoPS at all but had a solid Algebra background and he has an easy A in a notoriously hard (so much that have a night before finals ritual surrounding it) math-y business class at an Ivy League. 

So I think if he's working an hour or so a day, then he is on a completely fine track. To complete the courses in those short time spans, kids are doing a lot more work per week and a lot of AoPS students live for math. For kids that are gifted at math, but don't live for it, AoPS is still valuable but you don't have to expect to be like everyone there. 

Btw, if they still have it, I would highly suggest the Alcumus practice (it was required in the courses my daughter took) but it is super high quality and it used to be free to anyone. I did have my middle child do Alcumus over the summers in the subject he had just completed to keep his math fresh. I don't think he ever maxxed it out though, just did some work every day.

Oh, and might I add that your son doing it totally by himself is HUGE and WONDERFUL. That alone is such a skill - and as a parent of two college students a very important one. That's the kid that has an easy time later. As a matter of fact you might see him start to speed up as that giant skill is honed.

Edited December 5, 2023 by quietgarden

[Clemsondana]

My kid was also young when we started AoPS pre-A.  This kid is good at math but isn't the type to do math for fun.  We spent 1.5 (3 semesters, with summers off) on it.  We did the same with algebra, and then kid worked through other books at a more typical pace (1 semester for classes like number theory, 1 year for geometry).  What I found is that kid became frustrated if we rushed.  So, we did AoPS 3 days/week and then did Life of Fred 1 day and had another day for enrichment classes.  So, not a traditional model, but it was the right plan for us.  You really can't plan the whole thing assuming that you'll move at a constant pace.  We were slow moving through the first 2 and then moved much more quickly.  Pre-A is incredibly tedious, and trying to move more quickly through it is one of my biggest education regrets because it left kid frustrated when there was really no reason for it and turned kid off of math for a while (hence the switch to including Life of Fred).  We also made different decisions around doing all of the challenge problems at different points.  We came to just do a selection of them, because that fit better with our learning goals.  It turns out that, while my kid likes academic competitions, they didn't want to do competition math because they see math as a tool...which is a valid approach.  But, they really enjoyed the math in Number Theory and think the second probability book, which they are finishing next semester, is intriguing, so for us making it possible to explore those other fields is more important than working all challenge problems in other books.  But, that's going to be specific to each kid.  

[Asker123]

Thanks for your feedback so far.

I am encouraging him to continue with his current pace. Yes, I understand Prealgebra is indeed tedious. I saw the book in terms of pages yesterday , the first 6 chapters is almost half the book in terms of number of pages v/s remaining 9 chapters.

 

[regentrude]

Math is not a race. Laying a solid foundation in prealgebra and algebra is the most important thing, much more important than getting through calculus in highschool. Gaps in prealgebra and algebra are extremely difficult to remedy later. I would let him be and give him the satisfaction of working through the book independently, at whatever pace he chooses.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

Chiming in to say my DS (11 in Feb) is moving at a similar pace. We exclusively homeschool, so this is his full-time curriculum. It’s likely it’ll take him 1.5 academic years to complete, so I’d say your son’s pacing as an after-schooler is excellent. 

It’s funny that you mention the writing, as mine has been writing quite a bit as well. His style is less verbal / conversational than your son’s, but for chapters 1-2 he wrote out every single Problem *and* every Exercise. It slowed him down quite a bit but developed good habits in regard to keeping his work organized, working systematically, & showing all steps. I think it’s a valuable process. In Chapter 3 he switched to only writing out Exercises unless he felt a particular Problem might come in handy to complete the Exercises (such as a table of the first x squares).

BTW, Alcumus (mentioned by @quietgarden) does still exist & is still free. We haven’t used it yet, but I plan to have my DS work through the chapters he’s completed this year over the summer to keep things fresh, then probably finish it out next school year after completing the textbook. 

Edited January 22 by Shoes+Ships+SealingWax

[Ausmumof3]

My DD worked through AOPS more slowly 

She has only finished half of intro to algebra and is going into Y10 next year at school 

In some ways I think she just needed more simple practice and a bit less depth but I’ll let you know how she’s going next year if I remember.