Hi all,
My second-grader is pretty good at maths and we've been working through above-grade-level books for a while at a leisurely pace 2-3 evenings a week. He's partway through a 5th grade book right now after taking a break to do kangaroo maths problems for ~3 months.
I looked through the grades 5-8 books and discovered that they don't really present a ton of novel material. They mostly seem to do the same stuff with bigger numbers. For example, long division is introduced in 4th grade and then 5th grade long division just uses bigger numbers. The books seem to repeat a lot of stuff, too. I presume most of you have noticed this (ahem).
So, anyway, he bought an algebra book somewhere and was reading it on his own. I've given him 3 lessons and he seems to get the ideas. I've decided to mostly skip the grades 5-8 books because I think he can learn most of it through algebra.
I really like the type of thinking that algebra requires and teaches, and think it might be a very good approach for him. He makes a lot of careless mistakes, and I'm hoping that the stepwise approach required in algebra might alleviate the problem somewhat (then again...).
We'll hit any missed grades 5-8 topics independently.
Have any of you taken this approach? If so, did it work for you?
I have to go now. My cat is trying to eat the elastic thing hanging from my jacket. Bad cat!
Val
