Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion New here and looking for enrichment advice

Hi, I have been reading this forum for years because I have always had a feeling my oldest (and maybe youngest) is at least bright. She's in first grade now and we had our parent-teacher conference. We found out that the teacher has been giving her differentiated work and we're happy with the writing/reading portion but not so much math. She said she is concerned our daughter is bored with math bc it's way too easy for her and has thus been sending her home with more difficult homework. Which is fine but it means she's not getting what she needs in the classroom. Her mind is not being stretched in class. What is the best way to challenge and enrich her afterschool? Private tutor? Kumon? Something else? Also we never tested our daughter bc our district (in SF Bay Area) does not provide funding for gifted programs and private is $40K/year/child which is out of the question for us, so we did not see any reason to do it. But should we test her such that we can use the piece of paper to advocate on her behalf with school administrators and teachers? Do teachers find the scores useful at all or would I get an eye roll?

Thank you in advance.

Hi and welcome! I also have a first grade daughter who's not being challenged at all by school math. Our approach to this is still evolving, but here are some things we are doing at home. Our goal is more for her maintain her feeling that math is fun and interesting, and to have a family culture in which we view math as something fun to play with and explore (Before kids, DH and I used to solve probability problems for fun as a way to relax in the evening...so this comes natural to us!).

--Math games/problems at the dinner table or as a bedtime game (everyone gets to take turns asking another person mental arithmetic questions).
--Bedtime Math books - these have nice story problems you can do at several levels of difficulty.
--Board games - we used to do Sum Swamp, but that's now too easy. I'm ordering Prime Climb for a holiday gift and can let you know how that is.
--This is more loosely related to math, but we do lots of puzzles and spatial logic games, like Tangrams, Connect 4, Rush Hour, etc.

Both kids (DD6 and DS4) love all of the above and demand these activities daily. In addition, I've signed them up for Dreambox. It's not my daughter's favorite activity, but I do require her to use it 2-3 times a week, as it's an adaptive program and is thus able to give her some on-level, more challenging math practice. It also covers a broader range of topics than what we can do through games/play. She's OK with using it to earn some extra video time. I like it because I think it's a good program for building "deeper" math thinking skills (as opposed to math fact drill and kill).

Take a look at Beast Academy. We haven't used it, but it's the Grade 2-5 version of the Art of Problem Solving website, which has been fabulous for our highly gifted math daughter.

https://beastacademy.com/

My son, who is gifted but not at the DYS level, adores the Beast Academy books. They are scheduled to roll out an interactive web site in the spring.

My kids enjoy Beast Academy and the Life of Fred books.

Or for something online, both kids generally enjoy Dreambox.

I would recommend Beast Academy and also IXL.

Thank you all for your suggestions!!! Our strategy too is evolving We ended up signing her up for Mathnasium which she really likes and she is getting more instruction (the common core way) at her level. I wrote before I was happy with the differentiated reading/writing instruction she gets at school but not any more lol. We had another parent teacher conference only to hear that the district limits the reading level for each grade and the teacher is not allowed to teach beyond that level. So she�s been at reading level �L� since Jan and will be there for the remainder of the year. She�s way past L. Ugh. So now I have to figure out what to do if anything at all. She has her books at home and we go to the library every weekend so maybe that�s enough. I don�t know. Anyway sorry this ended up as a rant but man just when I feel like I had everything figured out...