Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Elementary and middle school math recommendations

As a part of my work for Cognito Mentoring, I compiled a list of recommendations for gifted elementary and middle school school students who are learning math. Some of these recommendations have come up on the Davidson forum before, but some of them may be new to you. Some of the middle school recommendations may be suitable for elementary school students who are above grade level.

In addition to our recommendations, you might be interested by the
Poland McKinley Elementary School PTO Math Enrichment Family Resource Book, which contains a fairly comprehensive list of the resources available.

Elementary school

• Hard Math for Elementary School and the associated workbook, which complement the standard curriculum.
• Arithmetic for Parents: A Book for Grownups about Children's Mathematics by Ron Aharoni. This book is written by a mathematician who taught elementary school for years. It offers a sophisticated perspective on elementary school math. It's suitable for parents to use with their children, and/or for children who are advanced readers.
• Beast Academy, a comic-book style book full of interesting mathematical problems that are accessible to elementary school students. So far only the books for 3rd graders and one of the books for 4th graders have been released, but older or younger students may be able to benefit from these books as well.
• The Mathemagician's Guide to Lightning Calculation and Amazing Math Tricks by Arthur Benjamin and Michael Shermer. This book is good for improving computational fluency.

Middle school

• Prealgebra by Richard Rusczyk, David Patrick, Ravi Boppana and Introduction to Algebra by Richard Rusczyk. These books are part of the Art of Problem Solving series. The books in the series teach elements of mathematical thinking and problem solving, as opposed to rote drill. The series has been reviewed very favorably, for example, on Quora. The prealgebra book is accompanied by a series of free videos, which cover all of the topics in the textbook. Both books are synchronized with the free adaptive online learning system Alcumus.
• Algebra by Israel Gelfand and Alexander Shen. This is a very highly reviewed algebra textbook coauthored by a great mathematician.
• Vision in Elementary Mathematics by W.W. Sawyer teaches readers how to visualize elements of algebra.
• Mathematical Circle Diaries, Year 1: Complete Curriculum for Grades 5 to 7 by Anna Burago contains many problems that teach mathematical reasoning.