Jumping in because I'm in the same marketplace - yesterday's parent-teacher meeting resulted in permission, maybe even encouragement, to let DS5 do extra maths at home and keep his teacher in touch with what he's doing, yay!
I had a brief look at the MathCounts website and couldn't immediately see the info that would tell me whether DS is ready for any of that - but what does "middle school" mean, 11-13 or some such? Probably not for us just yet then.
So far we've mostly improvised; as far as bought materials go we've only used Bond Assessment books. They're good for talking about with DS, as (because they're assessment, not teaching) there's lots of variety. Something with more sequence might be good though. (I've also wondered about an online programme - don't think I'd want to be paying for tutoring given that DH and I can do that, but I was interested in the talk about ALEKS recently.)
I've heard a couple of recommendations for BRAINQUEST books, but they're not easily available in the UK, and I'm not quite convinced enough to order them from the US, and not sure which one we'd want first anyway. Anyone used those, and have suggestions? DS is secure with any size addition and subtraction, understands multiplication and division but only does them with small numbers (no long- either yet), is getting into prime factorisation, gets negative numbers and some aspects of fractions, understands symmetry quite well but for reasons I don't understand has a little trouble with rotation, is good at patterns, knows lots about 2D and 3D shapes, knows various simple kinds of charts, etc. Here that puts him roughly at 7-8yo maths: so I want Grade 2 or 3 I suppose, but which?
