I was abt to find out more abt the AoPs textbooks. Wondering if they would be good for self reading. It is not easy to get Higher Level Math/ Science books which are written in a more interesting (ie. not boring) way.
Yes, textbooks so often seem to be written on the assumption that the reader finds the material hard and boring! I think the AoPS books that I've seen are really good. The reader does have to be up for an approach to the material that is based on working on problems first and as the main way of learning. Sometimes even very mathematical kids find that rather threatening, and find more conventional spoon-feeding style books/courses (where it basically just tells you stuff and then tests that you've understood it, maybe with the odd "challenge" question thrown in towards the end of each topic) more congenial; however, to do anything with maths it's essential to get over that fear, and the sooner the better.
Ah: do you know about AoPS's Alcumus on-line courses?
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Alcumus/Introduction.phpI think DS is motivated by how structured the CTY Math courses are, but they are not cheap. At this point of time, I am also thinking if it makes sense to consider a more rounded course (ie. diploma courses), since the international schools in general do not recognise the credit of the individual courses.
Mmm; I don't know exactly what your situation is, but since you were thinking about leaving maths for a bit until your DS asked about CTY presumably finding a credit-bearing course isn't urgent, anyway; maybe experimenting a bit over the next few months would be a good idea before you commit to the next big thing? E.g. tell your DS that it's the holidays so he does recreational maths, and get him some Martin Gardner books or something?
Where I'm coming from: DH and I both feel we didn't get challenged enough in maths at school, and determined that our mathy DS should be. Result, he's going exceedingly fast through the usual school material. We're trying to move the emphasis now to lots and lots of different kinds of problem-solving - not to slow him down, necessarily, but just because problem-solving is so important. I think there are two reasons why it's vital: first simply that solving problems is really what maths is all about, and second that we want him to be comfortable with facing problems he has no idea how to tackle. The second is really the reason for putting emphasis on this now, because we reckon that the more experience someone has with being "good at maths" and expecting to be able to do everything, the harder it is to make the attitude shift into it being perfectly OK not to be able to do something. I liked Richard Rusczyk's talk on this (although it's a pity the video is so bad technically): did you see it?
http://mathprize.atfoundation.org/archive/2009/rusczykOf course YM(and YDS)MV!
