Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Math Curriculum Suggestions?

This year DD9 has been doing a mix of Dreambox, Life of Fred, and doing Abeka 5th grade speed drills, quizzes and tests (just to have a measuring rod on the basics). Last year, when she was in 3rd grade, I did Abeka 5th grade without the testing and skipped a lot of the repetition. She hated math. This year Dreambox has been her main day-to-day math. She loves it. She is a very audiovisual child, though I try to limit screen time and is very active otherwise. She did not like other video math curriculum either because they were boring. The problem is that it looks like she will have gone all the way through dreambox by the end of this school year or very close to it and through the first 13 life of Fred books (through Mindshaft). The question is, where do I go from there? I am afraid a standard curriculum will be boring to her and she will hate math again. I also need something that she can do mostly on her own.

It's frightening if no one on this forum has advice for me.

We don't homeschool, but it seems like all of the homeschool families rave about Beast Academy or AOPS, depending on the level of the kid.

I was going to say that. AOPS PA is sixth grade gifted kids but a lot go from something like Singapore maths 5.
If you go to their website and sign up for a free alcamus account she can get an idea. There are also a lot of videos free on the site. If she likes it you can just use their text or do online classes. Once you get past the PRe Algebra though the courses are very fast paced and heavy workload (whole year compressed into 4 months). Jousting Armadillos is also popular as an in between step.

Beast Academy is only out from 3a to 4(d I think) but it is generally considered more challenging than other programmes.

My older daughter actually does AoPS Algebra and brushed through the pre-Algebra. I don't think my dd9 will like it. Beast Academy seems it would be a repeat. Something like it but more advanced is what I am hoping to find

I haven't heard of Jousting Armadillos. I will have to look into that.

I am thinking of continuing with Life of Fred, but just the books doesn't seem like enough practice. She gets concepts very easily but she does need practice.

John Hopkins CTY uses Thinkwell and you can go straight to Thinkwell

http://www.thinkwell.com/

and a lot cheaper. If she gets concept, all she needs to do is some exercises and move on. She may finish > 2 grades level in a year.

If she wants just practice exercises, Mathopolis is free and fun.

http://www.mathopolis.com/questions/course.php
http://www.mathopolis.com/

If you go to this Holt textbook link
http://go.hrw.com/gopages/ma/msm3_07.html and click on homework help, you can see the same videos that appear to be in that Thinkwell site (and it's free), as well as practice problems.

These are the videos that DD is supposed to watch for school, but I think they are fairly idiotic. You can take a look, though.

Another vote for AoPS and Beast Academy. Anything will be better than A Beka (they're against set theory, right?)

Why does she need to be able to do it mainly on her own? I think it's reasonable for many nine year olds to need help to work through new concepts, and I think that homeschooling offers a wonderful opportuniy to do that with her in a way she'd never get in a class. A really good live tutorial to introduce each new concept or just enthuse together over cool stuff (the infinite hotel!) together is very useful, especially if she's not enjoying it any more.

There are so many cool, fun, interesting math videos once you're past basic operations!

Yes, that's my problem. I know about a lot of curricula, but she so much fell in love with learning through games on Dreambox that I think now everything else will be boring again. I will look at some of your suggestions.

I wonder if anyone has tried the Standard Deviants DVDs.

Videos are fine if they are not just simply somebody walking through a problem, but are actually entertaining. It's easy to find that for younger grades but not pre-Algebra. I may just stick with Life of Fred and add practice problems and some game time. Some of this stems from being a very young-minded active 9yr old who is not really into school but also ready for pre-algebra.

Tallulah, I don't know about the set theory part but I can't stand Abeka math. I just had access to the books and used them but in my own way last year and use the tests this year. My work schedule has changed so that I can't directly work with her everyday like I did before.