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Congrats on your new arrival!

Yay! Hug your wife for me!

I'm going to be trying Painless Algebra by Lynette Long with DS8 this year. You may recall that I liked her geometry book for him. I haven't used this yet, but it looks good and seems like a good place to start. I think it's a simpler-but-not-dumbed-down place to start than the AoPS stuff. A good intro, I think.

I hope!

> Painless Algebra

My DS9 found this book and it got him started on algebra. He loved it and I used it to re-learn stuff so I could teach him.

You may want to get a textbook or something else that will provide a lot of problems (textbooks are cheap on half.com). At a certain point, I found that having ready-made problems (plus answers) was more efficient than making problems up and working out the answers.

Val

Kriston - thanks for the resource. Will be checking out Long's offerings. AoPS might be too tough of a place to start. Thx again!

I completely agree, Val. Long's books don't give much in the way of practice problems. I have seen this as a pro at DS8's stage, but it could be a definite con under different circumstances.

Since I've approached geometry and algebra as a first pass for a younger kid in a spiral-ish curriculum rather than a "he's done this for high school credit," going light on the practice problems is fine. But it certainly wouldn't be appropriate for all kids in all situations.

As you rightly note, though, it is easy enough to supplement with more practice. And I think she does a good job of making stuff clear without oversimplifying.

My DS will be going to a school that will teach him algebra/geometry formally next year. They recommended Algebra: Structure and Method (Brown, author). I found it on half.com for a few dollars for anyone who's interested. It's the basic algebra textbook used in a lot of schools.

I've been happy with it (bought it two or three months ago).

I also made heavy investments in graph paper for DS for graphing. This seems to be one of his favorite algebra-related activities (presumably because it combines art and math). I've had fun writing series' of progressively outlandish equations for him to graph. Some require taping sheets of graph paper together and the results can be wide parabolas or goofy curves.

Val

Thanks for the book tip, Val!

I think DS8 will love graphing, too. DH's brother (both of them engineers) teases DH that he graphs everything. I suspect the apple won't fall far from the tree.

LOL!

Congratulations on your baby girl! How are the big brothers adjusting?

If all you want are word problems you can solve using algebra, then Singapore Challenging Word Problems should be sufficient. Even though they want the student to solve the problem without using and algebra, you can go ahead and solve them using algebra. I think any book from the 4th level up should do.

Talking about math, I got the next level of Zaccaro (for elementary and middle school students) and cannot wait to use it. I waited too long with the previous level and before I knew it most of the material was way too easy for DS6. The middle school level includes equations with 2 variables, cosine, acceleration, slope of the line of tangent, Venn Diagrams, and other really cool things.

Congratulations on your new arrival

A website with math puzzles etc. that my son enjoys is http://nrich.maths.org/public/

The murderous maths website is also also lots of fun according to DS7.

Val: Are you sure it's the Brown author for AlgebraI: Structure and Function? For that book, I usually read from mathy types that it's the Dolciani author you want. She wrote the books initially I think, then in later years Dolciani and Brown are listed together, and then just Brown. The older versions (Dolciani) are the ones recommended most often, so much so that it's usually just called Dolciani. The older versions are said to be more rigorous. Now, some don't use the Dolciani versions until later b/c they are using it w/ much younger kids and it would be too much for even very advanced kids. NOw this is all just my reading, none of it is first hand. I'd love to hear what you think of the later versions. Mathematically Correct did give only 2 algebra I texts the thumbs up and it was Algebra I:Structure and Function and Foersters and it was a later edition of Algebra I: Structure and Function.