Just looking to see if anyone has tried Mathnasium. DS6 is doing EPGY at home and he's working through the Zaccaro book, but we were thinking an outside source for math this summer might be fun. He does not have positive associations with challenging math from Kindergarten, they did not accelerate, so I was thinking that if he did something like this for the summer he might be excited about 1st grade math. He is switching schools so will have more level appropriate math in the fall. Thoughts?

Oh, and we were told by the Psychologist who tested him to avoid Kumon at all costs!

My son loves Mathnasium! We stopped doing it in the spring because he started doing some other extra-curricular stuff and I didn't want to get too overwhelmed but he will start again in the summer.

We've used the Mathnasium and are very happy with them. They tested my son and discussed his placement with me. They were very flexible about how to approach the best way to help him. They worked with my son at his own pace, and they test occasionally to check progress. They DON'T assign homework (unlike Kumon), which was a big plus for us. The guy who runs the place told me that their philosophy is that if they have to give homework, they aren't doing their job properly.

Kumon: we looked at them. VERY inflexible. Kumon is all about drills, timed tests, accuracy, and more drills. Accuracy is obviously important, but IMO, the Kumon approach might not be great for HG+ kids.

I am going to guess that the Mathnasium experience varies greatly from location to location. We tried the one closest to us requesting "enrichment," and did not think the learning justified the high cost. They seemed to be simply assigning grade-level worksheets and not allowing our DC to move quickly though the material. DC enjoyed it, but DC is social (and liked the lollipops they provided)! I don't think it HURT DC, but I can't really say it helped much, either.

With the help of Dreambox for DS and EPGY for DD, we've since adopted a "Momnasium" (yes, I've called it that and my DC think I'm a bit silly ) program at home of afterschooling that has been much more effective. Both DC have made nice progress lately and both are excelling in math.

Momnasium... I love it

That's really interesting.

Around here, they're very specific about their service being focused on what the child needs. They told me that some of their kids do their homework at the Mathnasium, while others follow Mathnasium materials, and still others do what Mom or Dad sends with the kid (in our case, DS does Singapore Math there).

DrummerLiz, my advice would be to quiz the whoever runs your local Mathnasium about their local policies.

Our experience has been the same as Val's. And ours is definitely flexible - If DS said he was interested in learning something - they would teach him it, if he were getting stuck on something at school (explaining you work for example) he could work on that. He had nice tutors - one was a lovely older man who used to teach high school math. He was great and he would say "I like how your son thinks!" They would scribe for him. He liked the logic games too. We have had a good experience and I didn't find it terribly expensive - but b/c we were doing it as enrichment we did more of a pro-rated thing... I did have a coupon that got my son a free eval and waived "registration fee" so that saved me $150 ... But compared to the other tutoring places and such in my area it was quite reasonably priced. I can imagine it could definitely differ from location to location though.

Definitely ask. I spoke to the director of our local center and he told me directly that they are remedial only and do not do enrichment.

That's what I thought Mathnasium was.

No, ours does enrichment. But I did inquire about that (that it would be enrichment and not remediation) specifically when originally contacted the center and when I interviewed the director... I guess our guy is just pretty flexible. Really not sure why it couldn't be enrichment though... Like Val, they tested where my kid was, what he had already mastered and went from there and they move at his pace, i.e., once Ds has got, he's got it... they move on. Ds also gets a say in what he wants to work on, like he wanted to work on fractions the last time he was doing it...