I recently bought an 8th grade Spectrum Math book since my nine (almost ten) year old son might try to take the Explore test next year and I was curious about what 8th grade math looks like. I also noticed that it didn't seem very different from the lower level math books, so I now use problems from the 8th grade book when making up a math worksheet for him to do. He also uses Aleks middle school math online but he doesn't do it every day because he likes to do a variety of things. He likes doing multi-step word problems from a book called Calculation Capers for grades 5-8 and he did one on taxes the day I did my taxes. Some days we work on mental math which I think is good for a kid with handwriting issues. We have done math with decimals for years. He learned how to figure out 1 percent of a number by moving the decimal point years ago when we got a credit card that gives us a 1% rebate every time we use it that goes to him. It was easy for him to build on that knowledge. We also have a pre-algebra workbook that he sometimes uses.
He likes doing a variety of math problems. He absolutely hates a worksheet full of the same type of problems. I like it that he does this because I don't have to worry that he needs to review anything.
We just started reading a book called Painless Algebra by Lynette Long, Ph.D. but I think we will probably wait before really going more in depth with algebra because my son is more of a verbally gifted kid. He will probably learn all of the math vocabulary and how to spell the words correctly before he really gets into doing challenging algebra problems. I actually got the book for me because I was afraid that I wouldn't remember how to do algebra. He seems to like the book so far. He likes telling his sister that he is learning algebra.
