My son is 3 years older and will begin Alg 1 next year in 7th grade, so it is hard for me to imagine an eight year old near the end of the high school math sequence! He is lucky that you are so well qualified to home-school him in that subject. Will he begin college within the next couple of years?
The Introductory Algebra class is so impressive that we plan to have ds11 do the Counting and Probability courses with AoPs next, assuming his new school schedule allows it. You could probably get through it extremely fast given your son�s ability and your home-schooling flexibility.
Well... I don't think of him as being really
that close to the end of the high school sequence... He's finishing Algebra 1 as we speak, and everything above that is dabbling and not solid courses. Algebra was dabbling at first too, but this summer I finally put my foot down and said he needed to finish the book so we could get on with it. LOL So... he can handle random stuff up to Precalculus-level questions thrown at him, but he doesn't have the vocabulary or the standard formulas memorized or anything, and there are gaping holes in his post-algebra-1 knowledge.
Introductory Statistics is mathematically pretty straightforward (no calculus), and fortunately I find it fascinating (geek that I am... LOL) so it's more of a rabbit-trail off from the standard sequence rather than a neat linear progression. And honestly I prefer it that way -- we've got the time and there are plenty of roses to smell here, so I think we'll take the long way around.
My only real concern is the age-appropriateness of the texts. How they take such an interesting topic and suck all the life out of it... He did catch sight of my Cartoon Guide to Statistics and wanted to start immediately, so maybe there's hope through that! LOL Or maybe I should write my own curriculum... you know... in my vast quantities of spare time...
