Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Best Young Math Curriculum/Enrichment Resources

I'm working informally with my 6-year-old swho acquired the math bug earlier this year and is now doing late 2nd-3rd grade level material. Mostly we just chat about stuff, and he teaches and drills himself. I'd like to start him on some printed worksheets, though, to see how comfortable he would be working in a second-third grade class setting.

The two sources of worksheets I've browsed so far are the Singapore Math books, and materials printed off the Enchanted Learning site. I wondered if other parents have found sources of especially good elementary school curricular or enrichment materials in math.

Many thanks in advance for your thinking!

There are also online programs like EPGY and Aleks.

At my kids' school, 2nd and 3rd grade are mostly about kids learning addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. There are a lot of speed drill worksheets. What kind of school will your son be attending in the fall?

For worksheets, Singapore would be the one I'd recommend. I like the "Intensive Practice" workbook if you're only getting one. The problems are significantly more challenging. Also, remember that it's about 1 semester ahead of where American schools usually are, so 2A is really more like 2nd semester of 2nd grade, not 1st semester.

Some homeschoolers and afterschoolers like Saxon, but it has too much repetition for my taste for a GT kid. Still, it's the other biggie for worksheets.

Aleks and EPGY are online sources, but I think you can print things out, too. They are very well liked by GT families.

You can't beat Aleks and Singapore for the prices! I's say start there. Aleks has a free trial for a month, and Singapore offers free assessment tests.

Good luck, and welcome!

Thanks for these suggestions. I've heard of the EPGY site, but somehow thought it was for older kids.

Our son probably will either go into the public school or I will school him at home. We're in a rural area without too many flavors of (affordable) school.

Without acceleration, I think the public school is impossible, since D reads at 3rd-4th grade level and has taught himself through at least through second grade math in about the last five months. So he won't learn anything in first grade. His behavior is on the young side, though, and we know from talking with them this year that the school administration is very strongly opposed to accelaration.

Thank you again.

We had basically the same set of problems, and homeschooling solved it.

I'm not evangelical about it though, so if you want more info, let me know. I'll only say that I strongly recommend that you don't rule homeschooling out because of assumptions. Most of what most people think they know about homeschooling is wrong, frankly. Homeschooling is almost certainly easier and more "normal" than you think it is. And it can work amazingly well for an HG+ child.

Shutting up now...

Thank you again, Kriston! I think I'll get started with the Singapore series. Partly I want him just to develop the habit of working routinely with paper and pencil. As an autodidact, he strongly prefers his own, invented ways of doing things to the conventional ones. In math, this means he would rather do his math in clay, chalk, cut-out letters, anything but the school way.

I also want to begin documenting his ability level, and the Singapore books seem well-suited to that goal.

Cheers!

Fitzi,

Check out EAI Education http://www.eaieducation.com/math.html for math manipulatives.

I order from them to supply the math lab I am running at the kids' school.

Fitzi, has your son attended school yet or will this be his first year?

Cathy:

Awesome math site, thank you.

D had a pretty bad pre-school experience, and last year we put him in an unconventional Steiner-style kindergarten three days a week. Conventional school will probably put him through a period of culture shock.

We think he is ready attitudinally now, though, and are doing what we can to prepare him during the summer for the structure of school. I'm concerned that the difficulty will be compounded, and his attitude possibly reversed, if he isn't offered anything intellectually while he's there. I've come to the view during the past year that he needs intellectual challenge to feel well. I hope this doesn't sound terribly presumptuous.

Sorry for the long answer!

Dottie:

Thanks for your interest. D spent a little time at the school last winter, so we know something about the make-up. There is once- or twice- a week GT enrichment through pull out for a group of about four children at his grade level. The GT teacher said she'd never worked with anyone like him, though, because of his reading skills and speed of uptake (this was her informal assessment; I have no idea myself where he is on any of the standard scales). So I don't know if this would make an effective peer group - especially since they work together just half an hour or an hour a week.

We are trying to organize a rational advocacy position to take into discussion with the school in the fall. His behavioral weaknesses - as you point out - complicate the case. But I think his behavior will be better if his attention is engaged.

Congratulations on getting a good situation organized for your child. I am just beginning to appreciate how much work is involved in this task.

It's a tough call for us for a couple of reasons, and I'm not at all sure I'm temperamentally suited to teach. We may have no choice, in the end, if the school won't teach him.

Thanks again for your kind comments and suggestions ... keep 'em coming.

No apology necessary, and you don't sound presumptuous to me but you might to the public school folks.

I think advocacy is especially difficult when you are coming into a school and need accommodations right off the bat. I had good results by enrolling my son in K with his age cohort and didn't request a grade-skip until the school had gotten to know him for a few months. He was then placed in first grade after spring break. It sounds like you may not have that luxury if you are concerned about behavioral issues resulting from underchallenge. Do you think starting the year in first grade and learning the ropes of public school for a few months and then switching to 2nd is a viable option?

We're right in the middle of this process with DS5 who is scheduled to start K this fall. It's hard to approach the school without hard data (like test results) and without them observing your child. I wish I had more advice to offer as it sounds like a similar situation... We're just starting this journey.

What did work for us so far was meeting face-to-face with the principal, bringing samples of DS's work, and asking "how can we work together to help DS?" If nothing else, our principal has matched up with a teacher that she thinks would work best with DS. That, coupled with at home work we'll be scheduling (15 min/day) is likely what we'll do next year. Sort of like "homeschool lite" if you will...

Good luck. A lot of us have been through this or are going through this now.

JB

P.S. We don't watch a lot of TV but one of the shows that I discovered through this forum is PBS Cyberchase. DS--a mathy guys--loves it.

One thing you can do if you are planning to request a skip is to get copies of the actual district policies on acceleration. If you ask the principal, "Do you allow gradeskipping?" The answer will probably be, "No." Instead, ask for a written copy of the board policy--it may even be available online--so that you know what requirements you need to fulfill and the timeframes involved. There may be a deadline for making the request and testing may be required. Our district also has a referral sheet that the teacher fills out with questions like, "Does the student complete all work on time?" etc.

You need to know what hoops you and your DS will need to jump through.

One of the nice things about homeschooling GT kids is that the teaching is the easy part!

Childcare and a homeschool group can help you to get enough time alone while your child gets enough social time. I'm a highly social introvert who desperately needs time alone. A babysitter has been a lifesaver for my sanity and the group has given DS7 enough time with kids.

If you're worried about the opposite problem--being an extrovert trapped in the house--well, the homeschool group makes that easy, too, only more for you than for your chid.

No need to respond if you don't want to, since you're not headed this route. Lots of people just have misconceptions, and I like to correct them when I can.

We had some interaction with the principal this year and made a couple of missteps (on both sides, I would say). I am researching district policy, but trying to do so in a way that will not give the appearance of going around her. If it comes to a confrontation, of course, even if we win, we lose, as the atmosphere will be spoiled.

I expect a month or two of in-school experience, plus some hard data and careful argumentation is our best shot. The challenge to us will be to coach our DS through the initial period, while pushing back against complacency from the school's side. Our DS lacks the 'respect for authority' gene (perhaps our fault), but we may be able to teach him at least to fake it on occasion. In any event, his emotional versatility is growing now with some speed, and who knows what two more months will bring?

Thanks again for the interest from all sides. It is a huge relief to be able to get views about such things from adults outside the immediate family.

I second Singapore Math, both the workbooks and the Challenging Word Problems. I also love Zaccaro's Primary Grade Challenging Math. That's what we will use to homeschool DS5 next year (1st grade on the paper, 4th grade math).

There are placement tests for Singapore Math, you may want to look at them first. Kriston is right about the curriculum being ahead by half a year.

Good luck dealing with the school.

I hear you...

Our DS wanted to skip, so we were able to convince him to do all the easy, (pointless for him), Kindergarten work. We told him to "show what you know." We explained that the teachers didn't know him and didn't know that he already knew these things, so he had to show them in order to get more interesting work.

A lot of times, I would change the instructions on his homework to make it more challenging and interesting. For example, the Kindergarteners learned about Abe Lincoln for Presidents' Day. The homework was a dot-to-dot of Abe's hat and the "challenge" work was to draw a log cabin. We extended the challenge work by looking up a picture of Abe's cabin online and reading about how log cabins are built. Then DS drew a log cabin in perspective using the photo as a model.

DS did some extra writing assignments in which he wrote about science topics of his choosing--planets and so forth--and turned those in to his Kindergarten teacher with his other homework.

I asked the K teacher to assess DS' reading level. I also asked the vice principal to write a DYS recommendation for DS, so she "interviewed" DS about money and saw that he could add and subtract double digit numbers in his head and that he could count money and solve multistep word problems.

These kinds of efforts are pretty much the only way the school will "notice" that your child is above grade level. If he just completes the work assigned, he is, by their definition, "on grade level".

...or if he's bored with it and doesn't finish the assigned work (because some kids are like that, like mine!), then they don't think he's even on grade level, let alone beyond it.

We had that problem at our Montessori preschool. They wouldn't let DS7 (then 4yo) move forward throught the language arts curriculum--even though he was reading easy chapter books--because he hadn't completed the phonics work, which was stuff he had been able to do for literally over half his life by then!

Frustrating!

Yeah, Kriston, when DS was 4 he figured out that if he told his teacher that the work was "too hard" she would let him play with legos all day.

Ah! Outsmarting the teacher, I see! :p

It was easy to convince her because that was what she wanted to believe, LOL.

Oddly, it didn't work when he tried it at home..."Mom, I can't clean up the legos, it's TOOO HAAAARD!" Hee, hee

We had a similar experience if it helps. We have three people we're dealing with: the director of special education (GT program), the K-school principal and the elementary principal. Not every meeting went smoothly as in general they do not want to accelerate or do early admissions (since that is technically what we are asking for if we ask to skip K).

We just try to be as constructive as possible and have kept the attitude that "hey, one way or another we'll be working together over the next several." I know that a lot of people have had really negative experiences with PS but our general experience has been that they are professionals and they are not making it personal. That said (a) we just started! and (b) we are fortunate enough to be in a position to get an outside opinion. Our state does mandate identification. So in a few ways we're better off than a lot of people.

Good luck.

JB

Dottie, good memory!

We're seeing someone privately for a SB-V. The school will be doing a WPPSI, and we're "in the queue". Could take as long as as Oct/Nov before that happens.

Basically we really like our psychologist and he's not rushing DS. We did about 1 1/2 hours of the SB-V and have another 1 1/2 hours scheduled this up coming week. However, as the psychologist pointed out (and showed us) DS isn't going to test really, really well on the SB-V but he suspects DS will be in the EG range. Visual testing just doesn't measure his abilities. That's fine, as the dr wants to do some other tests (achievement tests) to see where DS is. The dr has done a lot to dissuade any lingering GT-denial I had and he knows what our objectives are (understanding where DS is on the spectrum, understanding what we need to think about for DS's education, and if DS is in the DYS ballpark, having appropriate documentation). We've come a long way in the last month!

We are starting to lean towards the k-school + G/T pull out + some at home schooling. We started 15 min/day this weekend. Mixed results, but that's mostly because DS decided to be "a pill" this weekend. After misbehaving nearly all of today, 10 minutes before bath time he announces "I want to do home schooling!" Kids. Whaddaya going to do with 'em

JB

LOL I'd call EG on the SB-V, really, really well! And probably really, really, really, really well! Ha Ha Ha.

Hey, has anyone heard of "HeyMath!"? www.heymath.com Looks like fun. And they have a new story math, but I only saw one story. Free trial. Just the antidote to several months of EPGY. DS(still)7 and EPGY Math don't fit. EPGY was "too colorless, too boring, too dry" for him.

It does look like a lot of fun! I will have DS5 have a look at it tomorrow. I wasn't able to figure out what you buy for $99. Is it a full unlimited access to their web page? Is it for a year or less? Or will they send you a CD-ROM with the program?

From what I could tell, I think it's for full access for one year. The Story Math appears new, and so far there is only 1 story. But DS loved it. We're trying the 14 day free trial. And I think it's all web access. The nice thing is that you can access any grade any topic.

Have you thought about which one you would do? There is US version and Singapore version and a few others. I guess the Singapore version would make the most sense to us if we use Singapore Math. I haven't checked the contents yet. Either way I will have DS5 have look at it and see what he thinks. Keep me posted.

LMom, I can't even figure that out on Singapore Math, LOL! There is a US version and a Singapore version and some other version, as I recall, on Singapore Math. I spent forever comparing them and think I ended up with the US version because it covers something sooner than the Singapore version - maybe probability? It didn't even occur to me to check out the Singapore version of HeyMath - but we're trying the US version. I doubt it really matters, as it looks like little lectures and practice, and doesn't appear to be tied to specific lessons so much as specific topics. Also, from what I read the founders were in India with no ties to Singapore Math. I read was that HeyMath! was developed with the intention of fostering creativity in Asian taught math, as the rote side of things was so highly emphasized (and the American system is thought to emphasize the opposite). In any event, check out the multiplication practice on the computer (I found it in Grade 3 math). It's amusing trying to write on the computer with a pencil controlled by the mouse. DS hasn't tried it, but he was amused by how horribly I wrote. Just wait until he tries it!

No. So I'm doing my best to be patience We talked briefly while DS was playing in an adjacent room so we didn't get all of the feedback I would have liked. However, he did say he'd love to tell us where he thinks he'll be, but he's just not sure yet. He said that "at the low end I think he'll be exceptional." So we're thinking that is what he means... EG range. We'll see. Even if the SB-V doesn't measure him well, we're getting very good feedback.

JB

This sounds like the right approach, and it sounds like you're making good progress, too. What does it mean when you say that the state mandates identification, by the way?

Incidentally, do you have any experience with the Center for the Gifted in Philly?

Thanks!

We're making reasonable progress I think.

In PA, a parent can (once a year) request that your child be evaluated for giftedness. If they are identified as gifted, the SD must work with you to create a gifted individual education program (GIEP). What I don't know about (yet) is how this works out in practice. PA is a weird state in a couple of respects... we have a system in place for identification but we don't necessarily have it funded. And I think results are highly dependent on which SD you're in.

JB

Exactly. I took it with a grain of salt.

JB

If anyone is still following this discussion, I wanted to toss out another math-resource related question. Are there any good books that link math ideas to nature, as in pine-cone and flower petal formation, crystal formation, breeding patterns, and so on?

Thank you.

G is for Googol is a great book that does talk about ideas in nature, although it's not necessarily geared towards that. Fibonacci numbers, and other topics (one per letter).

Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar is a great kids story that shows factorials.

JB

I just picked up "The Number Devil." The first few pages hooked me but I haven't read further than that yet nor with the kids yet.

A book which covers petals and pine cones and pine apples is "Calculus by and for young people." it gets mixed reviews.

Thanks, JB, we've been reading G is for Googol, as a matter of fact. I like the Anno books, actually, but DS has not taken to them. At least not yet.

Thank you, Dazed.