Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments math clubs/math after school programs

Jumping off the thread above about a grade skip for 1st grader... someone mentioned math clubs. I don't want to hijack, so let me ask here...

Can I ask about experiences with math clubs/after school math programs?

Right now DS is in K, working 2 years ahead in math at home. I've been his math teacher for a long time and it seems to be working out okay. We enjoy working on math together. However, I feel like at some point he would enjoy something... more? different?

We're considering having him join an after school math program (I guess it's a math club?) next year, where he would do 3rd grade math once a week for 1.5 hours/week as a 1st grader. They use Beast Academy.

Should I bother doing this or is 1st grade still to young? It's pretty easy for me to just work through the Beast Academy books at home, which allows me to back off when he needs a break and speed ahead for things he already knows.

I wonder if this is just a way for me to feel like I'm doing something to deal with the lack of appropriate leveled math he gets at school?

After schooling already feels a little hard to schedule. He does other activities and sometimes I feel like he doesn't have enough down time.

So I guess the question is, what are the benefits of a math club at the 3rd grade level & his age vs say working at home with a parent?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

For my son, the math club is only once per month plus they do a few tournaments in which he started to participate. He is quite advanced and I am no longer able to add much value or talk to him about the math he is working on and that is what he likes so much about the math club - just being around others that like math.

We let our son say whether he wants to go as it is on Saturday's but he always is very excited to go.

Also, the math club has a few college math professors that do the instruction so that is a big advantage for him.

Best of luck!

My five year old (in K, with subject acceleration) attends a weekly math circle for children in Grade 2 and above. He's the youngest in the room, which is a factor from a maturity perspective and for anything involving fine motor skills (e.g. folding, precise drawing). But he loves the content and the off-curricular math. They have covered topics including hexaflexagons, transformations of plane shapes (e.g. stretching in one or both directions), Fibonacci series mod 2,3,4,... etc. For our math circle fluency in basic arithmetic has been sufficient for most exercises.

The 2nd - 3rd grade boys in our math circle are typically fairly wild and disruptive, so you might want to consider social factors. (My five year old wants to copy them) My observation has been that the girls and older boys set a better example of appropriate behavior. But even with the bigger boys' roughhousing I think it's good for my son to be around other children who enjoy math and who are quick to figure things out.

Thanks for the Epsilon camp recommendation! I think it's a bit too advanced for my son, though, who doesn't test quite that high.

But maybe there is something similar but not as advanced? We live near many universities, so I have been keeping an eye out. He's too young for the camps this summer, but possibly next year.

I think the after school math program we're looking at will really benefit DS when he's late elementary, when the classes are taught by math professors and PhDs. The lower levels will be taught by someone like me, basically. But there may be other benefits like more structure, peers, etc. I'm not sure.

We can handle the math just fine if we connect with the right curriculum/resources. The challenge is usually when he wants to explore an area outside of the curriculum (recently geometry and negative numbers) and we aren't sure the correct way to teach the topics. My husband and I are also math people.

We went to an info session for the after school math program and DS sat and read the Beast Academy books during it, for an hour. He asked me to buy them afterward but I hate to let him pour through the books now and then have the class be completely boring for him later. Plus he still needs to work on adding/subtracting fluency and place value before he moves on to 3rd grade math. He really liked the jokes in the book.

It is really hard to know when to let him run ahead with a topic vs forcing him to follow a typical curriculum path. He basically taught himself times tables when we told him he had to wait on learning multiplication. So obviously he was ready for it... but yeah, I don't know! That kind of thing makes me think he'd benefit from the flexibility of doing math with us for another year. (Well, assuming we would actually have the confidence to BE more flexible.)

Depending on your location, there are several Math Circles all around the country. Our local ones focus on fun math and concepts that provoke mathematical thinking and problem solving. They are not academic oriented but provide a lot of fodder for the young mathematician to think upon. Each one has its own agenda and run in a different way.
www.mathcircles.org

Too late for this year, but try Math Kangaroo. It is a pretty fun based math test with interesting math questions.

A couple of the math challenges we like include Noetic math and Continental Math League. They both have problems you can get to practice.

I am also a math person who was unsure what tools to give a child determined to drive forward in math, and concerned about their moving forward without sufficiently strong foundations. We found this book Help Your Kids With Math which has been at just the right level and depth of coverage for my child to explore on their own.

There is a lot outside the traditional curriculum that can be explored and enjoyed. Books we enjoy that are more "off-curriculum" include:

• Mathematical Ideas - we have a very old edition, no need to buy the newest very expensive (textbook) edition
• How to be a Math Genius - good book despite the title
• Go Figure
• See Inside Math - not sure if that link will work but you may be able to buy it here
• Hard Math For Elementary School
• Primary Grade Challenge Math
• Amazing Visual Math
• Books from Moebius Noodles

You could also look into math-oriented games such as Set, Spot It, Tenzi, etc.

As someone who loved math as a child I would encourage you not to force your child to slow down, but rather to broaden their view and explore topics beyond the usual curriculum. If it's helpful, my approach has been to provide fuel for my child's passion but not to actively push the accelerator. Typically I will get a new book and just leave it somewhere - it's usually not long before it is discovered and devoured. If your son meaningfully outpaces his classmates and sustains his pace over time perhaps you could explore options for in-school math enrichment and acceleration?

Yes, some great ideas here. And really we have a lot of things on the bookshelf already we'd love to explore more. So I don't know what problem I'm trying to solve! Maybe I'm just excited there's actually something available at his level?

I'm really starting to think we have something we're doing that works and he is enjoying it and I'm enjoying it so... maybe don't mess with it?

On the going ahead and worrying about gaps -- thanks trio. Reassuring to hear from someone else with that concern.

Acceleration will happen eventually, but the process is really stacked against the kids until 2nd grade. We're trying, but... may just have to wait.

Have been toying with the idea of Math Circles for a while. I love the idea.

In the end, it depends entirely on what the specific child would enjoy more. A math club offers access to other kids who love math, and potentially to experts who can share some of the beauty and joy in off-mainstream math concepts. If he's feeling a bit on the odd side at school, a club may be a great place to reassure him that his interests are OK and there are other kids "like him". On the other hand, if school is still a comfortable fit socially, he may not feel that kind of need now. Would he enjoy more scheduled, out-there time with other kids? Or more unscheduled free time at home?

DS (now 11) loves doing AoPS at home with me, but detests the idea of anything that feels like more school. At home, in contrast, he still sees it as a great chance for one-on-one mommy time, not homework. We can also binge and reduce depending on time available, homework, friends, and distraction by particle physics. And I can focus on what's important to us - concepts and problem solving - adapting to his needs by doing the writing myself on a whiteboard (he has writing issues), and skipping final computations if they are straightforward but time-consuming. I have eventually come to understand (and slowly accept) that I could never sit him down on his own with the book or an on-line course and expect him to do anything with it: what he values is our personal interaction. He's the antithesis of an independent learner - math by Socratic dialogue is more his style.

From my own experience at least, I can't see ever telling a kid there's something they aren't allowed to try to learn yet. If they're not ready to apply it, oh well, they've learned a cool concept and they'll grow into its use. You might find the AoPS pre-Algebra book (and/ or videos) a good reference for teaching miscellaneous concepts as they come up (like negative numbers or geometry) - it's basically an intro to everything (and covers all the prerequisites too, if you need them).