Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Is 4th grade too early to start Algebra I?

That's funny. Reading this reminds me of the Life of Fred series, which I suggest for your daughter.

Dadoffive,

I agreed with Shari, epoh, lmp and polarbear as well.

The main deal breaker is algebra is not taught in most of elementary schools which requires transportation to middle school and your DS will miss 2 periods for 1 class of Math in middle school. My DD7 and DD10 are doing Kahn's academy at school during Math class while everyone else in class is doing their respective classwork. We considered using ALEKS or conquerMath too but Kahn's academy is free. When you are armed with all info, the administration will have a hard time denying your request.

Good luck!

If you find yourselves wanting to supplement, The Hippocampus, part of the National Repository of Online Courses, has free online Algebra course presentations in addition to the Khan Academy worked examples. (They also have free online courses in a number of other subjects.)

The way we were able to get credit for the work our ds did in Aleks was through reports and assessments generated in Aleks - there's a report option you can do that will show you the modules mastered and specifically ties them to your individual state curriculum standards for math - which our school district ties their curriculum into. So if a child needed to have accomplished graphing a quadratic equation, for instance, it's easy to see from an Aleks report that yes, they have "mastered" that skill or passed an assessment that tested the skill.

Another thing people can do when looking for online or supplemental math curriculum is to google around on your school district's website - our district has quite a bit of info online. Part of the reason we chose Aleks was that we found it had been one of three online programs that were top contenders when our school district evaluated online math programs for supplementing middle school math. It wasn't ultimately chosen but it received high praise in the report issued, hence we figured that it would be difficult for school staff to argue we'd just picked a program willy-nilly without having a clue what we were doing.

polarbear

Have there been any issues/glitches with Skype?

Transportation may be an issue (there's nothing that "requires" the school to provide transportation -- some schools do, others don't). The other thing I have to talk about with parents when making decisions like this is making sure they understand that this move topples over other "dominoes" down the line -- if the child takes Algebra at such an early age, what do they end up taking four years from now...six years from now...in the later years of high school? What do THOSE logistics look like? If he's only accelerated in math and still needs four years of English and four years of social studies classes and four years of science classes in high school in order to get a diploma (different rules for different states), what is he taking for math in high school (some states require four years of math while AT high school -- high school LEVEL math classes taken in elementary or middle school don't count)? How will all of THAT work? I hate the fact that decisions sometimes have to come down to stuff like that instead of what's truly best for the kid, but just some questions to make sure you get the answers to before making any decisions.

I know that I am 6 years late, but if you do decide to teach algebra to your daughter, NEVER get angry at her if she is unable to understand any aspect of it! She is still a child, after all! Although, she is probably 14, so she'd probably know algebra by this point...

Bumping this thread because it's personally relevant. Fourth grade is definitely not too early if the child shows an aptitude and interest in it. Keep it light and fun, and see where interest flows! We cover off advanced math during a "math play" hangout on weeknight evenings for 20-30 mins, often with some sort of tasty baked treat.

#nerdheaven

Our household loves AOPS for this.

Definitely a lot more quality resources for this now, nearly a decade later! And I agree, there are children who are more than ready for algebra at all kinds of ages, including typical fourth-grade-age and below.

Here's an old post (2010) which shares: