Looking for any sites or book series folks have found useful. Ideally, these would be printable since they have to show their work on tests and are quite weak at this, especially with so much of their work exclusively on Chromebooks.
Looking for any sites or book series folks have found useful. Ideally, these would be printable since they have to show their work on tests and are quite weak at this, especially with so much of their work exclusively on Chromebooks.
31 comments
I recommend getting some math olympiad books; at that level they're just like puzzles so should be fun.
https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/Olympiad_book...
Go for general problem books (non-topic-specific), and start with the easiest problems that they find fun.
I remember the following two books were interesting (though might be somewhat harder). You might find them on the internet archive or pdf's online.
Challenging Mathematical Problems With Elementary Solutions (Volume I, Combinatorial Analysis and Probability Theory) - A. M. Yaglom, I. M. Yaglom.
Challenging Mathematical Problems With Elementary Solutions (Volume II, Problem From Various Branches of Mathematics) - A. M. Yaglom, I. M. Yaglom.
Additionally, look into various olympiads:
American AMC 8 and AMC 10 from various years should be easiest:
https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AMC_Problems_...
And when they feel adventurous, take a look at contests. Some countries (e.g. Romania, Russia) have contests for lower grades, though they are still quite difficult.
https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c3754998_aops_year...
Another example is card games, like Hearthstone or Pokémon TCG. For younger kids you can focus on the more basic "how much damage do you need to kill this?" or "given these coin flips, how much damage can you expect on average?", while for the older kids you can present bigger challenges like "how likely are you to start with this card in hand?" or "how likely are you to find it in the first 10 turns?", "how likely is it that this crucial card to your gameplan is going to be hidden in the prize card list?" etc. But perhaps the adult here needs to be good in card games in order to be able to grasp the math behind the game and properly teach kids.
Anyway, math is often hidden behind interesting things, which is way better than boring plain exercises.
https://www.haesemathematics.com/international-baccalaureate...
They maintain their own curriculum, often somewhat in sync with school program, but ahead of it. They also help kids participate in various math competitions, including Math Kangaroo, AMC 8/10, etc.
Just make sure to carefully evaluate the program in advance, talk to the teachers and the parents. They are typically NOT cheap, but if you want your kids to get good at "maths" (R) it'll be worth it.
https://projecteuler.net/
Alternatively, you could get a homeschool math textbook. They're written differently because the assumption is that the kid is going to have to teach themselves, and as such they are significantly more thorough and easy to understand. I highly recommend them. Don't get the kind that are "workbooks", those are usually trash. Find a good textbook that the kid can write in their own notebook for and sell after they're done with it. They'll learn how Ebay works, and algebra!
- MOEMS contests and practices were great for problem solving. You can buy books of previous tests, and try them. Honestly, these are fun math puzzles to solve as an adult, too. This definitely helps them learn important strategies like organizing your work, bootstrapping from simpler problems, looking for patterns, etc.
- Khan academy is fun and gamified. It also helps with computer literacy a bit. The most useful feature for me is that it can quickly identify holes in their understanding.
- Sometimes we watch Numberphile or Stand-up Maths on Youtube if the content is interesting and age-appropriate. This is mostly to cultivate curiosity.
I agree with other posters that ideally there is a "math circle" to work on these items together. Although, sometimes a "family math circle" works, too...
Hope that helps!
The biggest issue for me was that it is concept based rather than curriculum based, so it wasn't perfect for trying to teach them on a regular basis, but it was helpful if we encountered a topic they didn't understand.
If your kids were really gifted or really inclined to learn it, you wouldn't need to research it yourself.
Around that age 10-12 they generally can use the internet and already have their own interests, and are smart enough to Google it and build stuff by themselves.
If you keep getting that much involved in their lives they will have development issues. You only get involved if they are really slow and get a professional to help.
Was a reasonable approach in the previous century. Not clear that it will be enough these days...
https://artofproblemsolving.com/alcumus/problem
Have also subscribed to their online classes. Alcumus is free. I like AoPS and can recommend them.
https://artofproblemsolving.com/store
Try to see if they'd be using spaced repetition software like Anki to schedule review of problems they've understood how to solve.
It’s been played thousands of times and is a super cool way of building intuition around function composition.
It would be pretty simple to create a web app that produces printable random arithmetic problems (with optional answer keys) with levers for difficulty.
Other types of problems would be harder.
Get out and do some woodworking or metalworking and build something with it. You will probably both learn some math or realize how useless what you know is.
Make a footpath down the side of your house, stick some curves in. Calculate the ground moved and concrete needed. Let your kids do the math. Let your kids do the design. Buy what they say you need. Embrace any failures as a family and learn from it. Give the kids a feeling if responsibility and ownership and they will learn the math during those lessons better than any textbook will teach them.
I like that they offer several different ways of explaining / visualizing concepts plus exercises that reinforce.
For example, my sons is starting to learn multiplication and finally clicked with the app’s visualization of how multiplication is just repeatedly adding the same number over and over again.