Hoping for Long-Term Math Love

Halloween, age 5. This costume relates to math, I swear!

Math has been a bit of a meandering subject around here. The Kid loved math as a preschooler. We played with RightStart manipulatives. We counted how many steps we took in walking a block, and estimated how many steps to get all the way home. We played mathy games. We eventually transitioned to using RightStart Math, which worked well... until it didn't. We tried Beast Academy, but she wasn't yet ready for it then. We took off from formal math for most of a year, while reading mathy books and playing mathy games.

Then back to Beast Academy, which was rough going at first. It was hard. She got wrong answers. She didn't know how to tackle some of the problems. It was a slow, and sometimes painful, slog for a while. But by the time she finished up level 3, she was in love with it. Alongside, we continued reading mathy books and playing mathy games. She played around with Math Kangaroo practice tests, worked in Zaccaro's Primary Grade Challenge Math book, did some Hands On Equations.

She then tackled level 4, which was great for her... until it wasn't. I realized that all the meandering math meant that the second half of level 4 was mostly going to be review for her. I tried just assigning the starred and challenge problems, but those were still too easy. I let her start testing out of full chapters.

Around that time, I had her take the Woodcock-Johnson test. She'd taken it a year before, so I thought I could predict her scores fairly well. Nope. Her math scores had gone through the roof. Among other things, this opened up the option of applying to Epsilon Camp. Unfortunately, our finances took a major hit this year, so that wasn't an immediate option. I discussed the camp with The Kid, who fell in love with the very idea of it. Math lectures all morning! Yippee! (Yes, really.) Thinking ahead to next summer, when she will have just turned 9, she will be required to have not only the test scores, but also have completed Algebra 1 in order to qualify for Epsilon.

We discussed. She very much wanted to give this a try. But... Beast 5, Pre-Algebra, and Algebra all before next summer? Yikes.

We made a plan. She would continue testing out of Beast chapters as appropriate. Beast 5 would serve as most of her Pre-Algebra. She would double her math time from 30 minutes per day to a full hour. Selected chapters from Jousting Armadillos could be done alongside Beast 5 to cover any Pre-A topics that weren't covered in Beast. I could see no way to do both AOPS Pre-A and AOPS Intro to Algebra in one year, so AOPS Pre-A would be skipped. Once Beast 5 and Jousting Armadillos were completed, we would move directly into AOPS Intro to Algebra.

It feels a bit crazy. But in the three months since, she has completed over 2/3 of Beast 5 and almost all of the sections of Joust Armadillos that I selected. Looks like we'll be starting Algebra in September.

Pumpkin pi. She thought it was hilarious!