<p>Yes, mathcounts is a good program to try, though it is more aimed at kids who are at least taking algebra. Still, everyone can improve their math skills and learn things that are out of the mainstream instruction. My less mathy daughter liked that the mathcounts problems were more challenging than class. I will say that some kids thrive on the competition and having to do math fast whereas others don’t.</p>
<p>I also recommend Math League (<a href=“http://www.mathleague.com/”>http://www.mathleague.com/</a>), which has separate sub-organizations for most states. My son was OK with Mathcounts, but it tends to reward fast calculation, which isn’t particularly his strength. The Math League contests have generally harder, but fewer questions. It is good for kids to work at problems that are difficult for them. Math League is also a team test, so they would probably need about 6 kids.</p>
<p>Also, AMC8 is the middle school math contest that leads into AMC10 and AMC12, which are the ones colleges are more likely to have heard of.</p>
<p>As was said, AoPs has great lists of summer programs and more (and excellent classes):</p>
<p><a href=“Art of Problem Solving”>http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Wiki/index.php/Mathematics_summer_program</a></p>
<p>Preparing for math competitions or just taking them without preparation can be fun. Participating often gets kids on the lists for additional math programs. At least we seem to get mail from a lot of math programs. Some are easier to join than others. We did: CML, Math Olympiad (MOEMS) in middle school (for the one who attended middle school and his younger brother was allowed to sneak into the building and join while in elementary school), AMC 10/12/AIME, ARML, Math Kangaroo, Purple Comet, USAMTS, NACLO, HMMT, PUMaC, HiMCM (HS Mathematical Contest in Modeling), Who Wants to be a Mathematician, Splash and cSplash events and more (not both kids for all events). Actually, looking back at that list is a little shocking, but it was a passion for my kids since they were toddlers. </p>
<p><a href=“Art of Problem Solving”>Art of Problem Solving;
<p>Gunsup, I commend you for trying to keep your D engaged as a single mom who dropped out of high school. You are doing great by trying to follow her interests and anticipate her needs. There are many great suggestions here.</p>
<p>I will tell you our story and maybe something will resonate. We always homeschooled as my son was <strong>very</strong> wiggly (think adhd to the max) and very advanced in math from an early age. This was nothing we did since dh is a package cart driver and I am a SAHM (former special ed teacher).</p>
<p>The schools around here would never know what to do with him, so I homeschooled. I let him fly in areas that he loved-mostly math, physics and spatial stuff. He started the Algebra Survival Guide in 2nd grade and we took it slowly through 3rd grade. (Before that, we just did a mish mash, but I was using a 5th grade curriculum in 2nd grade when we jumped to Algebra) </p>
<p>In 4th grade, there was a univ. professor teaching honors geometry to homeschooled kids and my son did that for a semester. </p>
<p>In 5th grade, I didn’t know what to do, so we repeated algebra with a different textbook. (Jacob’s Algebra) He also did a lot of totally fun computer software such as Math for the Real World, Sierra’s Schoolhouse, Math Blaster, etc. He and I were just reminiscing about this recently. Such fun days! :-)</p>
<p>In 6th, I asked my dad to tutor him in Alg II/Trig, but about 1/2 way through, my dad got ill, so we dropped formal math and founded a homeschool Mathcounts team. We had no clue what we were doing, but it was fun.</p>
<p>The next year, I found a tutor who began Calculus with my son and wanted him to go to the local UC to take a class. We said no to that, but he did do Mathcounts again, and made it to the state level. It was lonely for him, though, as he didn’t know anyone else at the time and felt a little shut out since there were no other homeschoolers at the time. (He was 8th place in our large city, but didn’t do too well at the state level as his coach said he couldn’t teach him anything and we didn’t really understand math competition math)</p>
<p>So, at that point, with a third child born, I decided to jump him to the local community college. So, at age 12, he started back with pre-calculus.</p>
<p>He then spent the next 2 1/2 years taking all the comm. college math there was, but he didn’t go back to math competitions in 8th and 9th grade.</p>
<p>In 10th grade, when he was running out of math, I told him he needed to try the math circle one more time, because I felt he needed the challenge. Most fortunately, he met a fellow chess friend there, and the rest is history. He loved the people, loved competitions (though he didn’t study much, and didn’t go to the math circle at all as a senior), and especially loved the team math competitions as my son is a super extrovert.</p>
<p>In 10th grade, we found a wonderful online tutor who worked with my son in a very slow, meandering unschoolish way in areas such as Dif Equations, Dynamical Systems, and Real Analysis. That was what he did for his last 2 1/2 years of high school math.</p>
<p>I followed his lead as much as I could, but I also knew when it was time for him to be challenged more (telling him he needed to go back to the math circle). He never was terribly challenged except in competition math (and he wasn’t terribly motivated to study), but he loved everything he did.</p>
<p>He has a gift of teaching math and inspiring young people to love math. With his MIT math degree, I don’t know what he’ll do, but I do know I’m glad we went the route we did.</p>
<p>I hope your daughter can fly with her interests as my son did with his.</p>
<p>Some of the suggestions made are good but require a supportive community. Many of the math competitions require a school that participates or a team. Some of them are really for kids a little older, but good to keep in mind for later. </p>
<p>Something the OP’s daughter may enjoy, that she could start today on her own, is to learn about programming. My kids enjoyed using scratch to make games and movies. It is free to download, and she should be able to do it fairly independently at this age.</p>
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<p>Many high schools, including my kids’, do not allow BC without AB first.</p>
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<p>That seems like a radical step…another option is summer math covering AB then taking BC, our HS does allow this.</p>
<p>Algebra is an easy subject and it is OK to be ahead, do not think that anybody is ahead actually, think that the whole k - 12 system in the USA is way behind specifically in math and scinece, including the very best schools. Do not underestimate your own ability to help either. there are always text books and various websites where material is readily available. On the other hand, under no circumstances, the child shou;d be pushed, the kid should have a leading role here. If engineering is a plan, pay special attention to trigonometry. but math overall is extrememly important and every single concept should be understood 100%. Coming from the former EE, currently an IT proffessional (did not like engineering at all, hated it with all my heart, switched after working for 11 years, never had problem with academics though, specifically because of love for math and physics)</p>
<p>I like @mathyone 's suggestion to do computer programming as enrichment for a 6th grader. Scratch is a great place to start. Go to <a href=“http://scratch.mit.edu/”>http://scratch.mit.edu/</a> and she can try it out online before installing it. You might even have fun learning Scratch. If she likes that, go to <a href=“http://code.org/”>http://code.org/</a> and <a href=“http://www.codecademy.com/”>http://www.codecademy.com/</a> – these are all free.</p>
<p>Programming has been a great outlet for my son when some of his school classes were not as challenging as he might have liked. He has also been able to get community service hours teaching programming to younger students.</p>
<p>The only disadvantage was that once my son got interested in programming he got considerably less interested in pure math, being part of the high school math team, or actually preparing for the AMC or AIME exams! He turned out okay though. :)</p>
<p>a new middle school parent.</p>
<p>What is the course content difference between</p>
<p>Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1 and Algebra 2?</p>
<p>Some of the responses here have me confused.</p>
<p>This is what it is in NY: <a href=“http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/mst/math/documents/mathcore.pdf”>www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/mst/math/documents/mathcore.pdf</a></p>
<p>Honestly, it’s all pretty silly. Pre-algebra is the year or two of math before Algebra 1 where most school systems try to get kids starting to think algebraicly but in not too scary a way.
Typical topics:
integers
fractions, decimals
factors, exponents
solving linear equations
solving linear inequalities
ratio and proportion
percent
graphing linear functions
Pythagorean theorem and other geometry topics
some statistics and probability</p>
<p>Algebra I usually covers quadratic equations, while Algebra 2 covers more complicated stuff like exponents and logs and polynomomials. Here’s a nice over view (someone else’s school system shorter than the NYS document) : <a href=“https://commoncorealgebra2.wikispaces.hcpss.org/Algebra+II+Year+at+a+Glance”>https://commoncorealgebra2.wikispaces.hcpss.org/Algebra+II+Year+at+a+Glance</a></p>
<p>I believe in any additional math instruction. A few reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>The math curriculum is aimed at kids who have trouble understanding math. (And I’m using the word math when I mostly mean arithmetic and then really concepts of relative quantity.) If you can do more, you often need to seek that out.</li>
<li>Some people have a very high ceiling for learning math. And that goes hand-in-hand with exposure to the vast array of areas within math, something few people even realize exists because they don’t get close. Maybe you like topology. Maybe you like arrays or real (or unreal) analysis. As you get into the field, it opens up the way history or literature does into areas and specialties. </li>
<li>More and more and more jobs really become better if you understand statistics. Not many people take stats - though the number is growing. If you can go further - bioinformatics, econometrics - then your career choices widen.</li>
<li>Very importantly, as a father of girls - one with really high math potential - I saw the culture of math is anti-girl. In our case, we found our kid excelled only when we found a tutor. Not to work on remedial concepts - which took about an hour - but to show her how to do stuff, how to approach problems and break them down in an environment that wasn’t about boys showing off, putting others (and girls) down and the whole ego tripping of the competitive atmosphere. In our case, we were lucky to find a math grad student from a local university who’d sit at a table and work through problems together with her. That kind of team approach / mentoring worked well and she discovered a gift for integral calculus. She was struggling in class and it turned out to be the environment not her work ethic or skill.</li>
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<p>You guys are so wonderful, thank all of you all l so much, My daughter will be going to an all girl school that starts in 6th grade and goes all the way through high school, It is a public school aimed at college prep for economically disadvantaged families. </p>
<p>I skipped “math 6” and took pre algebra as a sixth grader, and I never had any problems. There’s hardly any new content, and if your daughter is a math student she’ll be absolutely fine. It’s really nice now that I’m ahead in math in high school, if it’s not too much extra work I recommend it</p>
<p>Just keep in mind that if accelerated math is a goal, "computer programming " has absolutely nothing to do with math. Computer Programming does not require ANY math background and very very remote from math concepts. It has challenges that are different from challenges in math classes. I have been a Computer Programmer (or whatever title they give me at my various places of employment) for over 30 years, I absolutely love it and wish that I started with it as my initial field of study instead of engineering. I was incorrectly steered towards engeineering by my love of math, physics. It was absolute wrong field to me although I was OK with it at college. Academics are not always an indication of what you will love or hate. If you are not into tinkets and assempling things and technology usage, most likely than not, you will not like engineering despite of being super great with math and physics. Believe it or not, when I have the problem with my laptop or other device (I am really bad with those), I consult with my EE H. I just love developing software, I really do not care about any harware related issues or for that matter using the software installed on each machine. And here is a hint that anybody could use to see if they are going to be OK with engineering or not. </p>
<p>True, they are not the same thing, but the OP said her daughter wants to be an engineer and loves robotics and computers.</p>
<p>I’m OK with accelerating math as long as the student has a very strong foundation. Algebra is so basic and so foundational to every following math course. It’s easy to get by with decent grades in middle school and early high school but not really understand the Algebra and suddenly you’re in Calc 2 or 3 and it’s a struggle because the basic Algebra is either forgotten or was never fully understood. We also have a very, very strong public school district, but the math education has always been weak in my opinion. The school has rotated teachers in and out of the math curriculum but never really settled on any strong teachers while my kids went through the system. I allowed my humanities kids to accelerate because their lifetime math was going to end with Calculus or Statistics if not math for non-math majors, but did not allow my (now) engineering student to accelerate. It’s never a race to the finish in my opinion.</p>
<p>My D is an upcoming freshman in engineering. I have to admit that I did not try much to push or help my D to advance in math. Many parents will make their kids to take summer classes or online courses to test out one or 2 math classes to accelerate the math track in my school district. While my D just take the accelerate class within the school system all the way along (which is recommended for any students getting an A in the previous level). So at the end, she only reached AP Calc BC in senior. Some of her friends reached that level in junior. Anyway, it was never a disadvantage for her in school application and she did really well in all the math classes she took in school. In contrary, her friend took the AP Calc BC a year earlier did not do so great in the exam which may have a small adverse effect. By the way, my D could not take the AP CS due to a schedule conflict and that did not affect her application to top engineering schools either. So I think as long as it is in the fast track within the school system and excel in it, it should be good enough for admission purpose. To keep the kid from being bored in class is another story.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that “acceleration” is relative. </p>
<p>DS went to a small K-8 private school in 5th grade where they mostly let kids study at whatever level they needed in any subject without worrying about the grade level too much, but they topped out at Algebra 1. He was on track to finish that in 7th, but since they didn’t have anything else, were going to slow him down (the kids need a strong foundation in math, harmful to push, blah, blah…) For a lot of reasons, we moved him to a public magnet program for middle school where he ended up taking Algebra 1 in 7th and Geometry in 8th. If he had stayed at the small private school, S, who was good in math, but not driven, would have been happy to go with the flow, and if I had done anything to make it possible for him to take geometry, would have had been considered a bad, pushy parent. At public magnet, there was a good-sized cohort of kids who all ended up with geometry, it wasn’t a big deal, and DS just did it (easily). Because of his “acceleration” in middle school, he was able to take IB HL/AP Calc BC in high school. This saved him two math courses in college that made it easier for him to double major. That was MUCH more valuable to him than “not being pushed” in middle school would have been.</p>
<p>But anyway-- the point is that at school A, algebra 1 in 8th was normal and geometry would have been acceleration.
At school B, geometry in 8th was normal, and algebra 1 would have been “holding back”.</p>
<p>We were very fortunate to be able to find middle and high schools where the normal curriculum matched his needs. That wasn’t always the case in elementary. </p>
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<p>How did you know in 6th-8th grade that the students were definitely humanities or engineering focused? 6th-8th grade math placement decisions that result in acceleration or not generally depend on how well the student is doing in math, not what his/her future college and career goals are, since most 6th-8th grade students have not decided those with any certainty.</p>
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<p>“Only”?</p>