<p>My younger brother is a rising 9th grader who is very interested in math/science and has a natural curiosity for these subjects, especially math. He gets A+s easily in his 8th grade honors math class, and has been asking his teacher for more challening problems, but she's reluctant to let him go far ahead in the curriculum. She gives him some mathlete problems but he's said that they don't help him very much. He's been bugging our parents to let him take summer classes in our school district with kids from a grade above him. He really wants to hone his math abilities and be the best he can be. I suggested that it might be advantageous for him to become more adept at problem solving skills rather than study the same stuff that he's gonna learn next year, as a lot of HS competitions (local mathletes, AMC/AIME, Mandelbrot, etc) seem to test your ability to problem solve. He's done practice problems on sample AMCs and scored in the high 80-ish range on AMC-12. He's really into these math competitions and wants to be able to score higher. </p>
<p>I was wondering if anyone here as any good ideas about ways (preferably ones that aren't heinously expensive) for a rising 9th grader to get ahead in math (over the summer)? preferably in ways that would help him on math competitions like the AMCs. We ordered the AoPS book volume 1, but it's easier for him to learn from an instructor rather than self-teach himself advanced math concepts. I was just browsing the AoPS website and they have online summer courses (for <$200, June-August), some of which seem tailored to the AMC contests. Anyone have experience with these? I'm a little skeptical about an "online classroom," but if anyone on here has any info or other ideas for this topic, please let me know! (I wasn't sure which forum to post this in.) Thanks!</p>