Maths....

[oldbirdy]

My ds (9) is very good at maths. Never managed to get school to do anything extra but git him an 11+ tutor recently who is very excited about him, says he could do higher maths GCSE now with just a little teaching of content. She is talking about maths Olympiad etc when he's older and says he's the most capable mathematician she has ever had. She can't keep him on after Feb for personal reasons, and I don't want to let him drift again like I did for all these years at school. She will 'pick him up' again end of the year but does anyone have any suggestions for good resources he can work on in the meantime? He's better than me already, my maths is very average. Are there junior equivalents of the Olympiad for example or other organisations for talented mathematicians? He comes alive when he's working on a really hard puzzle, bless him.

I can't remember. I think code academy for programming and lego mind storms. Not sure about the code breaking. It was a while ago but you might find stuff on the bletchley park website.

but remember, It mustn't come out of a parents desire all of this, it's important that the child does it because they want to and choose to.

National Cipher Challenge run by University of Southampton is a fun intro to code breaking. You don't need programming to do it, but it helps.

Yes to the doggeared copies of Murderous Maths. I think DS could quote them without looking.

I will tell DS about the National Cipher Challenge. Just done it-he is very excited. I recommend the Christmas GCHQ puzzles. Murderous Maths have a code breaking book.

When the film the Imitation Game about Alan Turing and his work at Bletchley Park came out a couple of years ago, Manchester University devised a special cryptography competition to mark the release. Although that competition is now over, you can still have a go at cracking the codes. There are three to break and the first is definitely accessible to primary school children. The other two are more challenging but could be tackled, particularly if some adult assistance is available.

I had a lot of fun worrying away at those codes!

Manchester University have also got an annual cryptography competition aimed at secondary school children up to Y11 - starting up again in Jan.

If you want to gain some insight into Alan Turing’s work, the biography by Andrew Hodges – on which the film is based – is very good. (Maybe for older teens.)

For secondary children, Simon Singh wrote The Science of Secrecy and The Code Book about codebreaking, and has got loads of codebreaking resources on the web if you Google him.

I have a year 4 child and was thinking of delaying all the codes cracking until later age(I work in light quant area so loads of VBA to deal with daily), I am more fond of books reading and working on challenged problem solvings, maths in an intuitive way(however we will have to focus on 11+maths soon next year). If you have come accross and material that you'd recommend pls let me know.

I understand that there are more opportunities in secondary. I know the maths camp mentioned earlier this thread in southeast asia. However there must be something in middle for a very highly enthusiastic mathematician to juggling between in primary?

DS loves the Simon Singh books

The Royal Institution has some nice workshops on for pretty much all ages if people can get to London.

and the science museum has a new maths gallery.

I actually sent ds on a two day maths residential thing a few years ago, the summer before he went to secondary school. A friend who's a year younger went too. I just found it by googling "maths camp" or something equally obvious. It was down in Dorset - I'll try looking up the details and pm you. I think I found a few things but that worked best for location/cost/time.

You could also try Potential Plus who run various groups and events around the country.

Hi all, OP here. Ds' tutor has given him the junior maths challenge paper for y8 and below. He didn't have quite the full hour as they did something else first. Ds is 9, in year 5, will be 10 at Easter. He got 13 of the first 15 correct and had time for 3 from qu 16-19; he got 2 correct. I think this means he has 76 marks? Can anyone tell me how good this is, I mean what do kids normally get? I am still trying to wrap my head around if he's just good at maths or if he's exceptional.

Thanks for all the advice; I have said enrichment and challenge rather than just powering through key stage 3 curriculum.

If he got 76 on the 2016 paper then that would be a silver certificate which would be good for a Y8 let alone a 9 year old! He would be somewhere around the top 15%, bearing in mind only the bright kids enter.

Definitely worth pursuing further.

Yes it was the 2016 paper.

He's also pretty raw; never had anything but ordinary school lessons until October, though he has read a couple of the murderous maths and the number devil.

I guess he might improve further if he is actually given some encouragement and nurture :)

Oldbirdy: That's impressive for someone that young. Really well done

No one anywhere else will care, so I'm afraid you get my woohoo that ds got best in school for the senior challenge Which he thinks means he got full marks - he'd looked at the list and thought he'd got 117 which he was a bit confused about, as he had answered all the questions (not a possible score), but he must have just read the wrong line when the results were posted up, because he knows someone else got more than 117. So he was pleased

brilliant Atia :) very nice!

Anyone's DC doing BMO2? DS very chuffed to hear he's through. Those questions are quite hard though, will be interesting to see how he does...

I'm a bit late to the party here. But I wanted to thank everyone for all the resources that they've pointed me to. My DD1 is only Y3 but Maths and science are her favourite subjects and I'd been struggling to move beyond our well thumbed copies of Murderous Maths with her.

As my contribution, someone mentioned that they prefer paper resources to online. I'd recommend Ian Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities. It covers alsorts of mathematical theories and I think it works quite well as an introduction to a range of fields of maths.

oldbirdy can I ask, if you could have the chance again to push the school when he was younger what would you have asked for them to do?

My DS is only 5 but I can really connect with what you're saying. He is very unhappy and frustrated at school because he feels misunderstood and unheard. He can do all his times tables up to - well, up to anything (this morning he got up at 6am to write the 979 times table...) and is obsessed with zero, infinity, negative numbers, fractions & decimals etc.
He can't understand why he's being asked to do stuff like write his numbers 1 to 10 and it's a massive deal for him.

My issue is the school WILL NOT accept he's more than average and they treat us like we're pushy and pretentious and the reality is all we want is for him to be happy. But I don't know what I want them to 'do', really. Other than maybe acknowledge what he can do and encourage and praise him. And not just allow him to be miserable.

I would be really grateful for any practical tips I just feel completely lost and like there's no one I can talk to about it without them thinking I'm showing off :-(

(The hardest bit is I'm really, really bad at maths - was in SEN class for maths at school and really panic if I have to do any mental arithmetic - so I can't help him or really understand the thing that matters the most to him.)