Maths competitions!!

[wayoftheworld]

Have been trying to get my son to do smth out of school curriculum and have not found anything. The MA will only accept school registrations rather than individual(private) ones and when I did talk to school to take part in it, they said that MA does not appeal to their curriculum.

So what do I do? He is only 8 and I could just leave it till he gets to secondary school, but I feel there are waisting opportunities for him. I work with him at home and currently doing KS3 maths ( age 12- 13) twice a week and he loves it.

Has anybody been in similar situation? Any ideas?

lots of posters on here recommend maths whizz - havne't tried it yet. won;t keep him busy long, but my DS likes mathionaire

I have already registered him with Mathletics. At school DS is y3 and in mathletics he started at y5 and completed it within few months so I moved him to y7 stuff which is a bit more challenging and is the highest level they offer.

I feel a bit stuck becouse of his age, there does not seem to be much going on out there on individual basis.

Has anyon here had their kids take 11+ early??

What do the school do to support his maths ability?

They have tried his ability on sats for y4,5 and 6. And he has done really well on those. But that is it - today he told me he is getting extra work than the rest of his group.

Teach him chess? Truly excellent for developing the logical and strategic thinking he will need to apply his excellent maths abilities in life..... And an exciting fun game to play. If he is good there is no ceiling to how far he can take it....

(All the computer programmers of my generation were chess whizz-kids as youngsters)

My children enjoy maths, but have often been bored with maths at KS2 - their school sticks fairly rigidly to the curriculum.

I have been reluctant to push them towards KS3, preferring to challenge them with the maths they already know. I am always on the look out for mathematical style puzzles that I think they can do; this does require quite a lot of effort.

For maths word problems, the MA publish a book called "Challenge Your Pupils" which contains lots of examples of questions from their "Primary Mathematics Challenge". To get an idea of what is in it, I think they have some 'past papers' on their website. I liked the questions, but would prefer not to have multiple choice answers.

I prefer this book "The Complete Book of Fun Maths". It is aimed at adults so you will need to try them first and pick out the ones you think he will be able to do. Amazon's 'look inside' feature shows a good chunk of the first chapter so you can get an idea.

"The eleven-plus book, genuine exam questions from yesteryear" contains lots of wordy maths questions which I found good - and more challenging than the stuff Y6 kids seem to be given these days.

There are lots of classic maths puzzles that he may like. Things like the 'fox, goose, corn river crossing puzzle', 'fixing a broken chain at minimum cost', 'switching positions of counters'. The murderous maths site has some great ones eg 12 coins problem If he really likes these puzzles, you can find whole collections of them in books such as "Amusements in mathematics", "The Moscow Puzzles", some of which are old and available freely on google books - will require lots of effort to find ones at the right level though.

Logic puzzles of the type you get in newsagents (the ones with grids) might be good for him. Mindware publish graded books of these and call them 'grid perplexors' - expensive for what you get though. "The Works" often has cheap books of this type along with IQ / brainteasing books.

No suggestions has to how you can help get the most out of his school though I am afraid. Unfortunately many primary schools fail to recognise that some children need more of a challenge than KS2 maths offers - imho.

NRich is a nice site - lots of problem solving ideas at different stages. Also - if the children send in their answers to 'this month's problems' they may be published as they publish some of the solutions (Often those which are done in a particularly elegant way or have been extended well.)

(As a complete aside, it's nice for me to hear comments about the MA Primary Maths Challenge as I was a question setter in the early days)

Has he read the Murderous Mathsbooks? I’d also recommend chess and IQ puzzles.

When I was a primary governor, our school had the odd gifted maths child. The maths co-ordinator had links with the local grammar school and the gifted programme was developed with them for DC like yours. It’s simply not good enough for the school to not assess his ability accurately and then devise a programme for him to extend his knowledge. So ask the school what extension work they can provide (via another school if necessary) and try and get them to assess his ability. Just plodding along isn’t good enough.,