1st grade math - what should I be asking?

[justlearning]

I think your DS sounds VERY good in math! I think it'd be entirely appropriate to talk with the teacher. I did that last year when DS was in 1st grade and his teacher did start giving him 2nd grade worksheets to do at home. That's all she could do at his school because they don't have any gifted groups or any other groups that get pulled out of the classroom. But perhaps your school does provide those. My friend's DS gets pulled out for an advanced math group 3 times a week at his school.

By the way, if your son loves math and wants to work on math at his own pace at home, there's a math website that I recently paid to join--it's www.ixl.com. Both my 5 and 7-year-old boys have been enjoying working on math there. (It has levels pre-K to 8th grade.) You can try around 20 sample problems a day for free.

[KrisM]

I forgot to update this. I did talk with his teacher and she had already been giving him some extras. I didn't realize this since they came home with everything else. But, now he has a folder with extras in it to do when he finishes the regular work. They don't have any program for pull-out until 3rd grade, which is in another school.

His teacher was at a different elem. last year and said they had Math Pentathlon, so I'm looking into that for us.

Thanks for the advice and ideas.

[larig]

DS1 is in 1st grade. He likes math. A lot. Today, I happened to talk with an aquaintence who subbed for his room last week. She asked the kids to tell her a simple equation to get the number 58. They do this daily with different numbers, so the kids are used to it. DS1 said "2 plus 2 plus 1 times 12 minus 2".

In the car last week, he was asking me to quiz him on math, so I did. He knows most of the multiplication tables up to 6 really well. I asked him 'what is 64 divided by 8'. He said 8. I asked how he got the answer. He said "I know 5 times 12 is 60 and that leaves 4 left over. So, I made the 12s into 4s and found 16 4s that I turned into 8s and got 8 of them".

So, he likes math, and is good at it and is logically figuring out answers to things he hasn't learned.

He is bored with adding and subtracting in 1st. He needs the money part, the telling time part, and other parts, but the actual mathematics part is not challenging at all. I want to talk to his teacher about getting him working on more challenging things, but I don't really know what to ask for. I don't want him doing worksheets at home at a higher level. I could use some ideas before talking to her.

Thanks.

ETA: If you think I shouldn't ask for him to be challenged more, please let me know that, too!

I'm a former h.s. math teacher, so I can't speak to specific materials that are available at that age, but can speak generally about what I'd be doing at home. (BTW, I assume that you're not remembering his explanation of how he got 64 exactly, right? If so, he's taking some lucky steps to get to 64, not necessarily all of which are mathematically correct steps, but that's not what you asked). ETA2: actually he's right, just the wording threw me for a minute. D'OH!!

Anyway, it sounds like he enjoys it, and that's what you want to encourage. Why not explore other branches of mathematics with him, like geometry?

My father (who was a h.s. math teacher) bought me tangrams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangram

Make a hexaflexagon.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...-hexaflexagon/

make some tessallations (like Escher).

collect some data--like get a bag of m&ms and count the different colors and construct a pie chart or other graphs that show how many of each color you have.

ETA: like your son, I found the arithmetic-heavy elementary years painfully boring. I think my dad noticed this about me, like you have. Good work, mom!

[nicolexx]

Have a try with beestar. It offers free online math programs for elementary kids. The worksheets include all parts you need, full of real life world problems, challenging stuff to help kids thinking. DD has been using it.
Nicole