How to challenge bored child
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Anonymous
| My 3rd grader is bored to tears in class. His particular area of interest is math. I would love to challenge him more, but at the same time I really do not want to send him to some math center where he will learn more material ahead of his class and thus be even more bored in school. If you have a child who wasn’t challenged in school, what have you done to help engage their mind? |
Anonymous
| Chess? |
Anonymous
| Ask if his teacher will let him retest units and work on prodigy if he tests out. Dd’s Teacher allowed this last year and it helped a lot. |
Anonymous
| Piano lessons with a serious teacher |
Anonymous
| Poor child, must be so smart to be so bored and unchallenged. All the other children are interested and engaged in school because they’re slow. |
Anonymous
| Frankly I’d find a new school or homeschool. If that isn’t an option try Art of Problem Solving (the Beast academy books are great — more “sideways” than “ahead”) |
Anonymous
| Homeschool |
Anonymous
| Board games and card games |
Anonymous
|
First, it's cruel to limit his exposure to a topic he loves. Second, it's monumentally stupid on your part to ignore the possibilities of taking the advanced math track in school and the benefit to college applications. Public schools have advanced math tracks. MCPS has magnets. Most schools in the area organize Math Olympiads, or similar competitions. Get him to an AoPS class, they are the only math outfit to actually focus on critical thinking. They have great textbooks and workbooks as well: https://artofproblemsolving.com/ I have one child who devours books and loves to learn about history, so she spent all elementary doing that, did Model UN in middle school and is in a selective program for history and literature in high school. I have another child really into classical music, who started an instrument as a preschooler and now takes part in competitions and is the concertmaster of his youth orchestra. I never thought I'd have to actually spell this out to a fellow parent, but please... encourage your child in his healthy interests. |
Anonymous
| Any chance he was redshirted in K? If so, perhaps consider moving him up to the correct grade. |
Anonymous
| No child is "really into classical music" at age 4. The truly gifted ones do learn quickly how to please their parents. I do find it's often helpful to remind fellow parents of this. |
Anonymous
Well, he was 3 and annoyed me for a year to take lessons in his instrument of choice, declaring that he didn't like any music apart from classical (and not all classical, baroque is apparently not in favor, romantic and Russian is everything). Also, he loves the history of music CDs we have at home, and can spend hours listening to opera arias on Youtube. Please recognize that many children know what they want really early. It may be correlated with a high IQ, which is probably why you're being all weird about it, but that's neither here not there. What parents notice is that they're being hounded for something. It wouldn't have occurred to me to pay good money for serious instrument lessons for a preschooler, for goodness' sake. |
Anonymous
|
I had a mathy kid. She tended to figure out a lot by herself and eventually we did end up accelerating her, but you can do enrichment too.
Games of all kinds have math applications from making moves, keeping score, etc. Some have more direct math connections (ex. Monopoly). My mathy daughter particularly liked geometric strategy games (Checkers, Chinese Checkers, Othello, Pentago, Connect 4, GO, Chess, Blokus, etc.) My daughter went through a secret code phase. There's a mystery series of books, Third-Grade Detectives by George E. Stanley and Salvatore Murdocca, that features secret codes. Magic Squares and Sudoku don't require advanced math, but they do require logic. Logic puzzles in general are good for math kids. Louis Sachar wrote a book of math puzzles called Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School which is a companion to his Wayside school series. The series is entertaining amd I highly recommend it for reading enjoyment. Sideways Arithmetic, however, may not be for everyone. While I don't remember the math being that hard, the puzzles require you to look at them from unconventional perspectives. Origami appeals to kids in general, and for a mathy kid there's geometric aspects they might appreciate. Give your son a tape measure and let him measure things. Get him involved in crafts, maybe have him build something. He may find himself calculating perimeter and area or applying other math concepts in his real life. Cooking/baking is excellent for math, especially basic fractions. If you want to make things more challenging you can halve/double recipes. Buzz is a verbal math game that you can adapt to any level. You establish a pattern and start counting, substituting the word Buzz for any numbers that fit the pattern. Ex. Even numbers and numbers with a three: 1, buzz, buzz, buzz, 5, buzz, 7, . . ., 11, buzz, buzz, buzz, 15, . . ., 29, buzz, buzz, buzz. . . (All 30s are buzzed), buzz, 41, . . . You can buzz odd/evens, specific numbers, multiples, primes, squares, fibonacci, etc. You can combine rules as in the example above. It can be as simple or complex as you want. Good for those waiting times (long lines, restaurants, car trips, etc.) If he knows the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) and the fundamental order of operations, he can play 24. I used to have a link to a website with an online solitaire version, but the link stopped working. You can probably find another or an app. Here's a basic description of it in it's original card game version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Game The following are great resources, but they may expose him to new knowledge: PBS has an excellent show called Cyberchase which is both entertaining and informative. My kids loved it and it covers a lot of math concepts. You might try the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html Hoagies has tons of links for enrichment in different subjects. Here's the math page (includes all math topics for all ages, some will be far too advanced for a third grader, but some will be relevant.) https://www.hoagiesgifted.org/math.htm The Sir Cumference book series by Cindy Neuschwander is good. It introduces math concepts in the framework of a fictional story. Theoni Pappas has a lot of good books that introduce mathematical topics that are outside of the regular math curriculum. My daughter enjoyed Fractals, Googols, and Other Mathematical Tales. She is especially known for her Penrose the Cat books. There is a National Math Festival held every 2 years in DC (The next is in 2021). I've never been, but it looks like a lot of fun. https://www.nationalmathfestival.org/who-we-are/ |
Anonymous
| Extra sports. School was not challenging but she loved competition. She is involved with a lot of activities outside of school but sports have been been the best for her because it’s where she gets the challenge she craves. It doesn’t have to be academic. |
Anonymous
BTW we took her to the math festival at the mall the past two years. She did not enjoy it and said it was also “boring” along with most days at school and most things I suggest her to do at home. Some kids declare everything is boring. |