Reply to My daughter's friend who is a rising 8th grader is in Multivariable calculus camp, WTF?

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Reply to "My daughter's friend who is a rising 8th grader is in Multivariable calculus camp, WTF?"

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[quote=Anonymous]As a mom of a mathy kid, I can see it.  My kid didn't hit multivariable calculus until she was a junior.  However, she really didn't get much math at all for her early school years.  She figured out multiplication herself before kindergarten.  I realized she wasn't learning anything in her math classes, but she was happy until third grade.  When she asked to learn more I conferred with her teacher who agreed that I could send in math for her as long as it related to the unit.

So while the rest of the class spent a weak on place value, she learned  to convert fractions to decimals and decimals to fractions, how to add, subtract, and multiply decimals, an introduction to scientific notation and metric prefixes, and for fun an exercise with Roman numerals.  At the end of the week, I checked in to see how she felt it was going, and she complained it was too slow.

We didn't keep to that pace all year.  There were times when she wanted to be lazy and do whatever the class was doing.  That was fine.  The class did cover some new material that year in terms of operations with fractions.

The next year at the HGC she jumped to Math A (sixth grade math), and then when she was bored (knew most of the material) in math B the following year jumped to IM.

Although frequently accused of pushing her, I felt that she was pulling me.  When she was happy doing grade level math, I let it be.  I only stepped in when she indicated a problem.  If she had pursued math at her level starting at kindergarten instead of third grade, then we might have been looking for sumner multivariable calculus camps too.

For the record, I am not a math person.  She always looked at the world in a way that is foreign to me.  I think these kids are wired differently.

As to the point in "trying to push your kid ahead this far", the only point is to please your kid.  Obviously, camps are expensive.  Finding school programs that fit will be different/impossible and will most likely involve paying college tuition.  It will complicate things for the family.  The family is sacrificing to accomodate the child.[/quote]

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