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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If your child participates in math competitions, please share how they are doing with reading. Do they spend as much time on reading? What do they use to learn the subject in depth. AoPS language arts? CTY? How many hours a week do they spend on each subject per week outside of school (I prefer my child study no more than two hours a day at home and keep the passion for learning longer.)?

My kid enjoys both subjects and doesn’t want to focus on either math or reading/ELA yet. It’s easy to find a program for advanced math, but I don’t know about reading/ELA. [/quote]

It depends on how old your child is. If your child wants to seriously compete, they need to start in early MS. AOPS is the best, but most study on their own also.

Our DC is a math kid -- took Calc BC as a sophomore, got 5 on AP, etc. but they didn't start math competitions until 8th grade. What we learned is that being good in math classes is very different from being good at math competitions. DC made it to statesin 8th grade with very little effort, but by HS DC found it was too late to catch up with those who started competitions in ES.

[/quote]

My kid is on the A Team and is on the ‘regular’ advanced math pathway.  She is doing Algebra 2 as a 9th grader, FWIW.  And has not done Calculus.  She will be doing Pre-Calc next year, but still does well on Math Team and is hoping to do ARML.

From what she has told me, most Math competitions don’t include much Calculus.

I do agree that the kids are self-motivated and enjoy Math.  [/quote]

That's right. For math competitors, they usually finish learning all high school math up till Calculus at 7th grade or so (+/- 2 grade). That means they have to speed up at least from upper elementary, and you can't force feeding them. They have to be self-motivated to pace in a high speed at a relatively young age. [/quote]

PP here. We are not talking about the same level of math competition. Doing math competition for some EC fun, maybe can be written into a few sentences in the personal statement for college application, sure, your experience is pretty accurate. Doing math competition for qualifying for USJMO or USAMO and even MOP, which can be counted as a significant achievement for college application, the kid has to excel from a very young age. Genius does exist, but learning for genius still takes time, given that they have to achieve a high GPA at the same time so cannot invest 100% into math competition.
Oh wow, I disagree.  [/quote]

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