Math resources for mathematically advanced 1st grader

Our child is advanced in math as well. We have a tutor who does private math instruction online twice a week. The tutor cost generally ranges from $40 - $90 / hour depending on qualifications and experience. In addition, we let our child play Prodigy Math game. You can also check out Firecracker Math locally. We've done summer camps there pre-pandemic and kids had a lot of fun. 

You may want to check out the Berkeley Math Circle - https://mathcircle.berkeley.edu/

They have programs for students starting in 1st grade. It diverges from conventional U.S.-style academic math instruction but it does involve classes, which may not be what you're looking for.

I hope you can find ways to encourage and foster his interests!

My children use Beast Academy online as enrichment and they like it.  It is a fun program and mixes learning with logic games and problems.   I am also selective about what workbooks I buy for them (looking for ones focusing on logic, reasoning, word problems, etc.)  Singapore Math Challenge series is great.  They are also doing Russian School of Math after school.  For a mathematically advanced kids, most schools will not be able to provide what they need, so after school enrichment activities and online programs are the only way to keep them learning and interested in math. 

That's a good problem to have!  Math Kangaroo is a competition that now has a printed collection of challenges for kids in Grades 1 and 2.  I haven't seen it but I assume it is something that can be done mostly independently.  There is also the game Prime Climb.  For fun events targeting various ages, check jrmf.org.  Sign him up for the Berkeley Math Circle Elementary I waitlist!

My math-loving kids liked PBS Kids shows like Cyberchase. Looks like they now have another math-oriented show called The Odd Squad. PBSkids.org has games based on the shows. Also check out Kahn Academy (kahnacademy.org). 

Hi, we use Beast Academy by Art of Problem Solving. They’re pretty affordable - around $100 - $120 per year and it’s a self guided curriculum for gifted learners. It starts from Grade 2 but seems like your child can give it a try. They have some free lessons to try before buying. It’s got videos, logical puzzles etc and is one of the best math curriculums out there! We love it. Good luck on your search. 

We have a math-y kid, too, and have had a lot of fun and learning through Beast Academy online. It’s a series of humorous graphic novels (and accompanying practice books) about young monsters (the “beasts”) who are learning math concepts. The content can be quite challenging; it’s the opposite of a Kumon-type of book, and gives kids an understanding of the “why” behind math concepts. For younger kids who might not be able to read the guidebooks yet, I’d recommend the online version, which includes videos as well as practice games and puzzles that they can do on a computer or tablet. The series is published by a company called The Art of Problem Solving, which also offers online live math enrichment classes. We haven’t done those, but would like to give them a try down the road.

I recommend Richard Fischer's book, "Higher Math in the Lower Grades". Will need some supervision, but these problems are great. Developed with two fields medalists whose kids Richard taught (I was one of the kids... great stuff).

Khan Academy is what my mathematically gifted daughter would love to spend time with. It’s free! https://www.khanacademy.org/

Seconding Berkeley Math Circle in general and, once your 1st grader is a little older, BMC's "MTRW." If you're just looking for something fun-but-at-least-somewhat-real, check out the books in the Life of Fred series. You can get them pretty reasonably on eBay. 

I wanted to add another recommendation for Beast Academy. They have three options - you can just buy the workbooks (guides, workbooks, and puzzle book), do the online curriculum (has interactive activities) or sign up for their virtual class (a live teacher with a dozen or so students). When you do the last option, you get access to the online curriculum as soon as you sign up (so you could use it and check out if you want to keep it - you can cancel your class until after the second class meeting). We ordered the books and signed up for Math 2c/d for our 2nd grader. She has been doing an in-person pod all year, so this is her only virtual instruction, and she likes it. But we mainly use it to keep her motivated/on track. The real learning comes one-on-one when she does the homework ahead of each class (which isn't pen and paper, but math problems presented in a fun way on-line). We did the workbooks and math problems without the class before it started, and it was less motivating.

All semester last fall, we also benefited from a pedagogically intuitive, kind, smart, amazing math tutor who worked with our daughter one-on-one. He was a freshman at Brown, at home for the semester because it was virtual because of Covid. He charged $20 an hour and came to our house before my daughter's pod school and on days they had off. Since it was such a great price, we had him tutor her like ten hours a week, sometimes more. He built in a lot of breaks (like x number of problems, then a few minutes for legos or dolls), knows what second graders are supposed to be learning (from on-line research), but also talked with his former high school teachers and math olympiad friends about strategies for tutoring. But he's just got a strong sense of how to get others to develop their own math sense, to think flexibly about math. That is a great thing about Beast Academy, too. It's the opposite of just learning to add, subtract, multiply, etc. It forces you to learn different strategies (regrouping, rounding, etc) to get to an answer, so you understand more about the relationships/what's going on with the numbers you're using. Sadly for us and hooray for him, he went back to campus this Spring, so now we're just supplementing the pod with Beast Academy and our own one-on-one work.

I should add that in the interval between the 19 year old math tutor and the Beast Academy class, we did math with our kid and she often got SUPER frustrated, screamed, cried, threw things, hyperventilated, etc. It was the opposite of what we want, which is just for her to like it, be competent at it, and feel confident with it. We realized we weren't building in breaks and were pushing her past the point where she was into it. When problems were easy, it was fine. When anything was hard and we actually had to teach, things went berserk. We did a reset, really clueing in to the signals she gave out, and basically just became Ghandi in terms of our parental patience. The second we lost our capacity to be less than super patient or things got counterproductive, we would stop. Better to stop when you're ahead and finish with good feelings about the subject. Now we've had positive sessions pretty much every time. 

Finally, a friend is also started her first grade daughter (they have different age levels) on Golden Key Russian virtual math classes, which is more about math logic/puzzles.