Mathletics

This week Ryan is participating in the American Math Challenge with kids all over the country ages 9-14 where he gets points for every right answer to math problems. He broke the top 100 yesterday and is working hard to stay there. He has been as high as spot 53. He has spent probably 6-8 hours a day, maybe more, working on math problems-- and even decided to come straight home after scouts instead of going to basketball with Stephen so he can do more problems and earn more points. I guess he inherited my competitive streak. Stephen would NEVER have chosen math, or anything academic, over basketball.

It is only for this week and next week, so I figure he can do as much math as he wants and is excited about during his free time. I'm still having him do his writing and other school work. He will go do one of his assignments and come back to do more math. He was marking off his assignments and I told him he could count this for math this week and he was totally excited. It was pretty funny-- This doesn't seem like schoolwork to him, even though he has done over 1000 problems in the last 2 days. (His regular assignments have 22). He is already planning to get up early on the last day because it ends at 7 am our time and the kids on the east coast might slip ahead of him. It will be interesting to see if his enthusiasm holds.

I wish the contest was for a scholarship or something like the high school level of MathCounts (the program sponsor). The top prizes for this one aren't as cool. The top 3 kids, nationwide, get a medal and the top 25 get a certificate. Not nearly as good as money for college. But, he is motivated and is working so hard I told him if he ends in the top 100 either of the two weeks, or both, I will buy him a half gallon of ice cream to share with the family and he can have a "free" day to just read instead of doing regular school-- he'll have earned it.