Hard Math for Elementary School: Workbook

Hard Math for Elementary School: Workbook is a workbook to accompany the textbook of the same name. Together the books aim to provide kids who are not challenged by their regular schoolwork with lessons that are harder, deeper, and more fun.

The Hard Math textbook (sold separately) is designed to supplement what kids are getting in school. It has chapters related most standard textbook topics: addition with carrying; multiplication; fractions; etc. It covers other important topics —prime numbers, counting, probability —that are being squeezed out of many curricula. And it has chapters on topics which may not be as important—tiling floors, solving number puzzles, squaring big numbers in your head, making polyhedra out of marshmallows and toothpicks—but that make the book more fun and develop higher-level reasoning skills.

Hard Math for Elementary School: Workbook is an important accompaniment to the textbook. It contains more than 100 worksheets. Each worksheet contains challenging questions that help students solidify their understanding of the material that is explained in the corresponding section of the textbook.

Problems in the Hard Math workbook are hard. Some are very, very hard. This reflects the author’s view that hard is fun. Hopefully, talented students will come to enjoy feeling good when they get problems right instead of feeling bad whenever they get one wrong. Many worksheets contain “Making Connections” problems that reinforce what students have learned in previous chapters and “Challenge” problems that will make many teachers reach for their copy of the answer key.

Parents should not buy the workbook without also getting the textbook unless their son or daughter is in a class where someone is using the textbook to teach the material. Much of the material in the workbook is not covered in standard elementary school classes and will seem idiosyncratic and confusing without the textbook.

Glenn Ellison is the Gregory K. Palm Professor of Economics at MIT. He is also the parent of three daughters and has spent many hours coaching middle school math teams and working with informal groups of younger and older kids in his kitchen classroom.