My son is in 1st grade, and seems to be good at maths (he's doing 4th grade) so I was wondering what maths competitions there are in elementary school. We are living in the US but are not from here, so I'm not familiar with what competitions there are here. What maths competitions are there in elementary school (and later grades)?

I don't know about the US, or that young, but I will note that doing well in a bunch of elementary school math competitions (even a mention in the local newspaper) was a sort of ego boost that made me think I was "good at math". Hard to say exactly how ones motivations develop over the years but now I am doing a math phd and who knows perhaps the appeal of math was inculcated through competitions like these.

I dont know if it's in us, but in high school in canada there was gauss, pascal, and euclid if i recall correctly. Maybe another. Can't remember anything in elementary.

I'm not sure what there is at the elementary school level, but middle schools have a national competition called MathCounts. That would be a place to start looking for resources and local contacts.

If you have a well-run Kumon center, that's another way to give him the ability to see more (and higher level) math than what he'll see in school. Kumon is like a self-paced educational program that runs from something like preschool basic counting up through calculus and beyond. The emphasis is on NOT being told how to do problems, but students learning how to do it themselves and learning to find and fix their own mistakes.

Edit: Here's the competition series as I best recall it:

Middle school: MathCounts
High school: AMC 10/12, AIME, USAMO, IMO
College: Putnam

Also, there's a website called "The Art of Problem Solving" which also has many resources.

I checked out the "The Art of Problem Solving" website and found this
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/W...s_competitions
which lists a bunch of competitions. I don't know where to start. Anyone familar with these?

I also saw a long list here.
http://homeschoolmathcontests.com/page.php?6

What does a kid do before they are ready for the Middle School competitions?

Access to competitions for younger children is probably very geographically sensitive. For example, you could probably find something in Boston or Los Angeles, but you wouldn't find one in the the middle of Kansas. Your best bet is probably to see if you can get in contact with a local MathCounts person and try to network from there. These things are not super-heavily advertised because there's usually not a broad interest in it.

(I keep going back to MathCounts because that's a national competition, and the biggest one at the middle school level AFAIK. I think it's your best chance at getting connected to something.)

It's really more about learning to understand mathematical language and how to reason through questions, which comes from exposure and practice.

http://mathcounts.org/handbook

This is a free resource. You can print it up and set your son to just have fun with it. The most important thing at this time is fostering interest and maintaining curiosity, and that doesn't have to happen in a formal competition setting.

I agree with this, but I will note that the competitive aspect was fun to me when I was a kid and probably helped stimulate interest.

I liked this league, although I think I did it in middle school and high school more than elementary school. It seems like it might be tricky to find contest-style problems for really young students. EDIT: Along those lines, I do like the idea of building up my own collection of fun little problems for my daughter, although it's going to be quite a long time before she's ready for them.

No worries, in Kansas your local church points you in the right direction.

http://www.mathleague.com/

Starts in 4th grade IIRC.

Thanks for the info.

A great math competition website the kids really like is Beestar math competition. Kids love the questions and we get to see their progress and what they need to work on. Really love the website.

Five years later... Is the kid a math champion???