Theory, tricks, worked examples from real contest problems, and practice for each. Pick a topic and start reading.
Read the numbers before you crunch them.
The opening problems on these contests are traps for the calculator-brain. Every one of them rewards the kid who spots the shape of the numbers first.
What whole numbers are made of.
Divisibility rules, primes, units digits. Once you see how integers are built from smaller pieces, the problems get easy.
Three names for the same number.
Percents are multipliers. Fractions are division. Decimals are place value. Move between them freely.
Same ratio in two places.
Distance = Speed × Time. Three friends in one formula carry most of contest math.
Turn the story into a letter.
Algebra is a language for unknowns. Patterns are predictions about what comes next.
Draw the picture. Then look for symmetry.
Roughly a quarter of a typical contest is geometry. The kid who draws a careful diagram is half done.
Count carefully. Don't compute.
Counting is mostly about <i>finding the right way to list</i>. Probability is counting twice — once for the favorable outcomes, once for the total.
Turn the story into a table.
Logic puzzles look like English. They're really tables and constraints in disguise.
Fold it, turn it, see it from the other side
Spatial problems are the single biggest slice of Math Kangaroo. The kid who can fold a net in their head, count a stack layer by layer, or track one corner through a turn picks up points that everybody else loses to guessing.
Three pages that span every lesson at once.
Save the points you already know.
The seven habits that turn a 12 into a 15. Apply to every topic.
The climb to 20+ across every topic.
Pick’s Theorem, SFFT, Legendre, British Flag, and more — collected in one place.
Every “memorize these” block, one place.
Print and pin to your wall the week before the test.
Build a custom problem set to print.
Pick topics, difficulty and how many questions — get a questions PDF and a separate answer key. For teachers & parents.