Every program has it's own genetics. The AoPS (Art of Problem Solving) program was started by winners of national math competitions. Its main focus is to raise the next generation of math competitions' winners. RSM (Russian School of Mathematics) was started by two immigrants from the Soviet Union, an engineer and a school teacher. The focus of this program is on teaching the time-honored standard 20th century Eastern European school math. Our program was designed by UCLA professors of mathematics, also immigrants from the Soviet Union. The roots of the program lie in the Easter European Math Circle movement pioneered by the Soviets. However, the program was further developed to prepare American children for success in the 21st century American college and beyond. We look past math competitions. Our aim is graduate and post-graduate education and research.

 Our study materials, from kindergarten to 12th grade, are organized in a system that prepares children for success in college and beyond. On the one hand, we build the knowledge of modern day mathematics layer by layer. On the other hand, it is the nature of our program that students come and go. This fact of life requires a modular approach to teaching. Our courses and quite often topics covered in the courses are independent of one another in the short run. In the long run however, they form the layered system mentioned above. There is one exception to this rule: the course  Breaking Numbers into Parts forms a single 2-year-long course for 1st and 2nd grade. This course cannot be broken into smaller independent modules.

It is very important that your child does our homework regularly and with due diligence. They may occasionally need parental help. Please encourage your children to spread the load evenly solving a problem a day and not leaving everything until the last moment. Failure to do homework may result in your child getting behind and losing interest in the course.

Parental participation is very important. Most often, children take our classes once a week. If a student does not reinforce the material covered in class at home, they would remember very little a week later. This is why each and every lesson in our courses is followed by homework. Parents are expected to encourage their children to do the homework throughout the week. It will help to evenly distribute the load so that a student does a bit of advanced math nearly every day. Active parental participation is required for a child’s success in all of our elementary and middle school courses! At the beginning of almost every homework, a child is asked to explain to their parents the main concept of the lesson covered in class. A parent listening with genuine interest, asking questions and occasionally playing a bit goofy is a huge motivator! Unless you are a STEM-area professional, be prepared to learn a lot of math with your child!

Each major topic covered in a course is followed by a quiz. The purpose is to check how students have learned the material. If the quiz indicates that many students have a far-from-perfect understanding of some part of the curriculum, we will review the part. Practice shows that the feedback the quizzes give is invaluable! To ease the fear of testing some students may have, we  use the following approach. Before a quiz, we tell students that in our courses quizzes test not students, but teachers. If a student gets a low grade, it means that us teachers could do a better job. Then we ask students to come prepared and not to let us down! 

This is a picture of a 3D projection of the most symmetric solid of all dimensions, a 4D polytope called 120-cell. Each of its one hundred and twenty 3D walls is a regular dodecahedron.