I wish I remembered the series of math books that my school system used. It was during the "new math" movement. We learned about sets in first grade. Proofs were introduced fairly early. There were problems for which "no answer" was the correct answer.
If you could find a collection of the Mathematical Games articles from Scientific American, those were entertaining and required little background knowledge, but conveyed the fun of math.
Geometry is a good subject because it doesn't have very many prerequisites other than basic arithmetic, and the older textbooks were mostly about proofs. (Note I'm biased, proofs are what made math come alive for me).
Comments
I wish I remembered the series of math books that my school system used. It was during the "new math" movement. We learned about sets in first grade. Proofs were introduced fairly early. There were problems for which "no answer" was the correct answer.
If you could find a collection of the Mathematical Games articles from Scientific American, those were entertaining and required little background knowledge, but conveyed the fun of math.
Geometry is a good subject because it doesn't have very many prerequisites other than basic arithmetic, and the older textbooks were mostly about proofs. (Note I'm biased, proofs are what made math come alive for me).