HUDSON MATH WHIZ TO COMPETE IN PARIS
Twelve-year-old Alexei Kieran sits with his sister Katia and mother Sasha Malashenko near their home in Hudson. The three will be travelling to Paris this week where Alexei will be competing in a math competition.
Alexei Kieran could tell time when he was two-and-a-half years old. He would spend one hour every day at his Montessori preschool playing with the 12-hour and 24-hour clocks, telling the teacher what time it was.
The 12-year-old’s enduring fascination with numbers and excellent math skills are sending him to Paris to participate in Le Championnat International des jeux mathématiques et logiques, Aug. 25-26.
Kieran, who is from Hudson, is one of eight out of a field of close to 16,000 French-speaking students who won in their category at the Association Québécoise des Jeux Mathématiques competition organized by Université Laval. The eight students will represent this part of the world in Paris.
Kieran is about to start Grade 8 at Collège Charlemagne in Pierrefonds, but it wasn’t his high school that entered him in the AQJM competition. Every Saturday, he attends the École russe Gramota in Montreal. The Russian school enters all the students in the competition. Kieran didn’t think much about it when he sat down to write the competition entry exam in October. He sailed through to the quarterfinals.
“I wasn’t nervous for the quarterfinals, but it was hard because there was more logic and less math,” Kieran said. “I’m most comfortable with math. I was nervous for the semifinals because by that point my school was expecting me to move forward. I felt the least pressure for the finals because there was a small probability I would go to Paris.”
He was contacted about attending an awards ceremony at Université Laval in June, but the reality of the invitation didn’t sink in until he returned home from a doctor’s appointment and was met at the door by younger sister Katia holding a sign saying “Congratulations, you’re going to Paris!”
Katia, 11, maintains a high average at Kuper Academy and is a voracious reader. She has a library of more than 1,000 books of all genres. She will be going to Paris to cheer her brother on with grandma, Camilla Malashenko, and Alexei’s godmother, Alla Chupikov. Alexei and mom fly to Paris on a different flight with the rest of the AQJM contingent.
“It will be great for Alexei to be with other students who think like him,” said Sasha Malashenko, Alexei’s mother. “I want him to have fun. I told him to enjoy the (contest) questions. And when he’s finished with his answers to read the questions again. It’s a wonderful opportunity to enjoy.”
It was Kieran’s Montessori teacher who told his mother about his ability to tell time, but it came as no surprise. She was already well aware that he understood numbers at a level way beyond his years.
“When he was still a toddler swinging in the baby swing at the park, I would count with him — past 100,” Malashenko said. “And he’d read out the street addresses when we were in the car. He loved Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. They have really long addresses.”
Keeping up with a highly-intelligent toddler is not for the faint of heart. Malashenko cast around for the best possible way to nurture his intellect. She couldn’t find the exact academic fit at the neighbourhood schools, so she bought the Montessori school he had been attending, renamed it Inspiration Montessori and watched him and his sister blossom in the setting.
He skipped Grade 1 at Kuper Academy.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how nervous is Kieran about the Paris competition?
“Zero,” he said. “My goal was to reach the AQJM finals and I did that. I’d say I’m 9.5 excited to see Paris. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know what to expect.”
Malashenko described her son as “very structured.”
“He will miss the first two days of Grade 8, so he asked me to buy all his supplies and he’s already packed his backpack.”
Catching up on any missed math classes shouldn’t be a problem.