I am struggling with this idea of rushing through a subject he hates. Why's that? I mean, I can kind of guess, but I would ask that you stop and check your reasons for teaching math at all? I mean, if he hated art would you do as much art as possible as quickly as possible while he's young so he can get it out of the way?

If you are making a "good income" and beyond the education tax deduction phase-out but are this uncertain about financial matters, it would probably be VERY worthwhile to consult with a financial advisor. Find a fee-only advisor with a CFA designation and arrange a meeting to discuss your financial goals and how to meet them. They'll be able to confirm or deny the benefits of the state tax deduction for college savings (surely you are throwing away hundreds if not thousands of dollars?) as well as checking up to see that your retirement funds and other savings are invested according to your risk tolerance.

Tax code references. A 529 plan gives federal tax benefits under section 529 of the Internal Revenue code. Plans are state-sponsored and may include some state tax benefits for people who enroll in their own state's plan. IMO contributing to a 529 is a great idea IF you are already very solid on your own retirement savings. Jenny, what is your husband's alternative idea to help your kids pay for college, and where are you investing your retirement options in this recession? Which state's 529 plan are you looking at? Reasons to use a 529: http://www.savingforcollege.com/intro_to_529s/name-the-top-7-benefits-of-529-plans.php

Speaking of "write a bit", you probably don't want to completely neglect output. Big juicy conversations are terrific, but organizing your thoughts coherently enough to put them in a logical written format is an important skill that needs to be built over time. You can scribe for them, and you probably don't want to over do it, but practicing a few times a month to take a summary from some of their history and science doesn't seem like it would hurt. My son keeps a Book of Knowledge where he draws pictures and does copywork or dictates a paragraph for me to write now and again.

SWB wrote the History of the World to be like SOTW but up to high school level. There are also some spines and supplementary primary source readings suggested in the Well-Trained Mind -- I have the National Geographic Almanac of World History and we use its readings sometimes to supplement Gombrich's Little History of the World. Reading-centric science is an interesting concern. I like BFSU for coherence and completeness but it's more of a supplementary sources and conversations and activities kind of program. Someone recently linked to a bunch of books by Isaac Asimov, we'll be using those on an interest-led basis from here on.

If you have a Mac, you can do this with Preview. Just open all the documents you want at the same time. Then either print them from there (it will print all the pages one after the other) or "print" to PDF to create a new document with all the pages in it.

Keep in mind that school won't change who she is. It isn't a magical friends-maker, in fact, with mostly class time and no recess I don't see any reason why she should have more chance for socializing than she does in all those many classes. And that's an important distinction BTW -- socialization means learning to behave civilly with human beings. She can do that if she has any kind of human interaction. Socializing means those friendship interactions you're looking for. And frankly, some kids are introverted and don't need a whole lot of socializing. My son has yet to make any close friends just from school. He spent the whole first half of first grade just bouncing a basketball by himself every recess because he couldn't figure out how to play with anyone else. His friendship relationships are mostly from the neighborhood and from soccer, and a little bit from karate (though we live a long way from most of those families). I definitely feel like it's overkill in kindergarten to go to the classroom daily and give a math lesson to an audience of one. You can do math during afterschool or you can just let math ride. She'll pick up a lot of stuff from life. If you want to do a battery of testing and get a gifted IEP in place that's another option but not one I'd be keen on. If she's self-driven she won't mind doing a little more seat work, or doing fun math on the weekend, or whatever. If my daughter goes to kindergarten I'm not expecting any academic progress during class time. We can do actual learning afterschool. Ours is a half-time program where they attend full days every other day. So we have every other day and the weekend to keep enrichment and interest up. It worked out okay for my son so I'm hopeful for my daughter. I think I can keep her working no more than about 2 years ahead in math, and let her do all the reading she wants, and go from there.

Good luck, Gil. I definitely don't envy you this struggle, but I know your boys are in great hands.

IMO, mathematics and computation are fairly distinct fields. A clever mind can definitely understand and apply instruction about how to do a specific computation. That's the gifted learner trait coming out, the fact that you don't have to repeat yourself. "When the problem looks like this, you do that." And the thing is learned. Gifted learners are great pattern graspers which helps too. But thinking mathematically is a horse of a different color, and that's what Beast encourages. And it takes a bit of a different pathway through the brain to do that. The maturity needed is both the developmental capacity to synthesize ideas from many areas and make something new (the classic "logic stage" distinction) as well as the emotional strength to persevere and wrestle with something that doesn't come immediately. My observation, totally biased by what I see in my kids (and myself), is that there's a transition around age 7 that takes away some of the maturity stumbling blocks. I think that gifted learners have some of those "logic stage" traits much earlier than typical (and that the stages aren't black and white for anyone) so they're able to synthesize better starting around this age. And combined with the usual "age of reason" ability to buckle down, this is a good time to expect more. For some kids, it seems like the best thing to do is to go ahead and fly through basic computational stuff to get it out of the way and to keep the student interested with the novelty of learning new things, then come back and do more problem solving when they're ready. But kind of as an experiment, for my kids I'm working on an approach that gives them other stuff to mess around with until they have the maturity to do useful problem-solving, so that they get to problem-solve with basic math operations while those operations are still fairly new to them. My still newly-5 DD is very bright but I'm kind of...hiding the curriculum from her. I don't want her to get very far ahead while I am still unsure of her ability to bounce back from disappointment and uncertainty. She's getting better at this and I might pull out some puzzly things for her soon, and step up her chess game a little. I want Beast to wait until she can really enjoy all aspects of it. She keeps sneaking the guides and reading them, which is frustrating...I might have to keep 3C out of her reach when it comes. (She's reading LoF as I type. When she gets confused by a Your Turn to Play she says, "Mom, I'm going to ask you to help me with this, but answer me with a QUESTION, because this is MY math." Last week she was getting annoyed when I would guide her to figure out answers on her own, so this is progress!) Now, my DS at 7.5 with some problem-solving experience under his belt, he thrives on challenge. He skips straight to the starred problems in Beast, calls Borac his "advanced/interesting math," and yesterday he spontaneously described to me his ideal math class; it was basically a math circle with a teacher guiding Socratic discussion. This is a kiddo who, even though he is probably just bright and not a gifted learner at all, is going to go far with mathematical learning (I hope!) When he was just newly 7, we hit the Geometry chapter and angle mazes were terrific fun and he got polyominoes pretty well but he was stumped by counting triangles. He got the wrong answer and flipped his lid. That turned out to be a terrific learning experience!

Not a story-flow thing, but Beast A-C treat a lot of topics that other programs just don't. So there might be a prerequisites thing. You can use the pre-assessment to find out if there's anything missing that would make that level tough for your student: http://beastacademy.com/store/products/3D/assessments/Pre.pdf

My 5yo is using Fred and Singapore. Since she's still months away from her kindergarten year, I'm playing it very gentle and chill with no real problem-solving supplements yet. We do a little bit of the textbook and workbook when she demands it. Since I'm starting to get the hang of Singapore, I'm occasionally guiding her to think about things that way, and as a result we're doing a bit of skipping around in the workbook. The stinker did all of LoF Apples and some of Butterflies, including Your Turn to Play, in the past two days though. We might have more Singapore skipping to do the next time we hit it. My 7yo used Singapore up to 1B before starting Beast. He's still technically in 2A but I may or may not switch him to Beast as his spine plus occasional supplements (Singapore IP, competition math) by the time he's done with 2A.

I've been on a similar quest lately with my guy who's a competent reader at the 3rd-5th grade level or so but won't immerse himself in fiction. We've had a couple of slam dunks this week: Boxcar Children and Time Warp Trio. I don't know about well-written, but they're not terrible (Scieszka isn't a slouch even if he's quite free with the booger jokes) and they've sucked my little guy in. I'm hoping they'll be gateway books. ;) I like to go through the Juvenile section of the library and seek out the slim, unintimidating volumes. Whipping Boy for sure, maybe Water Horse, there's a Gary Paulsen series about somebody called Tucket that keeps catching my eye but looks a little higher interest level than my youngsters. I grabbed Bunnicula eagerly based on these criteria and it looks like it might work out if my sensitive boy can get past his worry about BUNNIES WITH FANGS. :lol: My Side of the Mountain is looking good. Sometimes it's not as much about the word count as it is about the binding.

I use the New Content button. I try not to follow the links to the Logic Stage, High School, Learning Challenges or College boards since those don't apply to us but nearly everything else is fair game. :) If my time is limited I scan for or just jump straight to the boards for Accelerated and Afterschool.

Makes a lot of sense and I've not been down any of these paths! But it seemed to me that the optometrist wanted the 5yo seen by OT primarily in order to make him pay attention and work more diligently at his eye exercises, not because of a specific underlying concern related to the vision issues. And the OP posted the thread because her gut disagreed that he needed more therapy, but she was reluctant to go against a "doctor's orders". I guess to me, an optometrist's suggestion to do something about her 5yo's ability to concentrate would be just that -- a suggestion. Now, the OP lists a bunch of red flags, and the optometrist (who's probably seen lots of kids with issues and may be speaking from that experience) and the posters here are confirming that these are red flags, so it sure does seem like there might be something going on worth investigating. But is an optometry referral to OT for the stated purpose of making him sit still longer, the most appropriate path to start the investigation? I'm kind of asking for myself too. My son has a handful of musculo-skeletal issues that my mama gut is starting to tell me must be related, but I don't know where to turn first. It just feels like a diagnosis should precede therapy...right? (Of course, for me there is not really insurance involved since we have a huge deductible, and the costs you're talking about are disturbing. Ack.) I tried to start with the pediatrician but that was a non-starter so now I just don't know where to turn next. Hrm.

Homeschoolers do tend to tweak. I'd be extremely surprised if you found someone who had never needed to swap out a single aspect of MCTLA from 3rd grade level through high school level. But if you did find such a loyal user, they might be more likely to be found in the Yahoo group or RFWP forum? As for teaching lit without modern Spark Notes analysis, I am reminded of Kern's comment about dissecting puppies and then expecting your kids to joyfully receive them as presents. :) You could look in the Circe threads for that.

The dynamic of an optometrist referring a patient to an occupational therapist for presumptive treatment of an undiagnosed behavioral/neuropsych problem, just feels like a weird short circuiting of the whole health care support network. Where are the psychologists and the medical doctors coming into play here? I don't feel like declining your *optometrist's* observations about something completely outside of their narrow field of training quite qualifies as "ignoring a doctor's advice."

The book Sleepless in America has some interesting stuff about how different kids' personalities affect their sleep needs. Some kids do fine with varying bedtimes, some not so much. Some will sleep the longest stretches with the earliest bedtimes (sleep begets sleep), some will crash for their set number of hours regardless, etc. My 7yo son does best with about 11 hours of sleep, and he gets up at about 7:30 almost not matter what I do, so I try to get him in bed by 8:30. I notice a difference in his daytime behavior if I do. Lately I've been exhorting him to PLEASE sleep in if I let him stay up late. He's working on it, and proudly made it to 8:30 in the morning one day after I let him stay up till almost 10. But I feel better about it and see better behavior if I stick to 8:30. (Earlier would maybe be better for him but it'd be much harder to enforce; as it is we slip close to 9pm most nights.) My 5yo needs slightly more than 11 hours but she's good about adjusting her wake times so I actually let her stay up later than her brother most nights (she loves having a few minutes to read after tucked in) because she can get up at 8:30-9 without affecting her behavior for the rest of the day.

The same people are going to see it either place, I suspect. :) If you are referring to the general response of, "what controversy," I guess it just doesn't seem like something to really get knotted up over if you haven't even encountered a problem yet. There's so much else in homeschooling to fret about! All I can say is that my 7yo just last week reviewed the sound of y at the end of a word and then learned the suffixing rule for pluralizing such words. He was able to absorb and extrapolate pretty easily so no problems here thus far!

Oh. Well, it's not really a conscious choice on my part, AAS and LOE just happen to be the programs I have chosen. :) But spaghetti, piano, stadium and helium (per LOE, syllables ending in i and followed by a vowel; or else at the end of foreign words) sure do look more explicable this way!

But it IS one of the sounds /i/ can make. Can you give an example of the problem you're seeing?

If you're mulching around plants, then organic materials all the way. Bark if you must, hardwood is better, compost if you don't mind reapplying a lot. I'm still trying to remediate parts of my poor soil 5 years later from the rocks and landscape fabric the previous owners put in. I'm sure it looked nice and low maintenance for a while, but the soil needed to breathe and to have more organic matter added and it just was not a happy situation for the plants. I wish I could make a Most Interesting Man in the World meme. "I don't always mulch, but when I do I use compost."

What is your goal for kindergarten math? Maybe articulate that for starters. My goal for kindergarten math, for all kindergarten subjects for that matter, is to promote a love of the subject. I don't really care what that looks like...I don't know if you're familiar with the adage "Solid food under one is just for fun?" Well, for me "Math before first grade is just for fun." I do feel I should do something since this is such a terrifically curious age, but I don't really feel anxiety about *what* we do. Not even for an accelerated kiddo. Interest-led activities are sufficient, so anything curriculum-based is just gravy. (DD5 is ramping up her progress through Singapore 1A now and I would not be surprised if she's at or even through 1B by the time we start kindergarten officially. We'd totally be doing Miquon if I didn't cringe at the thought of adding yet another math program to this household...it's not out of the question though, and we do have a double set of c-rods that we use for playing with Education Unboxed videos.)

I should put that a little differently. I still don't think kindergarten *needs* academics. But because of my views about kindergarten being primarily for fun, I hadn't been fretting about the complete lack of academic challenge in public school kindergarten. So now I'm seeing that my daughter is different. If she's already getting frustrated with work that's too easy, then maybe a kindergarten classroom for kids who are just learning to count past 10 is not the right place for her after all.My point in posting this here was that I empathized but didn't really understand the folks with very small kids who insist on progressing their computation skills before their problem solving skills catch up. Now I'm getting a taste of it and it's kind of upsetting my apple cart. Still, I'm pretty happy to have a little guy who'll mess around with his "theories" for "solving subtraction problems with a blank" or who wants to invent "one of those symbol things like a plus or multiplication" that will take the inputs and create new numbers or digit sums for the outputs, who is willing to tackle a rate problem with only rudimentary multiplication skills. I would like it a lot if his sister would also be willing to think about stuff from a few angles before leaving it behind, and I'm currently brainstorming ways to make that happen. A rousing game of "There are Zero" from LoF was a great start today.

The trick, I find, comes of taking a topic in which the student has had direct instruction, and somehow making it fresh enough to be worth problem-solving with. This is where I like competitive math. The problems come out of left field with some of this stuff and no amount of computational expertise will make you see the patterns that need seeing in some of the puzzles. Then you can throw in some stuff that encourages you to see the same ol' computations in more elegant ways...computing the sums of the first 100 integers or whatever. I'm watching your threads more closely than ever, because while I know my hooligans don't have the passion or the genius of yours, my DD5 went to bed last night begging for learning...she worked through the first few chapters of LoF Apples yesterday on her own, writing out her answers on a separate piece of lined paper, and at first her suggestion for learning time was Fred but then she sighed, "Fred is too EASY. My other books [singapore 1A] are easy TOO." I said, "I've noticed that addition and subtraction facts are coming a lot easier to you lately. It might be time to start skipping around a bit in your Singapore book." She sat up in bed with wild grin and said, "Oh, THANK YOU MOMMY!" and hugged me hard around the neck. Um. Still holding tightly to the last fraying thread of my firmly-held theory that kindergarten (which begins in fall for her) needs NO academics even for the most accelerated kids?

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