I am much more likely to eat unintentionally. :o

I think mathwonk has a post somewhere about brainstorming with colleagues about ways to solve complex problems at the elementary level. Challenging each other, "Okay, that's a solution, but what if you didn't have that tool? Then how would you solve it? Good, okay, but now eliminate that as an option, say you don't have that skill yet, what then?" Which do you think is tougher, solving with the one easy tool or driving down to the conceptual underpinnings and finding the solution that uses the most basic principles? When you smash an arithmetic problem with the sledgehammer of algebra, you aren't displaying nearly the depth of understanding that you'd have if you could simply visualize and diagram your way to an elegant solution. But once you've got that sledgehammer in your toolbox, everything looks like a sledgehammer-worthy problem. It's a unique and wonderful situation in early elementary that you have a student who *doesn't* have the sledgehammer yet, so his options are still wide-open for seeking out that simpler yet deeper understanding...and this builds for him a foundation on which the conceptual understanding of algebra can be built.

This is what I did for 1B and it worked well. I agree that you need the HIG or the text, otherwise it's kind of pointless to do Singapore. Also, like you pointed out, this is a very early grade we're talking about.

I liked them both when I read them in the past year or two. WH was like a whodunnit with all the unreliable narrators and crazy plot twists and I remember being drawn like a trainwreck to those awful, awful people. JE was the most heart-swelling yet cheesy romance, and following it up by watching the Timothy Dalton movie version was just a completely terrific way to spend some long nights alone, back when I had Netflix streaming and my husband worked late! I bawled my eyes out, though I thought Dalton was way too handsome to be Rochester. We did WH in AP English Lit when I was 17. I remember the whole thing about the wildness of nature and the moors and whatnot. Other than that, nada...I am pretty sure I detested it and/or was numb to it because I only have nebulous negative emotions attached to the book and no memory of the actual story whatsoever.

https://www.facebook.com/peacehillpress

I moved abroad right around my 14th birthday and went to an international college prep school starting with 9th grade. My warning would be that I remember the international move, plus puberty, had me in a bit of a tailspin. I would leave a little wiggle room for culture shock to do its thing. I was still a top student, and 9th grade biology was a let-down because there was no advanced/honors/AP section, but I had enough on my plate with remedial language classes and social situations to deal with.

LOL. http://fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/forum/12-penmanship/

Beast Academy has some beginning discrete math in it and lays the foundation for all kinds of higher-level math. Borac competitive math is at least 1/2 discrete topics. Looks like they most recently published book 10, in level 3 (considered preparation for AMC-8 and AMC-10 and partial preparation for AIME, designed for students aged 11-13 who "can solve linear equations, are fluent with fractions, and can factor into primes,") but 18 books are planned, up through level 4 for students aged 12-15. The Borac books recommend their free site http://www.mathinee.com/ for actually teaching the topics for which their books provide practice. Looks like they've got some trig, combinatorics, probability stuff in there. Beast also requires written response to a lot of problems, which is the beginning of proofs, and is conceptually consistent so there is no unlearning for your student; I am loving the distributive property section that my son is in now, his lightbulb moment about the difference between addition and multiplication reminded me of similar moments I had in college-level Discrete. You should look for posts on this board from mathwonk. He's shared a lot of terrific materials that he uses with Epsilon camp kids.

nm, I'm sure this advice will not be welcome.

I go around and around about this. At the moment my little one who's using Singapore from the ground up, uses the 1A text and WB. The IP is waiting in the wings for her, and I have the HIG to help me cross-check the foundational concepts I need to be solidifying (eg. don't move on without this vs. move on but keep practicing that; where and how to use manipulatives; plus the mental math practice pages and place value cards). My bigger boy who's using it to fill gaps -- as he prefers to play with Beast Academy but needs practice with decomposing higher units to subtract -- looks through the text with me and then I mix up a combination of the WB and IP pages for practice. We're compacting 2A like whoa this way, which is kind of expensive but at least DD can use some of the materials coming up (I can probably even erase some of the books and let her use the same pages, we do so few problems in some sections.) I don't have the HIG for this level, I sometimes wish I did but can't justify the cost. Jury's out if I will pick it up before DD gets to this level though. I've never used CWP but I'm not sold on word problems being the end-all be-all of higher order thinking. They're usually just computational problems embedded in ambiguous language. There are enough word problems in the WB and IP, plus the other supplements we use like competitive math, for me not to be at all interested in adding CWP. So in sum, I think the text and WB as a core, adding IP and HIG as needed, would be my main preference for teaching from these materials. At this point I think I'd drop the text before I'd drop the WB, but like I said...I go around and around about this. You may just have to try it a few ways and see how the materials make the most sense to you.

I like this one, and also http://www.bertiekingore.com/high-gt-create.htm If you're not trying to get into a specific program, or to sort out special situations like twice-exceptionality, I don't think testing is merited at 5. All kids are going through such a massive amount of cognitive change at this age. So far I've been okay with my accelerated kids in ordinary programs. We have teachers who are willing to differentiate to a degree that I think is kind of impressive for 20+ kid classrooms. My son has not yet been bored to tears or misbehavior in class, so we do enrichment at home and it's okay. If you don't *want* to homeschool, IMO it's okay to sit back a while longer and see how things unfold. (But if you do want to, why wait until the end of the year? Withdraw her now and start deschooling!)

I've been putting a "next few days at a glance" along the side of my to-do list pages. Each day has listed just the few "hard landscape" items that I know I'll have to work the rest of the day around. That's where I'd put something like the DMV trip. I'd look at the next few days, choose a likely one, and put the DMV on there with a question mark. When the day arrives and I start setting up my actual bullet list for the day, I'd reconsider if it still fits on this day, and/or I'd put it on with just a bullet point (not a check box) and a question mark. If it's more than a few days away it'd either get a reminder in my iCal (a tickler to think about it again next week, maybe on Sunday when I should be mapping out the "hard landscape" of my whole week) or perhaps a note at the bottom of this current spread of to-do list pages, so it can be carried forward. That's probably as clear as mud, huh. :)

Sleep and food are the first two things I turn to when my kids are edgy and on a hair trigger. Banana or glass of milk the second she gets up? How long is she sleeping, and how well?

(This thread reminded me of the podcast I'm in the middle of, Teaching Literature without Killing It. This degree of analysis...kills the book for me. :o )

You've mentioned this line of notebooks several times, I think they are singing to your heart and you're trying to find a reason to indulge. Just do it! :) But do make up your mind before hand to accept messiness as part and parcel of being effective. As for calendar pages, how did you keep track of appointments and things before the Bullet Journal?

Not at all. If he were in school he'd be one amongst a sea of 20 students trying to get through the handwriting worksheet. In my son's class they say a little pencil grip poem but that's it. This is actually a major purpose of homework in my son's class: some stuff is best addressed one-on-one. At the beginning of the school year when my son was newly 7 he was forming letters wrong and reversing EVERYTHING. The teacher asked *us*, at home, to work on this, because she *can't*. I gave him a few letters to focus on during his work, and gave him the memory trick with his hands for b and d, and he improved. I don't like doing unpleasant subjects during afterschool time so I'm mostly saving our handwriting practice for the summer. When we do handwriting I'll demand posture and grip and correct formation. But only for a few letters at a time to start. Kids seriously don't have a lot of stamina for this stuff. BTW, I also plan on improving my own penmanship, because I bought a fountain pen and want to write more nicely. ;) You could practice alongside him with Getty-Dubay Write Now, and I bet it would be really helpful to you both!

Looks and sounds as good or better than my DS7 who is above average for his first grade class.

Restarted my computer and Chrome is working now!

Same.

Ditto the bolded! :) I brought it up only because I saw a few posts that said "What Circe teaches can be applied under any belief system," and I feel like from what I've experienced of the Institute's teachings, that's just not true on such a general scale. So for me, I need to be very specific about the parts I find that I can adapt. Cultivating virtue as something innate rather than God-given is a great example of adaptation.

I do think it might merit a discussion somewhere (maybe not here but another Circe thread?) about what "following Circe" really means. IMO, it's impossible to divorce the things that the Circe Institute stands for from their basis in Christianity. Like Monica says, their whole definition of virtue is engendered on an understanding that God put those faculties in us, and their whole definition of education is based on the cultivation of virtue. We can use a different definition of virtue, but I'm not sure we're "doing Circe" any more at that point. This is why I haven't felt comfortable chiming in on Circe threads to date. But I'm only just now to the bit in Sophie's World where she's learning about St. Augustine so maybe I'll soon have some new rabbit trails, since I gather that Augustine represents the source from which a melding of Greek Classical/Hellenistic and Biblical worldviews was carried forward. :)

Me! I have been inspired by Kern and Perrin, listening to Circe and Society for Classical Learning audio for months now. In the end, "The Circe Way" is inextricably Christian. There's no getting around that. But we can look to the sources that Kern references and find our own interpretation of the messages there, as well as listening to the ideas that Kern embodies that have to do with teaching methodologies and inspiration. Here are some quotes I've collected in the past few weeks. "The oldest question in the world is, 'What good may I do in it?'" -- Benjamin Franklin "An altered conception of the human being as such, and a new interpretation of the meaning of human existence as such, looms behind the new claims being made for 'work' and the 'worker'." -- Josef Pieper "Above all things we must take care that the child, who is not yet old enough to love his studies, does not come to hate them and dread the bitterness which he has once tasted, even when the years of infancy are left behind." -- Quintilian "Thinking does not come from learning. Learning comes from thinking." -- Bernard Nebel "The 'liberality' or 'freedom' of the liberal arts consists in their not being disposable for purposes, that they do not need to be legitimated by a social function, by being 'work'." -- Pieper "Stop introducing them to a thousand friends [novels] and let them get close to one or two friends." -- Andrew Kern

I get Dr. Bronners in travel-size bottles for about $2. It sudses up so well (especially on a bath poof) that I only need a couple of drops to clean myself, so the tiny bottle lasts something like 4-6 months. I also like to use detergent-based body washes though, I find they leave less film than true soap does with my hard water. Method brand White Tea scent is impressively un-irritating to my sensitive skin and nose. $5 a bottle lasts me about 6-8 months. Finally I also find that local handmade soap holds up remarkably well, so $4-6 per bar gets you a long way. If you don't have a local soapmaker, check this one out: http://notyourmothersapron.com/product/milk-honey/

I have the first book in ebook, and it is workable (especially if I make my own bookmarks and notes to jump to) but I really wish I could flip back and forth and just dog-ear pages for the different threads. If we go to full-time homeschooling I think I'll splurge on hard copy.

I'm crazy in love with my Zebra M-301 (.5 mm), I've had it for years, and I'm so mad it walked off this week. I will find it!!! I don't have a problem with the lead breaking, but I've been writing with .5 mm forever. Just extend less lead (the Zebra is better than, like, a disposable Bic for being able to fine-tune the lead extension) and write gently I guess? :)