Hi accelerated board, It seems like the classifieds might get buried under the volume of stuff that goes through WTM so I wanted to give anyone interested a heads up that I have AoPS Prealgebra and Intro to Algebra for sale in the Classifieds here as well as MCT Level 3 Basic package (Grammar Voyage, Essay Voyage, Etc.) Sorry for the spamminess of this. I will nuke this post if doing this is verboten. Thanks, Jill

My 12 yr old ds is working on Intro to Algebra. We did some of the PreAlgebra over a year ago but picked and chose because he had also done EPGY pre-algebra a couple years ago. It will likely take him about 1 to 1.5 years to complete Intro to Algebra and this is *without* doing Challenge problems. I generally let him work along at his own pace by watching the videos, reading the section and then working the exercises. The Review exercises can take a week for him, again, without the Challenge problems. I tend to supplement a bit with some other practice work when he struggles and I have found it difficult to find good supplements because AoPS is a real *thinker's* program and so many aren't. There are sometimes not enough practice problems for him to develop concepts confidence, so then I might have another week of extra practice (this week it's "Mixture Word Problems" courtesy of math-aids.com.) That's just our example of pace for an accelerated but maybe not highly gifted math student.

My 12 yr old is taking it. He probably could have done it at about 9-10 yrs old. At 6, I would recommend Scratch first or maybe some of the other suggestions here. Depending on the student too, Alice might be an option but my ds, while initially quite interested at a young age, didn't take to it.

Thank you, jetzmama! I didn't check this thread for a while as we packed and moved. We are in the Barboursville area now and will be in Huntington proper hopefully in a month or two. That will be more convenient for my husband so we'll get to se him just that little bit more. Thanks for the tips - :)

My husband will be a first year med student at Marshall this fall. I expect to continue to homeschool our 12 year old son as I have for the last several years. Since it's a completely new area for me, I'm looking to make a few connections. anyone? :)

Literature - 1 hour Memorization (poems, educational songs, speeches, anatomy flashcards) - 10-15 minutes Vocabulary/roots (Caesar's English) - 10-20 minutes Math - 1 hour or more Spanish - 20 minutes (I also try to use what little I know in the home...) Alternating weeks of History and Science - ~1 hour Grammar & Writing - varies from 15 minutes to 1 hour daily (if we're editing his writing and it goes quickly, sometimes that's all we do or if there was a lot of writing in History or Science, I assign him a Practice Voyage sentence analysis.) That's roughly it not including exercise, fun reading times, swimming lessons, etc... No music yet this year but I'm not certain what to do there. Both my dh and I were/are musicians yet ds does not naturally incline that way though he has great pitch, rhythm, and voice. I have him memorize songs fairly often so maybe I'll just add in some more of that for now?

My ds did EPGY's pre-algebra with a running 85% which is ok by them but I could tell there were things that weren't sticking. So I tried the AoPS Pre-Algebra (not AoPS Intro to Algebra) but I ultimately ran into the issues that came up in this thread: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/473914-ok-so-what-is-going-on-hereaops-pre-a-vs-elementary-algebra/ (edited to add link I apparently forgot...)

At 4.5 years old I'm not sure I'd worry about it considering he's doing other fine motor drawing and has that "watch until he can do" personality.

I second printing out the Mr. Q books at the younger ages. I think I only started working with pdfs with ds when he was 10.

Just this fall I switched from the MCT writing materials to IEW's "Rockets, Radar, and Robotics: Technology-Based Writing Lessons". The lessons are broken down into small steps that help guide ds a bit better. MCT's Essay Voyage was a bit looser and more intuitive which strikes me as funny because I don't think of the grammar Practice books as being that way. You might want to look at some of IEW's materials? http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/catalog I use MCT's Caesar's English as our backbone for vocabulary and spelling still. I intend to buy Word within the Word too. They don't give you guidelines for using it as a spelling program but I just quiz for both understanding and spelling by giving him the definition and then having him spell the word out either verbally or in WordPad (with no SpellCheck turned on of course!) edited to add: Generally, I don't emphasize "spelling" as a subject. My opinion is that he needs to be able to proofread his own work and find spelling errors in context moreso than isolated words. When we read a paragraph, we are able to "correct" spelling errors internally, oftentimes without even realizing we just saw a spelling error. So I tell him if he has spelling errors in his writing but make him find them.

bump... :lurk5:

I can't recommend EPGY Algebra based on our experience. The Elementary mathematics and pre-algebra was a good fit for ds but Algebra is not. It may be timing or maturity or who knows what. I think the lack of a course text (they could just let us download the scripts they read for the lectures with the final images or something) contributes to this issue. My ds is just barely getting into taking notes for classes at age 11. Unless you do that to create your own text as you go, I think it suffers for that. The way the lectures are labeled and organized does not aid in finding previous topics for reference. I can't tell you how many times we have tried to do just that and were unable to. Instead, I decided we would just have him repeat most of it but it's no better second time around because of the difficulty in navigating the information. Nope, disappointed in this as a stand alone and even with a couple of other sources we use here - Head First Algebra and The Humongous Book of Algebra Problems.

Well, here I am again... DS had almost completed EPGY Algebra but it definitely wasn't "sticking" so we reset the program to redo most of it but I am just as frustrated with it this time around. With him, it encourages some pretty bad habits if I am unable to sit down and basically just do it with him. He resists until he's floundering and then I don't understand where he is. guh... Part of our issue is my DH is enamored with the Stanford name on this regardless of whether it's a good fit. I need to try to keep him out of it but he's home right now so he's butting in on our schoolwork every day... Painless Algebra may be a good fit and maybe I can do them in tandem until our current EPGY subcrip runs out. & then just do AoPS. or maybe I'll switch to AoPS now. arg!

Thanks! That link and the links within look useful.

I need to review options again and I, for medical reasons affecting my brain right now :/ , cannot pull to mind the various names of programs let alone how appropriate. I have an accelerated 10yr old son who has been doing EPGY for some years. He recently started their Pre-algebra program and while it's not bad, I'm not certain it's a good fit either. Since his current enrollment will be up at the end of January, I thought I could look around before then in case I wish to change programs. I tried a search on this forum but I swear every thread about math with all its responses comes up. Thank you!

You could start doing just pawns games with a chess set. Then after that is mastered you add one piece, like, a pawns and rooks game, then a pawns and bishops game, etc. Another cute and good game: Chateau Roquefort

Just fyi, I found over 1,000 listings for Mindstorms on ebay just now. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=mindstorms&_sacat=0 I was curious because I figured a used kit shouldn't cost someone $300 but it looks like it would be fairly spendy (at least $150 if it's functional?) by many of our budgets even used.

What Snickerdoodle said. (I'm a celiac too...)

We have hunted down old LEGO kit directions from the 70s and 80s and then ds would try to build them from the parts he already has. You can start here and navigate from the little pop up menu at the top of the page: http://www.brickfactory.info/year/index.html The old sets don't tend to use as many specialty parts as newer sets. There are some very cool puzzle builds here but may be for more advanced builders? We haven't tried these yet: http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/puzzles.html

My son had similar issues with Singapore. We switched to computer based math with EPGY. There's one problem at a time on the screen in front of the student and it's not full of colorful little cutesy-wootsy drawings and characters... though I can't remember the kinds of names they use in the word problems; I can recall it's a variety - some non-anglo-saxon names.

I agree. That's essentially what I did. Island is wonderful and did with my son approximately when he would have been a 2nd grader. Sorry, I don't remember all of the things I used to stretch it into 2 years but just a smattering of things that reinforced the basic parts of speech and sentence structure. Some of that was in his EPGY program Language arts section which we then dropped when it was time to do the Town series last year. We would do "Mad Libs", play "Silly Sentences" game, memorize "Schoolhouse Rocks" grammar songs, etc...

I understand. Completely. :grouphug:

In addition to many of the books already mentioned, there's a series of books by Gary Paulsen of Hatchet fame about a young man, Francis Tucket, who was headed west on the Oregon Trail and got waylaid by adventures: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/garypaulsen/library/tucket.html These books dovetailed nicely with our history unit. I don't see them mentioned much but my son really enjoyed them last fall just before he turned 10.

We are using as our main program. About once a month I check through the detailed reports and see if there are some areas we need to review or drill a bit. Sometimes it's obvious to me as I sit by and observe which subjects need more work. Mostly, my son works on his own and the program provides the repetition as needed though so this doesn't happen often. He is supposed to do the work and the learning on his own with no interference from me - it's my understanding that is how it is designed, so that the child learns it on his/her own for maximum retention and understanding. It's meaty enough for us. My son started doing 2 - 20 minute sessions a day roughly when he turned 10. We did 20 minute sessions for the first few years and then added on 5 minutes, then 10, then 15 until we reached our new cap. We find it quite easy to use. Rarely do we have any computer compatibility issues. Once in a while the lectures are not all that helpful but that's rare. Their geometry sessions still suffer even though they rewrote them last year - the interface and instruction were both wonky. The rewrite is definitely an improvement but I think they should try again. I would just double check the info on their site. I don't remember precisely but the program is worth the cost to us as it's a good fit. There aren't a bunch of overly cutesy colored graphics (my son doesn't want those in his math program), it's direct and to the point, and, most importantly, moves at his pace even if his pace varies.

I cannot remember which appellation goes with which version of OSX. Mindstorms worked just fine, no problems for me on a MacBook running 10.5.8.