If you are using Lindamood Bell products, why not LIPS? That's their auditory processing and beginning phonics program. A less intensive and cheaper option would be the Heggerty programs or the Tennessee kindergarten reading (free to print). Somebody here has the link. These are similar to each other; with more scaffolding than AAR, but much less than LIPS.

The SAT would be computer-only also. It's a trend... The AP tests haven't converted yet.

Can you get into that site? It looks like I can, but then I only see a blank page, no matter which option I pick.

It's not the College Board; it's the local schools inappropriately placing students. Several years ago, an administrator for my local district was quoted in the local paper as saying "we celebrate our 2's" because a student in the AP class who gets a 2 on the exam supposedly learns more than a student in a similar regular education class. That means failing to learn the content of the course, although the grading system probably gives the student a B or a C on his or her transcript. About the same time, a neighborhood child with APD complained about the special ed class she where she had been placed. She was a serious student, who read well, but processed oral information slowly. The one-size fits all high-school special ed "accommodated" by doing mostly oral work; worse than no accommodations for her. Most of the students had both reading and serious behavioral issues. She said the class was a waste of her time. The only option the district gave her and her parents was to move her directly to AP. She moved. The family was happy with her C grade in the AP section and a kid who actually liked the material being covered and her classmates. I never asked if she even took the exam, but I expect that the school would have insisted even if she said she didn't feel ready.

I think many people use Megawords as just worksheets, but the teachers' manual emphasizes repeated readings of a few words from each list over several days until accuracy and fluency are achieved even with a new selection of words. With 40-100 words per spelling pattern and 5 or 10 per practice session, there's plenty of choice if a kid needs a month to reach fluency. The criteria for spelling is similar, but only the more common words are suggested for spelling practice. They encourage moving ahead in reading even if spelling needs to move more slowly.

Just to ensure that someone other than the original poster doesn't misapply Malam's good information: Malam's point is true for math, sciences and most STEM areas, but not necessarily for all fields. The professional schools, such as medicine and law, are notoriously expensive. The humanities generally do not fully cover tuition and living expenses.

Wait a minute... the older kid might be a good candidate for Beast Academy, but a really wonder about the younger one. You have to really like puzzling out tricky problems for Beast. If he needs lots of help with Singapore, I'd slow down and give him the help. Also, I would never make a dramatic switch in math programs without doing a placement test first. The sequences can be different enough that even quite "mathy" students may need to back up a level. They may then be able to speed through parts of the first level or two, though.

I have taught in a large, required course where the final exam included a standardized national exam published by the professional organization for our majors, plus a brief in-house part covering topics taught in our course that weren't covered on the standardized test and questions with higher-order thinking. We set our own grading scale for exam and course grades since it wasn't exactly the same test as the standardized part. (We reported the raw scores from the standarized part to the national organization.) We could NOT ever release the full exam due to exam security rules on the standardized part.

Napoleon's Buttons is good, with an emphasis on chemistry that may have changed history. However, the chemistry level is probably too high for a logic level student, more like strong high-school or college/interested adults. There are lots of comparisons of similar organic structures, easily accessible for AP level students.

When I taught freshman chemistry at a 4-year, mostly science and engineering college, we had about 24-27 labs for the whole year. Each was scheduled for 2 hours in lab plus reports written as homework. Some "reports" were simple forms to describe what occurred; others required extensive data analysis, graphing and a formal written report. We actively taught computer skills for data analysis and the desired format for the reports. I would expect slightly less from an AP course because very few high schools or home-school families have the more expensive laboratory equipment.

Note this comment: When I taught at CTY many years ago, the 3-week "AP" chemistry class was clearly labeled as prep for a follow-on AP class. It skipped the easier topics (assumed solid mastery of high-school level material) and provided an introduction to the more difficult topics, not complete coverage. I assumed the biology works the same way. The 6-7 week version should be great for showing rigor and readiness for acing the same course in college. The student would still need extensive review and test prep if planning to take the AP test 9-months later. Most students forget a lot over a full school year if not used or reviewed!

Note: For pre-med students, colleges often recommend a second year of biology and/or chemistry in high school, but not earning credit for AP/DE. You can still take the AP, but not report it or (at some colleges) report it, but not ask for credit. The idea is to take these courses officially at your 4-year college, which med schools often regard more favorably, but with most of the material understood before the class. Colleges with large numbers of declared pre-med students often use these classes as "weeder" courses, making them harder than necessary to eliminate pre-med majors who might struggle in med school. Not a nice practice, but it does happen at some colleges, because it gives the college a good reputation with the med schools if all their applicants are stellar.

Seconding Miss Tick. The only other "math movie" I saw was "The Mean Policeman" which was about the mean value theorem in AP Calculus class. A man tries to argue with the policeman who gives him a speeding ticket on a turnpike because the time and distance between two toll booths shows an average speed over the speed limit. The "mean" policeman patiently explains the theorem three times. Not at all useful for grade 7.

I did Mech and EM BC as a senior concurrently with AP Cal BC. I felt I learned more multi-variable calculus than electricity and magnetism in the second part of the physics class. Well, it made "Calculus 3" much easier in college, but I re-took the physics despite my univ being willing to give credit.

Note: I know one local school district that pushes AP hard, but the AP coordinator was quoted in the local paper saying "We celebrate our 2s!" A friend's teen in that district went from special ed for auditory processing disorder to an AP humanities class with no accommodations mid-year and did OK (B/C borderline). I don't know if she even took the test. This was done at the student's initiatve. The parents were surprised that there didn't seem to be any intermediate levels available. Northern VA schools tend to be among the highest achieving in the country, so OP school is likely to have a different attitude and higher level of achievement.

The strictly humanities students in my college year took something called something called "Discrete math" to meet the mathematics requirement. It covered neither algebra, trig nor calculus. Instead, it had a mix of basic probability, statistics, number theory. group theory, Boolean algebra, binary arithmetic... with exactly which one were included every term based on the whim of what the professor thought would be most interesting. I had a young relative who graduated from Lynn University 5 years ago. The "core" requirements were so broad and varied that no two students took the same thing. The "quantitative reasoning" requirement was one or two semesters with probably 10-15 choices, including options with names like "Lying with Statistics" or "Winning at Vegas", all designed to be catchy to entice uninterested students. They seem to have revised this core again and now I can't even find actual course descriptions in the online catalogue. Note that I only saw two courses labeled as MAT for math: college algebra and calculus concepts. Moral of the story: Many applied programs at 4 year colleges have very little intense academic requirements. Smallish schools with heavy business, eduation and public policy emphasis seem the furthest from what we consider traditional academics.

My former AP Physics teacher from ages ago came to my class reunion once and said that the scores have been so generous that he wouldn't want anyone with less than a 5 to validate. He would even like an option for a "6" to show who really mastered the material.

I have read two Poodle books. While the work for the student is more basic than the Island level, the story line and literary style are convoluted. It's as though MTC is showing off every literary technique at once (with side-bar definitions) while introducing basic parts of speech. Characters in the first book become aware of being characters in a book and climb over the top of the page. In the second volume about sentence structure, the characters are rehearsing a play. Again, "breaking the fourth wall" is part of the story with little transition between the story of the play and the story of the rehearsal. I think it would be confusing to a very literal child. The Island books may be more advanced, but seem less conceptually and visually cluttered.

"The ABCs and All Their Tricks" is a good resource for adults. It's not something that you could give a kid. One big point that was new to me is that the spelling rules on the "Latin side" of English and the ones on the purely "English side" are slightly different. The core English rules require doubling consonants because VCV patterns make the first vowel long. In word with Latin roots, the first vowel can be long or short, resulting in what look like exceptions to the "Happy rule." Doubling in Latin-side words is pretty much limited to adding English suffixes like -ed or-ing. The book gives pretty long lists of "English-side" and "Latin-side" affixes. English root words have very strongly accented syllables and very weak unaccented syllables, leading to lots of schwa sounds, which can be spelled like almost any short or long vowel. For example, mitten, button, mountain all have "schwa n" or final, vinyl, lentil, candle, missile... About all you can do is learn which are most common and look for patterns. The "say to spell" method is helpful to remind yourself which one to use in a given word. Read final as if the accent were on the second syllable and say the short a clearly when learning to spell it. Latin root words have less variation between accented and unaccented syllables and the accent shifts as you add prefixes and especially suffixes. This lets you use a set of related words to find one with the accent on the syllable that's giving you trouble.

I'd be more worried about anything containing heavy metals and some exotic salts. Also, the old rhyme " Do as you 'oughta', add acid to to water." Well, it rhymes if you say it with a strong Boston accent.😉 So dribble concentrated acids slowly into a large amount of water. The reaction is exothermic (gives off heat) and can cause boiling and spatter acid if you do it backward.

I don't know the Abeka curriculum, but I have certainly heard of small schools with combined grades using two years of curriculum in alternate years for all the kids in a combined classroom without problems in the content areas. It seems to work well as long as the two years don't build on each other. For example, one year might be life science topics and US history, the other might be earth science topics and ancient history. That would not cause a problem doing them out of the original order. The teacher might assign some extra output for the older students, but any text, workbook or group projects could easily be identical. Skills must be taught sequentially, although an advanced child could skip books, particularly if there is lots of review built into the program.

Sodium hydroxide is toilet bowl cleaner, so just use a little at a time in place of your regular one. Just be careful not to add anything else until you've flushed a couple of times. Definitely use hazardous waste collection for the rest. Hazardous waste collection happens 3 or 4 times a year near even my relative's small town (pop~ 5000) so it shouldn't be hard to find. Four or five towns allow folks from the neighboring towns to join their special collection day at a town garage or transfer station.

As someone with really ancient programming skills (Basic, Pascal, Fortran)...just for my own edification: What are the current programming languages and where is each one commonly used? (For example, I learned Fortran rather than Cobal back in the 80s because I was interested in science, not business.) What are the scripting languages and where is each one commonly used?

When I taught, we let the student work with another section later in the week if possible. If not, there were one or two sets of equipment and chemicals on a cart in the the lab were the technicians worked for profs to borrow and take to an empty lab to supervise students who needed to make up the following week. I spent 6 or 8 hours each term supervising single students almost every term that I taught. (We didn't have TAs since we had no grad students.) As a last resort, we gave the students raw data and had them do calculations and write up a report with an acknowledgement of the source of the data. That allowed at least partial credit without cheating. Some experiments involving mostly qualitative observations really couldn't be done that way at all.

Everyone is suggesting disabilities or just too young. These are certainly possible and not being able to spell one "sight" word shortly after hours of practice IS a red flag. However, it sounds like she is spelling what she has actually been taught. AAS 1 only covers one-syllable, short vowel words. Long vowels are introduce in the last 3 or 4 lessons, with only open syllables as examples, clearly not intended as mastery. Not being able to spell words with vowel diagraphs or irregularities is only surprizing because she reads to well. Many people find recognition (especially using phonics, visual memory and context combined) much easier than encoding.