My older daughter really liked "Chains" and "Fever 1793" by Laurie Anderson, BUT I would hold off on them until your daughter is older because they do involve darker themes that a sensitive kid might have trouble with.

I wouldn't be concerned too much. They didn't remember everything, but nor did I expect them to. They'll learn about fractions each year, with a little more depth each time until 6th-7th grade, at which point, they need to have mastered them. I wouldn't worry about mastery at 2nd grade... it'll come. Along with SM, I have been using a series called "Math Minutes" that does a very quick review of some basic math every day and it keeps my kids from forgetting altogether about a topic... There is a second grade version, though expect it to be behind SM. I'm actually okay with that -- I like the idea that they have an easy review along with their more challenging math. It's very quick (like 1-2 minutes per day).

Some Dr. Seuss books like "Red Fish, Blue Fish" or "The Foot Book" or "Hop on Pop" are pretty similar and also quite cute. I recall "Fly Guy" was another silly favorite. Otherwise, I'd just go to the library and pick up some easy readers that appeal to your little one.

My daughter is using SM 6b and there are little calculator symbols by some of the problems where it would just be too time consuming to work it out by hand (like right now in the statistics chapter... adding up a ton of numbers doesn't help learn more about finding the mean...).

My daughter and I discovered an error in the Story of Science and I had her email the author. They had the sweetest correspondence going for a while. Joy Hakim sent her some chapters of her new book to fact check and respond to. Anyway, I think it's great if there is a single author and you have a reason to contact them. More likely, the author just told the publishing company that there should be a picture of Arabic text and someone else pulled it up and nobody really knew what it meant. Still, send a note to them for the sake of future editions.

Depending on age, Galore Park could work. Voyages in English looks like it has a lot of different stuff in it... But I don't know if it's got everything?

Schoolhouse rock does a cute song. You can do a search for "Mr. Morton" on you tube. Does she know the parts of speech and can pick out the nouns and verbs? You could give her an easy sentence to work with and then gradually complicate it... The girl acted strangely. The girl in the blue dress acted strangely. The girl in the blue dress acted strangely when she discovered her pony was missing. At high noon, the charismatic girl in the peacock blue dress acted strangely when she discovered her pony was missing. And so on... You could also make a table in MS word with three columns labelled "subject","verb", and "the rest of the sentence" (aka object or complement). Give her a few sample sentences to use as a template sentence and have her fill in the table with more sentences so that she begins to see that the subject (or compound subject) is in English, just before the verb. And we call the predicate everything from the verb over. You could point out the exception of some adverbs like "usually" can go between the subject and the verb. Forgive me if this doesnt make sense... I'm using my phone to write this and it's the middle of the night.;-)

You might also think look into EPS "The Paragraph Book". It's a slow and gentle introduction to writing paragraphs for middle school students who are struggling.

Ahh -- for you, it's a good idea. For your son, I'd wait until high school aged (or maybe 7th or 8th grade if he turned out to have a masochistic streak)... I used it in college and it was good... but I wouldn't consider it for my own kids any time soon for fear of putting them off Latin forever.

Is this your 6 yr old you are thinking about? I can think of a dozen more engaging texts for a 6 yr old. What is it about a college level textbook that you think will work well for him and you?

Yes, it's pretty normal. That said, I would not do preschool swimming lessons unless I actually had a pool at home (and then I'd consider the more controversial infant swim lessons where they learn to roll and float for safety/self-rescue). In my experience, the money and time spent on the year or two of swim lessons at preschool age can be saved... the same skills can be learned in a few lessons at age 6 in the school aged program. There is a developmental readiness that makes learning to swim kind of a waste for many little kids.

There is a lot of extra stuff in the teacher quest guide, but I actually found it too much. It's very classroom-organized... if I could devote several hours a day, I would totally use both the textbook and quest guide. But for us, just the textbook works well. We started Aristotle about two years ago when we were studying the ancients and I realized that SOTW didn't mention anything about scientific or philosophical though. We're now half-way through the Newton book and usually use it as a supplement to our history. I think it could totally be a full curriculum. Because we started it pretty young, I imagine doing it a second time around in a few years. It's one of my favorite series.

Are you looking for historical fiction or for a "classic" from the period?

Thanks! I love checking out your resources and Otter's ratings.

We use a series called "Math Minutes" for a daily review of math. It takes a minute or two and is just a mixed review... very non-threatening for non-math-lovers. You might consider pairing it with whatever program you decide on. Have you looked into "Jump Math"? It goes back and reviews basic concepts such as counting and adding, but on an age-appropriate level (so she could be in the 5th grade book and not feel like she was doing 'baby' stuff). This is from the 4th grade book. http://jumpmath1.org/sites/default/files/JUMP%20Math%20CC%20Ed%20AP%20Book%204-1%20Sample.pdf Another program you might consider is "Knowing Mathematics" by Liping Ma. It is also aimed at 4-6th graders who are struggling with math. You can pick up used copies on amazon for cheap. I've never seen it in person, but I respect Liping Ma's work. Finally, I've had success using the "Key to..." series for fractions and decimals and percents with kids who are overwhelmed by multiple steps to problems. It's not as conceptual as I'd like it, but it is very gentle and incremental. And cheap -- so you could try one of the worktexts for just a few dollars to see if you like it.

We have! Instead of CWP, we know it as "not-so-challenging word problems". It's a little more explicit in instruction and not as tricky as some of the CWP problems. Very useful at times!

We used c-rods more in 1-2nd grade and base-10 blocks in 3-5th grade.

Me! I was told I was evil or satanic or going to hell several times by my teachers at a Christian Jr high school. I was a fairly shy, well-behaved kid and came from a more mainstream denomination and thankfully had the common sense to know that it wasn't true. But I worry about kids from fundamentalist traditions who might actually believe that sort of thing.

Ahh... Nope. We're in southern Oregon.

The new CC standards have forced our local school district to drop TERC Investigations and take on a much better math program. For that, I'm happy.

I agree -- It doesn't make sense to have all parents of kids 10 and under in the pool. I understand having 10 and under parents in the pool area, since lifeguarding shouldn't also be babysitting. But in the pool? What about swim team practice? Swim lessons? Swim parties? Swim meets? That's absurd. My girls are good swimmers and do not need or want me anywhere near them. If we did have such a rule, neither of my girls could swim because I have to be watching my 3 yr old foster son who is terrified of water and will not be in the pool. Luckily at our Y, there is no rule about us even being on the pool deck.

We have a TJs opening this week near us too! Are we neighbors?

We are finishing SM6b and wondering the same thing. I never buy extra materials, but right now I have Lial's PreAlgebra and SYRWTL Maths 2 and DM7a because I can't figure out what I want to do. I have about a month to decide. For a while I also had AOPS pre-algebra but it just seemed overwhelming - so I returned it. My daughter's doing great with SM and I don't want to mess with what is working so well! Today I'm leaning towards DM since it's the same publishers and I liked how they move from the bar models to algebra... and how there is a lot of geometry still there and it doesn't seem too intense. But who knows? I think I'd like to use Jacobs for Algebra, and maybe we could go straight into it... but then again, I'd rather over-prepare and spend extra time on arithmetic and pre-algebra than have to go back and remediate because my kids have forgotten how to do fractions (or whatever). I can say that SM6 is not just a review of 5 and if SM5 is working, I'd just keep trucking along. There's plenty in SM6 and no need to skip it.

So much of learning is about developmental readiness. Whenever my kids hit a point (especially noticeable with math) that they just don't get, I set the topic aside, find another area to work on and come back in a few months. Almost always, they're ready by then. Have you tried Beast Academy? It's got some awfully tricky problems in it aimed at really bright 3rd graders. I'm impressed by the depth that it covers the topics. Of course, your son might find the pictures unappealing. Zaccaro is also great for bright young mathematicians.

Ellen McHenry's materials Hakim's Story of Science Horrible History/maths/science etc...