Earlier this year, I saw posts in various threads which recommended DIY.org and I got the impression that several forum members had their kids sign up around that time. I'm interested in hearing what people think about it after having their kids use the site for a while. Are they still enjoying it? How much do they use it? If you're willing to share, roughly how many projects have they done and/or how many skills have they earned? Do you need to push your kids to spend time on it, do they maintain a good balance by themselves or do you have to limit their time spent on the website or on activities related to it? Do you think they're learning much from using it? Would you still recommend it to new users? Do you have any concerns about the impact it has on your kids' attitudes? For those who enrolled their kids on the basis of the comparisons made to Scouts in some of the earlier posts, how do you think it compares to Scouting and similar programs? Many thanks, Alex.

Try the ABRSM exam requirements - they include scales for each grade. You can find the requirements on their website and they also publish a book with all the scales written out in full in staff notation. http://gb.abrsm.org/...scant-recorder/ http://gb.abrsm.org/...reble-recorder/ http://shop.abrsm.or...ades-1-8/637817

The current offering for corners is a pair of special brackets, designed so that you can fix a 40cm Billy on the diagonal such that it lines up correctly with the Billies either side of the corner. That's probably OK for the tall ones but no use for the low ones as you'd see the gaps and the fixing brackets. Even for the tall ones it wastes space. They used to sell a proper corner unit. That takes up 60cm of each of the two walls and has an opening across the diagonal just a little wider than you'd get with a 40cm Billy. The space in the corners is a bit awkward, but useable (depending on how you arrange things on the shelves). The corner unit also accommodates deeper books than the standard Billies. They are available secondhand - we've seen plenty listed on eBay. Start with a corner unit and work outwards from there, combining Billies and Bennos as needed to fit the space. That will let you work in multiples of 20cm. If you need something else, you can cut down a Billy or Benno to fill the gap. Hope that helps.

Anyone interested in the details can download the current syllabuses here: http://www.abrsm.org/en/exams/gradedMusicExams/latestSyllabuses.html AB offers graded music exams in theory and various practical subjects. It's not a curriculum as such, though some music teachers may design their curricula around the relevant exam requirements. There is no fixed preparation time for the exams. Some kids might spend a year or more learning their exam pieces and technical work, but others will need only a few weeks to do it all. Similar exams are offered by Trinity Guildhall and LCM: http://www.trinitycollege.co.uk/site/?id=1045 http://www.uwl.ac.uk/lcmexams/Subjects.jsp

The UCAS tariff for AP music theory is: 5 - 50 points 4 - 35 points 3 - 20 points The only ABRSM theory exams which attract 20 or more UCAS points are: Grade 7 distinction - 20 points Grade 8 pass - 20 points Grade 8 merit - 25 points Grade 8 distinction - 30 points ABRSM exams below grade 6 carry no UCAS points. (UCAS isn't relevant for US/NZ college admissions, but it's a useful reference when trying compare exams from different systems.)

It's not quite that straightforward. Many, but not all, private schools still offer Latin and some offer Greek. Some state schools offer Latin. In general, Latin starts anywhere from about 3rd to 7th grade, depending on the school. Where a language is taught from first grade, it's usually French or another modern foreign language. The year/grade numbering system is different here. The outline from the original post covers years 5 to 8 - that's equivalent to 4th-7th grade.

These (and others like them): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Basher-Science-Physics-Dan-Green/dp/0753432900/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Periodic-Table-Duplicate-Elements/dp/0753415119/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Biology-Life-We-Know-It/dp/0753417316/ (clean links - no affiliate kickbacks)

One caveat for anyone thinking about doing this with their kids - teach them about capacitors before they start taking things apart.

You can download A-level specimen/past papers from the exam boards' websites. OCR: http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/type/gce/index.aspx Edexcel: http://www.edexcel.com/quals/gce/gce08/Pages/default.aspx AQA: http://www.aqa.org.uk/qualifications/a-level.php WJEC: http://www.wjec.co.uk/index.php?subject=30&level=21

There's also a little quiz available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9701000/9701303.stm Would be teachers are required to have maths and English GCSEs at grade C or above. That's not setting the bar very high. Channel 4 made a 2-part documentary about maths teaching in primary schools. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-53/episode-1 Here's a shortened version of the test they gave to the teachers: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/articles/maths-quiz I'd need to watch it again to check, but I think they tested about 150 teachers, of whom only one scored full marks. If I recall correctly, the average score was 45%. On the other hand, our standards for maths are high in some respects. Calculus is part of the regular maths curriculum for 11th and 12th grades here. But, because maths is optional after 10th grade, there's a sharper division between the maths people and the non-maths people. Those who take maths for A-level get a pretty decent grounding in the subject.

I agree with Peter about the exercises. They might not help much in your case though. The problem being that the available exercises don't cover much 11th grade material. There are a few for differentiation and a couple for standard deviation, but that's about it so far. They do keep adding new exercises though, so they might add more at that level over the coming months. The videos already go much further, so the exercises for integration, diff eqs, statistics, etc. are likely to appear at some point. You might want to have an alternative planned in case they're not there when your daughter need them.

You might be interested in the book "The Physics of Hockey" by Alain Haché.

UCAS tariff for AP exams: http://www.ucas.com/students/ucas_tariff/factsheet/app

We're a Mac family whenever we have a choice. We've had very few problems and the ones that do crop up tend to be the sort that can happen on any system. It's basically BSD UNIX underneath the graphical interface, so you can pull up a terminal window (command line interface) and use UNIX commands, vi and shell scripts. Macs are great for people who understand computers! When people spend all day fixing computer problems, they don't want to spend their evenings and weekends doing the same - they want something that just works. Of course, Macs are great for people who don't know much about computers too - there's no need to interact with the underlying OS if you don't want to and there are relatively few ways for a novice user to stumble into something out of their depth. I've come across cases of Windows users messing with the registry without having the slightest idea what it was.

If you add up all the bookshelf space in your house, how many linear feet (or yards or metres) are there? How much of it is used for books?

Eric Knight - Lassie Come-Home James Herriot's Favourite Dog Stories Dodie Smith - The Hundred and One Dalmatians Dodie Smith - The Starlight Barking Sheila Burnford - The Incredible Journey Richard Adams - The Plague Dogs Henrietta Branford - Fire, Bed and Bone Daniel Pennac - Dog Phyllis Reynolds Naylor - Shiloh Wilson Rawls - Where the Red Fern Grows Jack London - The Call of the Wild J.R.R. Tolkien - Roverandom any one of several authors - Greyfriars Bobby

I don't know what size serving would be considered normal over there (my better half informs me that the catering industry standard is 1" by 2" for double layer, so my best guess is that you'd double that to 2" by 2" for single layer), but here's the maths... 9" by 13" gives 117 square inches. 117 divided by 14 gives over 8 1/3 square inches per person (a little more than 2" by 4" each). 1.5" x 3" would be only 4.5 square inches per slice, so that would yield 26 slices. 12 of the 14 people could have a second helping. 6.5 square inches per person, a little more than 2" by 3" each. 19.5 square inches (almost 4" by 5") and 5.85 square inches (just shy of 2" by 3") per person, respectively (not allowing for leftovers).

That's quite scary! The problem with anyone else's list is that you can't be sure that they would make exactly the same judgement calls that you would yourself. And even if they would, their list will still be tailored towards the interests, gender and reading-level of their kids, not yours. I enjoy reading other lists and sometimes I'll see something on one and think "How did I forget to include that?!". Or I'll spot something I've never even heard of that seems to merit further investigation. But wholesale copying, especially if you're not familiar with the books, seems like a bad idea to me. It's not just lists compiled by individuals that should be approached with caution. Even the Carnegie Medal lists can throw up some surprises (e.g. the 1996 winner). That's always a sensible course of action. I read The Hobbit at 11 and The Lord of the Rings when I was 11 and a half, but didn't get hold of The Silmarillion until almost a year later and found it very heavy going. I think it was another year or so before I read it properly and it wasn't exactly fun even then. It's the sort of book that's bearable if you're reading it by choice (and are free to set aside if you find it too difficult), but that most kids would probably balk at as assigned reading.

I don't think the fact that they're on one person's list in any way suggests that other people should use them without pre-reading. Everyone has different standards and concerns and everyone's kids are different in terms of reading level, maturity, sensitivity, interests and so on, so people should always use their own judgement about what to use with their own kids. I was a tad surprised to see them on a list of "classics" myself, but everyone has their own ideas about literature and it's the OP's list of what she wants her kids to read. If she wants to include them, that's up to her. Same goes for The Silmarillion - not something I'd generally expect to see required of 10-11 year olds, but clearly the OP's kids are way more advanced than most. Doesn't mean that anyone else should expect their kids to read it at that age (or at all). It's not on any required lists here, but there's a copy available if anyone wants to use it for free reading. Definitely. There are a few on the OP's other list (for rising 7th/8th/9th graders) that she's clearly fine with but that we wouldn't choose to use at that level (including Stranger, BNW, HoD, Passage, Remarque, Gatsby and C22). The only way it would be a problem would be if I just copied her list and didn't use my own judgement about which books to use at middle school level and which to save for high school or beyond. Apart from anything else, I think people get more out of those books if they come to them with more maturity. I found it interesting to read someone else's lists and see where they overlap with mine and where they differ, but I don't see them as a prescriptive list of what anyone's kids (other than the OP's) should read.

I suspect that part of it is because bright kids (who will score highly anyway) are more likely to be given the opportunity to take Latin than slower kids (who are likely to have lower scores). In other words, Latin is offered to kids who are already on track to do very well on the SAT, rather than Latin causing a significant increase in scores. Over here, Latin is offered in very few state schools. The ones which do offer it tend to be among the relatively few which select their pupils by academic ability. Many public schools offer Latin (and a few still offer Greek), but they're mostly even more selective than the state grammars. The "slow" kids in a typical public school would be above average in a state school. Even in these schools, not all kids take Latin - many schools divide the kids by ability and the very brightest can take Latin (and Greek if available), the middle kids take just Latin and the slowest kids take a non-language class in classics, studying the civilisations and literature in English translation. The end result is that the national exam results for Latin and Greek typically have far higher average grades than other subjects, because the only kids to take them are the kids who are likely to be achieving high grades in everything they take. The less academic kids are either at schools where Latin isn't taught at all, or they're not given the opportunity to study it. (I don't agree that that this is how things ought to be, but it is the way they are.) I suspect that similar forces may be at work over there.

Do you mean basic algebra? The lessons takes one past calculus, ending linear algebra. This website is pretty wicked! The videos do, but the interactive exercises don't go beyond 10th grade work (and there are a lot of gaps before that too). They have been adding more exercises though and the most recent additions included some at the end and some that filled gaps in the middle. Also there are currently 126 exercises (including challenges), but if you inspect the source code you can see that one of the Black Hole badges is for gaining proficiency in 150 exercises, so there's clearly more to come.

What sort of Greek?

There are plenty of resources for that, including ones aimed specifically at home schoolers and people wanting to study it by themselves. Just make sure you choose something that says "New Testament" or "Koine". The exam that Joan's daughter wants to prepare for is in ancient Greek and the difficulty there is that there are far fewer home school and teach-yourself resources available for that.

What you've heard does seems to be quite widely circulated and there is an element of truth in some of it. But the situation is somewhat more complicated, plus the relative difficulty of instruments will depend, to some extent, on the individual and their particular strengths, weaknesses and preferences. Any instrument where you have to form the notes for yourself requires a good sense of pitch (it doesn't need to be "perfect" (absolute) pitch - relative pitch is fine). Brass instruments have a limited range of valve combinations or slide positions - you have to control which harmonic it produces, just by your embouchure and airflow. Some woodwinds also use harmonics for some notes, and even for notes with unique fingerings it can be difficult to play exactly in tune. Instruments where the notes are all there ready for you to use (either tuned by someone else, or tuned by the player before they start playing) don't rely on the player's sense of pitch like that, but are mostly polyphonic instruments and some have music written on two or three staves. So the complexity involved in reading the music and getting your fingers/feet to the correct places is greater. Even when you don't have to get fingers onto keys/strings, it can be challenging - tuned percussion is often played with four or even six mallets at once, which requires a lot of coordination. Within each family of instruments, some are generally accepted as being more difficult than others - oboe and French horn are fairly notorious and rank alongside the bowed strings in technical difficulty. Someone with good co-ordination and a good sense of pitch might find violin reasonably straightforward while finding the piano very difficult because of the need to read two-stave music, while someone else might find the exact opposite. I think it's fairly pointless to try to identify any particular instrument as being the hardest (or easiest) of all. Absolutely. Bad habits can also cause problems with making progress at a later stage or with the transition to other instruments. If at all possible, I'd recommend having at least occasional lessons with a proper teacher. No instrument is easy if you want to play it properly, though some are less difficult than others. The recorder is very easy to get a noise out of, especially a fairly unpleasant noise. It's even fairly easy to get a recognisable tune out of. But it's one of the more difficult instruments to play well. Other woodwind instruments have elaborate keywork which, although it seems complicated at first, actually makes them easier to play in the long run. The recorder has a very limited dynamic range and is difficult to play in tune and with good tone quality. In terms of benefits for a wider musical education, I think it's hard to beat piano (or other keyboard instruments). My second choice would be guitar. Piano will give them familiarity with both treble and bass clefs and will make it much easier to understand music theory (much of which is usually explained in terms of the keyboard). As long as it's tuned regularly (or you have a digital instrument), they won't have to worry about playing in tune. It's relatively easy on the ears (many instruments, especially recorder and bowed strings, can sound pretty awful for quite a long time). Occasional lessons would help with technique (especially hand position) and with any difficulties that arise. If space and cost is an issue, an electronic keyboard is OK to start with, but I'd suggest getting one that has full-size keys and at least 5 octaves (61 notes). As you don't play any instruments yourself and say lessons aren't an option at present, guitar might be a particularly good choice because lots of people play it and are often willing to give a bit of informal advice/help/tuition. Many players are largely self-taught and there's a strong tradition of informal sharing like that. There's also an abundance of "teach yourself" materials available. It's easy on the ears, though you may need to take responsibility for tuning it in the early stages. It does help a fair bit with some aspects of theory (especially chords and chord progressions). Kids can learn both classical and chord-based music. You only need to learn 3 chords (D, G and A are the easiest that provide a I IV V combination) to be able to accompany some songs, so kids can feel like they're "really playing" from quite an early stage. It takes much longer to get to that point on the piano or on most other instruments. If you opt for guitar, I'd recommend starting with a nylon-strung classical/Spanish instrument. It's easier on the fingers than a steel strung guitar. Once they can play barre chords on a wide, flat fingerboard, transitioning to playing them on a narrower, curved one is a doddle. It's also the easiest on the ears. You don't say how old your girls are (or, more importantly, how big they are), but if they're fairly young/small, you might be best off with a 3/4 or half size instrument. The staff in a good music shop should be able to give you some advice about that. All that aside, if you do decide to teach them the recorder, there are some things to be aware of. Do not, under any circumstances, allow them to play with their hands the wrong way up. I know most recorders have a foot joint that can be twisted around, but it's not to allow "left-handed" playing. It's to allow the lowest holes to be positioned at a comfortable angle. If you look closely at the double holes, you'll see that they're not exactly the same size. For certain notes, you cover only one of them - if you use the wrong hand, you'll cover the wrong hole. The difference in tuning is pretty small (and a beginner will likely be so out of tune anyway that it won't notice at all), but it's important later on. Other woodwind instruments (and the largest recorders) have to be played the right way round because of the layout of the keywork. If you let a kid play the recorder the wrong way up, it will make transitioning to these instruments much harder. If you want them to have any chance of playing in tune, buy a reasonable student instrument (Yamaha, Aulos and Dolmetsch are pretty reliable). It's possible to save a few dollars by buying an unbranded recorder from a toystore or similar, but the chances are that you'll end up with something that even Piers Adams couldn't play in tune. Also, those cheap recorders sometimes have a slightly different layout of holes which most people wouldn't notice, but which requires a different fingering system (German). You want to be using the standard "baroque" system (it's actually modern). Don't let them raise their fingers too far above the tone holes. They'll be able to get away with it while they're squawking their way through simple tunes, but it will be a real hinderance if they progress further on the instrument or if they transfer to other woodwind instruments. Don't let them bite the mouthpiece while they're playing. Try to get them to pay attention to the quality of the sound they're making. It's difficult to get a really good sound out of a recorder, but it's near impossible if they're not aware of what they should be aiming for and aren't listening critically to their own output. Most kids blow way too hard, some persistently underblow and a few manage to do a bit of both. It can take a while before they start to sound OK, and even longer before it sounds good, so don't expect it to happen right away. Encourage them to listen to some good recordings. If at all possible, have occasional lessons with a proper teacher. It's better to sort out problems with technique before they become entrenched. One final point to consider is which instrument(s) interest your kids. Which do they like the sound of? Which have a repertoire they enjoy? Which are a good match for their physical, mental and personality traits?

Is it possible for her to do Greek for 3ème langue (at level 2)? All the languages listed for that option are also on the option spécifique, so if her current choice for that is something she'd do at level 3 anyway, maybe they could be swapped over? They're completely geared towards New Testament Greek, which is much simpler than ancient Greek. If you read page 18 of the document Joan gave the link for, it's clear that it's talking about Attic and Homeric Greek. There's a written exam which involves translating a passage by Xenophon, Plato or Herodotus and answering questions on interpretation, plus an oral exam on 500 lines of Homer (Odyssey and/or Iliad) and 500 lines from one or two plays by Aeschylus, Euripides or Sophocles (or you can swap 300 lines of this for lyric poetry). No course in NT Greek is going to be adequate preparation for that. JACT's 'Reading Greek' series might be worth a look. They have an independent study guide available to go with it.