Thank you very much for your reply. Comparison article gives a very good overview of existing sets.

We are planning to use this book next month borrowing it from a library: Robotics: Discover the Science and Technology of the Future with 20 Projects http://www.amazon.co...ywords=robotics We also will be using this one for our Robotics/Technology studies next year : Robot Builder's Bonanza, 4th Edition http://www.amazon.co...ywords=robotics There is another good one I will be using with my kids when they are little older: STEM Student Research Handbook http://www.amazon.com/STEM-Student-Research-Handbook-PB297X/dp/1936137240/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1368739509&sr=8-9&keywords=stem If your kids are interesting in Robotics these two books will be a good start: Robot Building for Beginners and Intermediate Robot Building by David Cook

My friend had used Saxon through Advance Math with her children but it would be a killer for my oldest child because of its repetitiveness. Not for everyone, but it does the job.

My daughter solves problems like this the same way without really drawing anything. Here is a problem your son might find interesting to solve. My daughter liked it. It is from old Russian math book by L. Magnitsky: " A man wanted to put his son in a class. He asked a teacher how many students were in a class. Teacher replied, " If I get as many students as I currently have and a quarter as many again plus your son, I will have 100 pupils. How many student did teacher have in his class?"

Hi, I have a question for those of you who used/ familiar with Mortensen math. I am looking into it for my almost 5 years old daughter who is very bright but not really mature to do a formal math so I thought I would explore something different with her. I don't have unlimited budget for homeschool curricular. We already spent $300.00 on math for my oldest kids so I can not justify myself to spend another $300 for math for my 5 years old. Since Mortensen math is on sale till June 29th, I thought I would buy blocks for her and go from there. I can not afford spending a lot of money on workbooks such as "Smiley face". Has anyone used blocks without beginner level workbooks. Has anyone used level 4/5 workbooks(algebra/calculus) and what do you think about them? Have you used their Chemistry workbooks? I like the idea of early algebra/calculus introduction through manipulatives so I thought it would be beneficial for my oldest kids to play with blocks exploring those concepts. Thanks a lot. P.S. Mortensen math website is very strange to navigate and trying to view samples of their above level 2 workbooks wasn't successful. We didn't like the idea of installing an odd application to view the samples and when I tried it didn't work anyway.

We used a mix SM/MEP/Russian Math 6 and ready to move to AOPS Pre-algebra/Algebra/Counting and Probability supplementing with MEP/NEM/ Russian math 7. We will be using pre-algebra book for a review and challenging problems over summer months so we will be ready for Algebra this coming fall.

My oldest kids liked Mathletics math competition last fall and did very well. I am thinking about using Mathletics as an enrichment/fun thing this coming school year. My daughter was very disappointed with World Educational games last spring. She didn't like either math or LA. She complained about LA saying that it looked like you were asked to memorize a particular set of words which were chosen by developers of the program without considering other synonyms could be suitable to use in the particular "choose the right word" situations. My husband found it also very annoying. Math was very limited by the area of topics covered and almost nothing comparing to the Mathletics. We looked at EPGY before and didn't see anything "targeted to a Gifted child" at our standards. We just went with mixture of text based math curriculum. In my opinion a lot of things are getting a high dollar price if they are targeted to "gifted" audience without any real value to it. It is just my observation.

Has anybody of you used their supplemental mathematics for the curious? They look very interesting as "summer math" activities so I thought I would ask. http://www.rfwp.com/...-number-systems

When my daughter was a K/1 grader we were part of CA on-line school and used 1/2 st Grade Calvert math as our supplemental math curricular. 1/2 grade math books were so trivial, so my child was bored with them. She like enrichment workbooks because they were little more challenging, but still didn't fit our needs. My daughter took math because she was asked to take one core subject besides electives she chose. So, if you have a child who is good at math, Calvert might be a slow moving curricular for you. Just my opinion. P.S. My friend used "Horizons" with her son and it was even less challenging than Calvert.

Here is a book I forgot to mentioned: Visual Discrimination, Grades 2-8 by Jean Edwards http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Discrimination-Grades-2-8/dp/1583240039/ref=pd_cp_b_1 My daughter really enjoyed it.

I agree with a suggestion by Kathy from Richmond regarding Building Thinking Skills: Figural by Critical Thinking Press. It is a good book and my oldest daughter(10) did very well. She is just opposite to your daughter; the above mentioned book was too easy for her, she struggles with Building Thinking Skills:Verbal at this moment:). When my daughter was young she read a lot of books dealing with optical illusions, visual discrimination etc and I think they helped her a lot as well as MEP visual assignments.

Hi, Has any of you used OLLO Robotics kits/courses before? I am looking into OLLO Explorer or OLLO Inventor set at this point and if they are good, possibly buying a Bioloid STEM kit next year. We will be getting a new Logo Mindstorm EV3 as a Christmas gift for kids. My two oldest kids are interested in robotics and envision it as a future career. Thanks again.

Hi, I would like to get your opinion on OLLO robotics courses. I am interested in OLLO Explorer, OLLO Inventor Set or Bioloid STEM kit. Thanks a lot. Ollo Explorer kit: http://www.timberdoo...9_a_7c077_d_077 Ollo Inventor kit: http://www.timberdoo...t_p/077-072.hml Bioloid STEM kit. http://www.robotiskidslab.com/

I bought "CSI expert" and "Real-life Science Mysteries" to do with my oldest daughter(10) and son(6.5) this summer. Few other titles looked very interesting but I ruled them out because we don't belong to any homeschool group. I will let you know how it goes. My kids like this kind of stuff, especially my son. :)

I think the work load depends on the ability and desire of a pupil to do the "work". When my daughter was 7 years old we were doing "Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization" and at the end of level 2 it took about 2 hours for my child to recite 40 poems. Our school day was about 6-8 hours 5 times per day and 4 hours on Saturdays. We did math daily (2-3 hours), science 1-2 hours twice per week, 3 languages 2 hours per day ( each language twice per week withing 6 day totally), history/geography 1 hours 4 days per week, independent reading(not counting as a school work), skating etc. She was very busy. She wanted to do it so I let her. Her brother being only 2 could work on his math/logic books without a break for 3-4 hours while his sister was working on her penmanship, memorizing poems, doing art work. I think if kids are motivated it doesn't matter how long they study because it is fun. We also had days when things were not "perfect". So, I assign work load in accordance with their abilities and they need to deliver. We try to do a variety things to stimulate their brains be sure they are not bored with "school work" . May be your friend does something you are not aware of or her kids do not like what they are doing, that's why it take them too long to do the school. My second daughter is a dreamer with a lot of potential. It might take her 2 house to do something simple such as writing numbers and less than 10 minutes to put together an electric circuit which works(she is only 4). Just my thoughts.

Hi, the only reason I said we would be skipping chapters on Fractions/ Decimals/Percents because we had covered them in SM and Russian based Peterson math which goes deeper than Pre-Algebra from AOPS. We still do all challenging problems from pre-Algebra chapters which we skip. We need only few chapters from pre-Algebra before we go to Intro to the Algebra. I agree that SM5 doesn't cover all manipulations with fraction and decimals, but we already covered multiplication/division of fractions and compound percents in Russian math. My books arrived 2 weeks ago, so we will be using them in May. Now, we are working on SM6 books including IP, CWP and few others.

Hi, My son is 6 also and he is working about 2 years ahead in math also. He is done with SM1, working on SM2/3, Russian math 2 and Beast Academy. He is not fond of writing at all. Singapore math does not require a lot of writing nor Beast Academy. In our family I help him to do a lot of writing otherwise my ds will be solving everything in his head which he does most of the time. I agree that RS requires little writing but if your son is advanced in math, RS might go a little slow for him. We are doing RS games which is a lot of fun and reinforce the concepts had been learned earlier.

If your son gets a solid foundation from SM, you would not really need LOF Fractions and Decimals as a bridge to AOPS pre-algebra book. My daughter read Fractions book as a fun reading before she started working on Fractions in SM. If she did it again, it would be just a review and nothing else. Just my 2 cents:)

Thanks for your suggestion. I was planning on doing it anyway. I want to encourage my daughter to compete in math Olympiads without feeling a lot of pressure. Her fear is her our enemy, especially when she sees a word "Challenge". :)

We are moving to AOPS Pre-Algebra in May and will be doing only 4-5 chapters from it. We are planning to skip Fractions/Decimals/ Percents because we already learned it in SM5. I was debating on getting pre-Algebra book and decided to purchase it. Also, We are going to do SM6 and IP6 to be sure we get all their challenging problems right. My daugher did Fraction book over the summer and she had a lot of fun with it.

I wish my oldest daughter would be thrilled to compete:( So far, she is so afraid to fail that I can not encourage her to even try. She would do it if I insist. I think she doesn't have a maturity to handle a competition preasure. She doesn't even want to try becoming a competitive skater at this point. When she was young she was a very competitive child wanting to try everything and excel in everything. Now it doesn't matter that much to her. She is interested in many things, get excited but doesn't always follow through. I am thinking of getting her on a speech and debate team next year so she can be around some bright kids. Any more suggestions? I am running out of ideas. Thanks.

My 10 years old is still trying to solve everything she can in her head. She does it even when she works on Geometry problems. I told her that she should write her steps down to check her thinking process when she makes mistakes. She does it so unwillingly that it almost not worth the efforts. My 6 years old does it all the time also. I was so funny when 6 years old was offering some help in calculation to a 10 years old who was solving a system of linear equations doing her geometry problem.

Thanks for posting. I haven't heard about it. Another thing to explore:). May be we will make it being our summer project.

My oldest child is 10 and I am planning to do physics and chemistry with her starting this coming fall. I wish Apologia Young Explorers Physics/Chemistry book was already out to ease my days:( Right now I am planning to use 2 physics books from AIG as part of our curricular and add what is missing consulting other physics textbooks/resources I have available. As far as computers/ IT subject, we had been studied it informally as part of our math/logic curriculum. When she was 6, she wrote several short programs(similar to BASIC programming language) for assignments such as "How to operate an elevator" and few others. I am still trying to put together an IT/ Computer science curricular for her this coming school year. We haven't tried scratch yet and planning to get a new Lego Mindstorms EV3 set for Christmas. P.S. I saw a computer curricular at 4-hmall.org when I was ordering a robotics curricular. Here is a link to it: http://www.4-hmall.org/Category/4-hcurriculum-computer.aspx There is a 25% discount using a code "prepress13" if you find anything of your interest there.

I have a Kiselev's copy in Russian but I haven't looked through it yet. I used Atanasyan's textbooks at school which I like much better than Pogorelov's. I think I will end up using a mix of Russian/American textbooks to be sure my kids at least know what I learned at school. Thanks for your comments.