My daugher loves it so much that she made me let her stay up a little later to do a page of math before bed. "OK but just that one page":lol: She is really liking it, so far it seems easier than the last book but we only just got started.

I took it in my junior year also. I think that is pretty common. Is he going to be studying from a text? Which one? I think my son would do very well with abstract algebra early. If only I could remember anything from college. Yipes! Who am I kidding, he doesn't really need me. At least not for math. I am also impressed with your situation. I am the only show in town here. Though I have taken far more math than my son, I think his "mathematical maturity" already surpasses my own. I am still quite a bit bigger than him and I can take him in arm wrestling. I try to take some small comfort in that.

http://beastacademy.com/store/3c :party:

Not at all. 7 is young enough to remediate spelling and reading issues. Get an OG program and start doing that right away.

DS eliminated gluten and found that helped. When my son was young I spend about a year at home doing very little just to regroup. Then we added activities slowly until we found our sweet spot. I find one or two days of structured activity a week is optimal for my kids. One is minimum for my daughter two is the maximum for my son. So we do one or two and leave it at that. I do not feel bad at all that there are some things we can't do. For example he never did team sports of any kind. It would have been a disaster for him so we just didn't go there. My husband plays sports with the two kids in the back yard. Not a big deal. There are a million activities available for kids. I had to do a little experimenting to find the right match. Some kids function better as they mature. Mine did. He was really impossible at around 7 or 8 but growing up actually helped quite a bit. I remember that age though :grouphug: ETA: Oh yes OT! If I had a time machine I would go back and do that with my son.

http://learner.org/resources/browse.html?discipline=5&grade=0&imageField2.x=13&imageField2.y=12 This site has a gazillion constructivist oriented videos as well as trainings for teachers. If you poke around the site there are also materials. I think constructivism has a lot to offer. The problem with implementing this kind of teaching in the PS is that you need a teacher that actually understands math (and most elementary teachers are mathphobic) and some of the curricula that they came up with were a little goofy (only constructivist math and nothing else). Constructivism is best used when you have a child who has mastered one concept but just cannot understand the next level up. Let them play a little and they wind up learning a ton. Most constructivist curricula are downright weird with a few exceptions. If you have a very bright child Art of Problem Solving offers discovery based math for gifted students. Their programs are not "constructivist" but are more balanced. I think their are a handful of early elementary programs that have a discovery element, perhaps someone will chime in and comment on those. I tend to teach elementary math from the seat of my pants so I never really invested in a fancy curriculum for that age. The videos are meant for math teachers and are really school based. I think the one you are thinking of might be "The Private Universe". I watched a few of these years ago and got a few ideas. http://learner.org/resources/series120.html

I didn't know this was common. When my son was younger and used to do the ALL the time I'd give him a drink of water and escort him to the bathroom. I have been at a few births and I am used to encouraging people to drink and pee. It worked for my son too.

Anyone use "Writing Skills" by Dana Hanbury King? I am looking at that for my youngest.

:grouphug: No words of wisdom but I am happy to hear that your daughter has one good friend.

Absolutely. However, I think there might be some small value to copywork. I have done it with both my kids in small doses. My eldest really struggled with handwriting and needing to practice. For some reason when he was young keyboarding was actually more frustrating so we just stuck with handwriting. But we only did very small doses. He now has passable handwriting. So yes, I do think there is some value in building up stamina. My daughter has pretty good handwriting. However she has more issues with reversals. I think there has been some small value in helping her remember which way to write her letters. With both kids I have kept copywork fairly minimal. However I think it has served a small purpose so I am not sure I would have skipped it (if I had to do it over again). If she is able to copy long passages I think your DD probably doesn't really need to do copywork anymore. It sounds like it has served its purpose and you can free up your time to work on other things.

With my dyslexic son eye aversion gets worse when he is struggling to retrieve words. He also has sensory processing (and visual processing) issues and I think he gets some overload there which makes eye contact harder for him. He has been practicing and is getting better at this.

I used to wish I had the support of Davidson's. It is hard to figure out what the heck to do with an extremely bright child. I finally gave up I essentially decided that *I* needed to be the expert. Money would be so nice. Many, many resources are free or affordable. It's easier than you think. AoPS is really affordable all you really need are the books and Alcumus is Free. MIT open courseware (and other open courseware, yale for example) all free. You can get many teaching company tapes free from the library. I also buy one or two of these for Christmas each year. Santa it turns out is an intellectual. Websites for general gifted support. hoagiesgifted.org giftedhomeschoolers.org senggifted.org Mailing lists like tag-max tag-fam tag-pdq and gifted homeschoolers are places where you can chat. Also once your child is 11 they can apply to Mathpath.They offer generous financial aid. Oh and of course this place has an amazing wealth of resources. If you think your child might qualify for D and you have access to a good tester that you can afford, go for it. But if circumstances don't allow this it is not the end of the world.

Singapore 3---> Art of Problem Solving Or you could do Beast Academy which is even better! But Singapore is strong and good for mathy kids. I am not sure you would need to backtrack to Singapore 2. I think they have placement tests. So start there. To be safe you might want to start with the placement test for 2B and see how your child does. http://www.singaporemath.com/Placement_Test_s/86.htm

My 14 year old still runs around outside and plays every day if not he just isn't right. I know it is a sensory seeking thing and it really helps him. The other thing that really helps is baths. Especially when he's super stressed out. And the bonus is he is very clean.

I used Barton through level 10 with my son and it is fantastic! I am also now using it with my daughter. She doesn't have a dx but has all the signs her brother had so I am jumping in with her and wasting no time. I have been my children's only tutor. I find it very easy to use. My sister in law who most likely dyslexic herself (but never remediated) had a harder time with it. She had a hard time even in the early levels figuring out how to phonetically pronounce things. In that case I'd recommend getting a tutor. But for me it was not hard to use at all.

I thought a significant discrepancy would be at least 2 standard deviations which on the wisc is 15 so it would have to be at least a 30 pt spread to be of concern.

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Latin-Paper-Language-Series/dp/0300103549 We started with Wheelock's but our tutor wanted us to get this book which is fantastic.

This is perhaps an honest question however it is really a divisive political issue. It is not something that all homeschoolers would get behind. My family has been attacked with similar rhetoric so I am particularly concerned seeing it here. I hope I am not violating board rules by answering. I don't think this discussion belongs here though.

I think going "at your child's pace" would be better. Same thing with review. My son tends to find things "impossible" or "obvious" so review is often silly. I think what's better is to hunt down things that are in the middle of those two so they actually need to review. At first I found this task very difficult but over the years I have pried apart his "zone of proximal development" so that there is a landing strip upon which he can learn. And then when they are studying those things for which they are a sponge, just let them learn. And when they are learning the impossible things keep the tasks really short. For example I started my son writing no more than 15 minutes a day. When the clock ticked 15 he could put his pencil down. The torture was limited so he was willing to do the work. I'll give you an example of how we did math. DS is really an amazing mathematician. And he has absolutely no capacity to memorize. So I actually just worked at two levels at a time. I'd go to the sections of the workbook that were easy for him, and I let him do that first. Meanwhile we'd play math games (i.e. 24) and once and awhile I'd see how fast his times tables were. He came up with ways of remembering the times tables using algebraic concepts 7x= 5x+2x 6x=3x*2 and often when he looked at the way the book did the math he was completely stumped. He couldn't do column multiplication at all but could easily do the math if he worked it his own way. I did eventually make him learn the standard algorithm but only way later, when I thought he was ready. So you see somethings are good to be slow, but you don't have to slow down everything. I agree with OhE that an eval could be helpful. Because Working Memory and Rapid Naming are not always problems. My son's working memory is excellent but his rapid naming makes him look like he's brain damaged. Some things that have helped. An O-G program. Access to high level material in any format that is accessible to your child. We are teaching company addicts here. Find your child's strength and passion and feed that. Give your child something challenging that they are motivated to do. (I taught my son music-which does not come naturally to him, but now from hard work he is outstanding) One thing I did not do but kind of wish I had done is pursue vision issues, not all dyslexics have these but I think my son has some visual processing underlying his dyslexia. It isn't so severe to interfere with the OG remediation that we've done but I do think that it slows down his already painfully slow writing.

:iagree: The special ed teacher at my charter school rolls her eyes at me EVERY TIME we talk. I just breathe slowly count to 10 and say "thank you for your opinion" and then continue on with my plan to take care of my child. Not everyone is like this, sometimes professionals can be quite helpful. I think it's important to listen to what people have to say and if it's helpful, keep it if not toss it. It can be quite a challenge.

Sometimes the co-morbid condition in giftedness. The problem with trying to put all spd kids on some sort of ASD or ADHD spectrum is that then you might be giving the child the wrong treatment for the condition. Also you might miss the real co-morbid condition. My son for example is dyslexic and no one believed me because he doesn't have great eye contact and sometimes responds awkwardly in conversation "See you later" "ok" (which can be due to his extreme word finding problems) I got several years of eye rolling before I finally convinced the school to test and sure enough he is dyslexic. Coincidentally dyslexia is also not on the DSM. I find it frustrating that my child doesn't fit on their form and I am especially frustrated with bureaucratic educators that say my child doesn't exist if he doesn't fit into a box. DS would not fit the categories for aspergers but I am sure that since he has so many visible spd issues that educators were completely missing the boat as to what was going on.

:hurray: Thanks for sharing that fantastic news.

I'd go with BA for now. Don't worry too much if she is ready for AOPS books early. There are a couple of things that you need to know about that program. The books are really meant to be self teaching. They read, do the problems and check the work or, when needed, look up a hint or the answer. In the beginning, when my son got involved with the books, all I really had to do was remind him that it was ok to look up hints or check the answers in the back if he had given it his best and he was really stuck. "Let's check the oracle (that's what we wound up calling the awesome answer guide)." That's about all I have ever done with those books. Really. I do happen to also have a math degree which is helpful in that when he is studying something really cool, he can tell me and I understand (usually) what he is talking about. Actually lately I get perplexed by him more and more. It's actually a good system because it forces him to organize his thoughts for a "novice". If you get to a point where your child needs someone to "talk math" with. You can always hire a tutor, do an online aops class, go to a local math circle or have your child do a summer math camp. There are a ton of opportunities out there. But I think you'll be ok for a few years. I would start with Beast and see if that is sufficient. Also get "living math" books like the number devil and penrose. I googled those terms and found a cool website with a more extensive list. Here it is. Have fun and come back when you have more questions. There are a ton of us here who are (or who have been) in the same boat. I came on this site and asked for a college course for an 8th grade boy who wanted hard college math with no calc and I got a fabulous resource. You are really in the right place. http://villainyinc.thinkport.org/families/books.asp

The wind instruments that are always needed for All State level groups are Tuba and French Horn. You can't really have too many of these instruments. A band does not want too many oboes. In college my band rotated the oboes because we had too many so unless the musician was just amazing I would not call oboe a scholarship instrument. It certainly is impressive to have on your transcript (as it is difficult) but not so much "in need". If your child plays something like the clarinet you might want to add Bassoon because that is more of a need. Still it's the low brass that people are usually actively recruiting.

NAGC recommends using the GAI for gifted programs. More here... http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=2455