Could you share what curriculum or class you are using this kit for? Or did you buy it independently to use on your own?

My dd14 has only recently begun to self-teach using the Intermediate Algebra book, but up to now, she's hasn't studied and of the AoPS texts without my teaching. Part of that is her academic maturity, and partly she's just social and doesn't like to study alone. But we do both problems and exercises in one day, and spend about a week on end of chapter review and challenge problems. FWIW I vote for Intermediate Algebra (especially the polynomials section) as the most difficult AoPS text so far. Geometry was way easier.

Starting in Geometry I needed to do the challenge problems at the end of the chapter ahead of time. It saved us all a bunch of time, rather than having to read slowly and carefully through the solutions for the first time with dd waiting not so patiently at my side. The same is true for Intermediate Algebra.

You can use Excel to enter data and create nifty charts. My kids made pie charts of their Halloween candy (8% Snickers, 13% Kit Kat...) There are probably lots of things that are quantifiable that might be of interest to your dc. Put them into a spreadsheet, and compute averages, sums, etc. Make a table of revenues and expenses: does your dc get an allowance? Have him/her enter what he spends it on, formatting it to look like a bank statement. If you do any science experiments with data gathering, entering it into a spreadsheet and graphing the data will dovetail nicely.

I love the people at AoPS. I can email Richard directly about any math question, typo in the book, the wisdom of homeschooling, and he always hears me out and gives me a prompt response. And I've never met him IRL! :wub: Really great people.

Not just for robotics, but if you want to learn more about raspi and arduino, I'm documenting our journey with electronics in this thread.

Thank you everyone for your ideas and encouragement! The suggestion to contact librarians was gold! It hadn't occurred to me, and I actually know our local children's librarian quite and well and she recommended a gem of a woman who is studying library science and currently leads a creative book club at the library. I also was contacted via a craigslist ad I posted ($75) by an equally competent woman with experience both at the library and a local independent bookstore. This thread really helped me get off my rear end and check off another big item from my to do list. WTM and the homeschooling parents who populate it are such a great resource!

I hate the term "helicopter parents." In the 1980s parents were criticized for not being involved enough with our kids and their schools. Now we're criticized for being too involved. What do they want from us?

Thank you. But I argue that one can use BY SOMEONE/SOMETHING in the first sentence: Kinsa was not impressed by my knowledge of grammar. :laugh: ..or wait a minute, maybe that should be "impressed with..."?

Can you help us with this distinction? These two examples come from MCT Practive Voyage: (1) We were not impressed. MCT says: WERE is a linking verb. IMPRESSED is an adjective/subject complement. (2) The captain's rule was best described as a benevolent dictatorship. MCT says: WAS BEST DESCRIBED is a passive voice action verb. I can not for the life of me figure out how to make this distinction. Thank you for your help.

I need to hire a new book club leader in the fall. I've tried posting job ads on local homeschooling yahoogroups, craigslist, and I've sent job postings to the english departments at the local college and university. Nothing is panning out. By that mean, I received only one response, an email written with poor English usage. Do the WTMers have any secrets to finding and hiring these lovely people?

I was wondering whether it was only homeschoolers who care about this rule, and it's mostly ignored by regular b&m schools. I mean, is the CB going to send out the Transcript Police to arrest us if we don't use AP on a transcript in the precisely correct way? Having said that, as homeschoolers it behooves us follow the letter of the law, dot our i's, cross our t's, etc.

Thank you, Reg. I did indeed have a little freak out there.

Yikes! It looks like I do need to get the college board to retain my dd's AP CS scores that she took as an 8th grader. I hope I'm not too late.

Wait, what? Dd13 just took the AP CS exam and got a 5. According to this link it looks like you can't list an AP class on your transcript before 9th grade, but that's different from taking the exam in 8th grade. Is there a link that confirms this? ETA: 8th graders can take the AP?

I must ask...in what way does Apologia use sig figs incorrectly?

I'm sorry about your dd's lupus diagnosis. That's really rough.

I wonder if the same could be said about a number of subjects. Learning to understand biological processes is very different than working as a research biologist? Working as a lawyer is very different from working as a law professor?

Caesar's English is just lovely. Open and go, easy to use, beautifully done. It makes vocabulary fun and meaningful. World Within the Word...well, what a disappointment. My dd just pointed out that she has now learned 2 synonyms for tightrope walker! (funambulist and equilibrist) Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm not well acquainted with classic literature, but do tightrope walkers appear with such frequency that they warrant not 1 but 2 synonyms in a list of the most frequently used difficult words? Both books (CE and WWW) suffer from poor organization between the student and teacher editions. Exams to be taken by the student are found in teacher manuals (not the student manuals where one would expect them to be), and are often found on the facing page to the answer key! So now I must insert an opaque page so the answers are hidden. The parent manual also duplicates much of the material in the student manual, thereby inspiring conspiracy theories on the wtm boards about overcharging for duplicated content. I'll add to the conspiracy theories with my own about all the added essays on history which tangentially relate to the vocabulary words, and really should be in a separate history text. We always skip them, thought admittedly they look interesting. Perhaps if they were published separately in a history text? Grammar Voyage is great, but what happened to Magic Lens? There is so much new difficult grammatical material: tenses and future past perfects and all that, but the accompanying exercise booklets (4Practice) do not dovetail with this new material. At. all. It's basically a recap of Practice Voyage from the previous year with no new material. ETA: We have also found many, many errors. Beware, if you are like me and language arts isn't your strongest subject, that you will be scratching your head wondering if the answer he provides is in fact correct. As far as I know, the RFP does not have an errata list, which makes this even more frustrating.

I agree with Arcadia. I haven't looked at a Make Magazine in some years, but my impression then was that it was way way too advanced for me. But pick up a recent copy at the library and have a look for yourself. The books published by Maker Media are more specific: for beginners, electronics, arduino, etc. Does your student have any programming experience? She doesn't necessarily need to be an expert programmer, but having some exposure to Python can really help with understanding the code in Arduino and RasPi. If so, I would start with Arduino. It's less expensive and there are many different form factors, including cheap chinese knockoffs. Look at my thread for some good guides. We have found RasPi less friendly for beginners, though I also have found some beginner guides to get started with those as well. If you want to get some hands on work done without programming, I highly recommend beginning with basic electronics. It's fun and easy and great experience for a future engineer. The link above also has some good beginning guides to electronics.

Here are some resources for hand on electronics work. If you have any questions about electronics, arduino, or raspberry pi, I'm happy to help.

Sitting in a language lab and listening to tapes and practicing your pronunciation is no fun. But being in a foreign country and being able to express yourself in another language is deeply satisfying. (I haven't had this satisfaction myself, but it sounds awesome!)

Hi, SWB: Do you plan to include resources for computer science, electronics, and math competitions? (If not, you should, lol.) Computer Science: Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner by Michael Dawson AoPS Python online courses (intro and intermediate) Amplify MOOC (now called "Edhesive") Electronics: Make: Electronics by Charles Platt (volumes 1 and 2) EEME Teach Your Kids Electronics online class Math Competitions: See my post #9 in this thread. ETA: I wanted to add that all these activities were a wonderful addition to our homeschooling experience, and made it (IMO) superior to a traditional school curriculum.

I'm thinking this so-called "four year college experience" is an anachronistic ritual which has outlasted its usefulness. Why pay so much money just to socialize and attend time-wasting football games? Focus on obtaining the best education possible, whatever the path he takes. Good for your DS!

I'll add this thread to the list: tracing recursion functions. My greatest difficulty when tracing recursive progams is coming back "out" from the recursive calls with their return values. Always so confusing, but I thought this method helped to simplify the exercise.