Yes. Otherwise I feel like we aren't getting our money's worth.

I can't really "read" math unless I'm sitting at a table with a nice pen and blank pad of paper. (ETA: a Diet Coke on ice also helps) Then I write/copy the equations as they appear in the book, making certain that I follow their line of reasoning. Writing keeps me focused and forces me to not skim. This is true for AoPS, as well as MathCounts and AMC. Anything with hard stuff. The AoPS books are quite dense, so it really helps to draw and write in my own style with plenty of white space, no paragraphing but lots of arrows and indentations. When working through the problems at the start of each section, I read aloud what is written while drawing diagrams and writing equations on a pad with my dd looking on. Often I'm asking her Socratically what she would do next. I read through the explanations emphasizing important points. The she completes the exercises independently. HTH.

I just thought of something that I wish I had known when we entered our first competition. I didn't know they would be handing out our score sheets at the end of the tournament, so I just left about as soon as it was over. They mailed it to me a few days later. The second year, one of the parents alerted to me that they had called the coaches up to the front...I hadn't heard the announcement in all the hubbub. Low and behold they were handing out our score sheets! Last year the chapter coordinator emailed a list of all the participating teams and their scores and ranks in the competition. This was very nice for us because since our team wasn't among the top 5-10, we really had no idea how we compared to all the other schools. Did we just miss the cut or did we come in last place? I was gratified to see we were in the top 2/3, and we beat out a few prominent and expensive private schools in our area. (Though we were beaten by the other competing homeschool team!) It also gives us a baseline for improvement this year. Good luck! the MC chapter competition is a lot of fun.

Also good preparation for younger students is to do MOEMS. You can either be a formal team, or just use their books of old exams for practice. The problems are easier than MC problems, but it's great preparation for younger kids who may want to do MC later.

I bought it from HS Buyers Co-op, and I agree, the DS videos were inferior that what we were finding for free on youtube.

One section per day, but I go over the problems with her and then she does the exercises on her own. If I'm careful, I might spot a particularly short section and add it to the next one, but usually I forget. They typically spend 2-3 days on review and challenge problems.

I was just listening to this essay on the radio, and I was wondering what my kids need to know about the abuse of prescription drugs. There are prescription pain killers, academic performance enhancers (Ritalin, et al), and now Xanax is being ground up into a powder at parties?? My kids are at home now, so I feel like I have some control, but what happens when they see their colleagues at college prepping for exams by taking drugs? Back in the day it was all about pot, heroin, and cocaine: if it was illegal don't do it. Now I don't know what to tell them.

You can also use a neo. magnet to ! My dd's followed the instructions in this and other youtube videos, and it was quite easy and was a nice addition to our lesson on electricity and magnetism. They totally work too, like you can hear the radio and everything.

You could go for well rounded or you could go for "pointy." I don't know which is the better strategy. :confused1:

Your team can consist of as many as 10 students. If you do, then 6 of them will compete as individuals only, doing the Sprint and Target rounds. The other four compete as individuals, but also compete on the Team round which they do together. Team practice is probably strictly not necessary if you have students who are motivated to prepare individually. If you are planning to register just your own student, s/he does not need a team practice, but it's probably a good idea to practice with old exams. If you have a team of 4, it is helpful to have them practice together as a team, to smooth out their roles. Who's going to keep an eye on the time? Who's going to decide on the final answers and write them in? I use team practice to review harder problems from old exams, discuss problem-solving techniques and just plain math. You can also practice using the MathCounts minis problem sets and videos. The MC store sells old exams and other preparation books which I find very helpful. Good luck!

We loved CE but found WWW very disappointing. As someone else on another thread mentioned, the analogies really are questionable. The history is non-sequitur. What happened to the lovely uses of the words in literature? We are skipping more and more of each chapter and going straight from the list to flash cards to the quiz and moving on. Too bad.

I asked the same question recently. Here's the thread that resulted.

...and don't forget our Iranian-American boardies! It's so nice to have some good news for once.

I for one would love to see the Amazon listing for this book. How wonderful for your dd! Please share a link to the book.

If you have a choice of testing locations, I recommend doing what you can to find out whether the climate will be controlled during the exam. Dd had the unfortunate experience of taking the SAT in an unheated classroom in December! This public school turns off everything on the weekends, so it was not ideal. I agree with kiana and others that taking the SAT early demystifies the exam. For an ID, we used a passport.

Would it make sense to turn it into an electronics course? You could use the projects in Make: Electronics to make an elective course, which is what I'm going.

I didn't want to post at first because I had such a love/hate feeling with FLL. It was overwhelming, and you are wise to tap the Hive for info and advice before beginning. Part of my problem was I thought it was a robotics competition. I was caught off guard by what is essentially a science fair tacked on. I seriously burned out, mainly because I felt obligated to catch up with school coaches who had been doing this for years. It's a steep learning curve, and I just didn't feel very competent. If either of my dd's asked to do it again, I'd do it, but since they were okay with their other activities, I've dropped it. Having said that... My team had a blast! I was also impressed that the judges and teams truly take seriously their commitment to their core value of Gracious Professionalism. At least in our neighborhood, treating everyone with kindness is modeled and rewarded. I do so miss that from FLL, and haven't really seen it anywhere else. Best of luck to you!

Thank you! This is a good start to my planning.

Anything that's easy to spell, or has a standard spelling that everyone knows. Cat Street is good. Everyone knows how to spell cat.

I am not an inspirational teacher when it comes to history. We have been slogging through History of US for what seems like ages with my now dd13 and dd11. Read a chapter, short discussion, do the worksheet, lather, rinse, repeat. Problem is, it looks like in a few months we'll be done, and I don't know what else to do. In my fantasy world, I would let the kids explore history, any time period, any location they want, but they aren't exactly history lovers themselves. (I take credit for that.) Does anyone have ideas form some sort of child-led history for middle schoolers? I'd like to incorporate writing (also not my strength, but I have a tutor for that). Or maybe not necessarily child led, but something fun. Something clean and easy. Something.

DH's company sends it engineering VP to the campuses of the I.I.T.'s to recruit directly for CS. Maybe we should be sending our kids to college in India? :lol:

Hm. I just looked up EE and CS on the ABET list and Stanford is not accredited. This says more to me about ABET than it does about Stanford.

We aren't terribly poor, but we save a bunch of money by not buying Apple products.

Take a campus tour of Stanford. They are free but check their schedule. Computer History Museum in Mountain View is amazing.

We are about to begin TeenCoder Java. Did it not help to look at the solutions to find his errors? I haven't looked at the solutions yet, so I'm wondering whether they provide adequate guidance?