Hi: I'm starting to prep for my 3rd year of coaching a mathcounts team. I will have at least a few students who are 8th graders, so I want to do right for them in their last year. In the past my team has scored only between 25 and 30 points in chapter competition putting them near the bottom of the pack, and I'd really like to see them make it at least in the top half of competitors this year. Here is what we do. We meet once a week. As homework I have them do an old Sprint or Target round, and grade it at home. Then when they return, I ask them if they want to go over any problems. Then I select the most challenging problems and review the associated theorems or techniques for solving it. The 4-person team meets once a month to do a team round together at my kitchen table, and we score the test and review tough problems immediately after. I've been doing some of the mathcounts minis problem sets, but I'm not sure how to incorporate them into our preparations. I'm not really sure what changes I should make to my coaching strategy that would have the biggest impact on our team performance. The students work so hard, I really want them to do well this year!

Thanks, everyone!

How have you found schools willing to allow homeschoolers to take the AP exam at their site? Who do you contact? The admin office, department chair, AP teacher? When is a good time to begin the search? If they don't offer a particular AP course, then should I not bother asking? What should I keep in mind about their point of view with respect to allowing homeschoolers at their AP exam? Is it more work for them? What misconceptions do they have that I might need to negate? My kids have never been enrolled in a school, so I have scant inside contacts, though I may be able to get some help from neighbors and local homeschoolers. But I may be cold-calling some schools. Any help is appreciated!

What resources are you using for AP CS?

Since when is that a silly question? :tongue_smilie: I could certainly use some help with meal planning!

If you want to extend BFSU as long as possible, I agree with PPs about Bill Nye and other videos and books you might find at your library. Also the internet is your friend here. Put the lesson topics into your search engine or into youtube search. You'll see lots of alternative experiments and demonstrations to further and deepen their understanding. You can also have your kids create posters or videos, etc. to show their understanding. Keep an eye out for museum exhibits near home or when you are traveling. The book Exploratopia also dovetails nicely with some lessons in BFSU1. Finally, don't pay attention to the grade level listed. If your kids are ready for BFSU2, then why wait? If they aren't, you can proceed at a leisurely pace through both books, supplementing and reviewing as needed.

Can I just say this is a total drag. You son would be an asset to any college.

Girls' Angle Bulletin

Can he take the AMC12 before his application is due? If he's a math whiz and does well there, that should alleviate any concerns about his math ability.

This seems to be a thing now. Particularly among first generation college students who are primed to feel like they don't belong there after they get their first B or C on a midterm. It was reported in the NYT magazine, that students who come from college-educated families and fully expect to graduate college view that first C as a minor stumbling block, not a sign that they should drop out.

That's awesome. Don't forget to check out youtube. there's lots of diy science projects there, it's amazing.

If your household is like mine, now is a good time to get started. My kids have camps on and off all summer, so that gives me more uninterrupted time to do planning. Look through the materials sections of each lesson you'll be covering the first semester. Order it and put it away until needed. You'll need more stuff in vol's 2 and 3, particularly in physics. If you are not strong in science, start reading now to familiarize yourself with the concepts and experiments. I agree with a PP to start putting library books on hold a week or so before the start of a new lesson. I usually hold additional books that pop up in my library searches as appropriate. It's free after all! I like to work through an experiment before I do it with the kids to get the bugs out. It's also amazing what people are posting on youtube. You can easily find lots of good supplemental hands on work. For example, we've been studying E&M in bfsu3. I wanted to supplement with some youtube videos when I stumbled on an experiment for DIY speakers made from paper plates! Amazing! It was so easy, you could totally hear the radio transmission, and it really drove home the role of electromagnets and permanent magnets in producing sound waves. It wasn't a part of bfsu but dovetailed so well with it. if you have any specific questions about any particular lessons, I'm happy to help.

Does she want to HS her own children? A college degree really helps, especially in math and science. I feel very lucky to have these skills that I can pass on to my own kids.

Buying sheets, lol. Do all colleges have extra long dorm beds like mine did? What's with that?

Congratulations do your son! Did he use the videos, and if so, were they a helpful addition or redundant to the text?

I am looking at the Kinetic website for the first time. It looks like there is an online class as well as several textbooks. What did he use?

You can order old practice exams from their website. Also MOEMS, and they also have a book of old exams. MOEMS consists of 5 monthly exams during the school year, so that should help with his appetite for testing. (FWIW, I love tests, too!)

Congratulations to your son! What materials or classes did he use to prepare? We're thinking about trying for AP CS next year.

BFSU Volume 3

You can type into a search engine "python programming assignment" and see what turns up. I did that a couple of times and found nice projects for my dd that were just at her level. Project Euler also lots of interesting programs. Also, as you move along in math, you may see projects which seem to lend themselves to programming. For example, dd learned about the Stable Marriage Algorithm and wrote a program that allows you to select the number of men and women to be matched, runs the match over and over hundreds of times, and calculates the average rank of the matched persons for men and women. If you assume men are doing the proposing, then the men are matched to their higher ranked women than women are to me. As someone else on this list said, sometimes it's a matter of chasing rabbits down different holes and learning things that are interesting.

Thanks so much. I never thought a vendor would be so forthcoming. I'll give them a call after the holidays. ETA: ...and report back to this thread for everyone's benefit.

Has anyone used Florida Virtual School for AP CS? It looks like it's $800 for the course, but it isn't clear what kind of feedback the student receives.

Speaking of which...could you ask your son if he was able to get Experiment 18 to work? It's the reaction timer. We were able to get everything to work until we added the last 555 timer.

No, no! I'm not offended at all. On the contrary, I'm glad you brought up the observation. I am also a little jealous of you and other parents who have kids who are so passionate about some topic that all you need to do is give them a book, and they just go to town with it. In the absence of such passion in my own kids, I feel the need to "fill the space" with exposure to a variety of topics. As dauphin wrote, I don't want my kids to miss any opportunities just because it wasn't on her radar. Now I feel a bit better about my homeschooling plan.

At the risk of going OT, I'd like to work through some feelings I have about what you wrote. I have a couple of girls who really have no passion for this kind of stuff, but I make them do it anyway. It is part of my curriculum. It makes me sad to read that "the joy would promptly leave it" because part of me agrees. And yet, I don't think I've necessarily killed their interest in electronics...they never really had one to start with. Our short lessons in soldering, 555 timers, etc., are met with mild interest, some eye-rolling, but never tears. I keep my lessons short and sweet. (Leave 'em wanting more, LOL.) I think it's important that they understand how things work by building things themselves. I had never seen a breadboard before I entered college, and it put me at a huge disadvantage over the men in my classes who grew up with RS electronics kits. My kids may never want to be EE's, but I don't want them to not choose it because they flail in their first electronics class and give up. So sometimes I feel Tiger Mom-ish for making them do this stuff, but I feel obligated to do so, particularly because I have girls who would never spontaneously gravitate to the topic. I'd love to hear what others think of this approach, or maybe it's a post for a separate topic.