The chalkdust series has been a God send in our house hold. Uncle Buck explains things so well.

We are right there with you! We have gotten a 30 for 2 times as well. The princeton review help our math scores the last time. Math scores were up but science and reading down. We could do really well with a super score! I also had her go back over her little brother's singapore level 6 math. She has had all the advanced math but had gotten quite rusty on the plain math.

My first daughter took the ACT and PSAT with the Princeton and Kaplan books. She did well and is a self studier. She has a 30 on the ACT after 2 tries and made around 180 on the PSAT. I am learning about the gamemanship of test taking and scholarship. With my second child (probable not as smart but a much better test taker) I am hoping similar numbers. (Every mom would love a National Merit Scholar) The wordsmart curriculum was introduced to my by a telemarketer. It is suppose to come with a money back guarantee if your child's ACT score isn't raised by 4 points. (similar for SAT) Original must be 29 or lower. That gets my 12th grader out but my 10th with a 25 might help? But like you I had no experience. Thanks

We have tried several ACT/SAT prep books and have had moderate success with them. I was wondering if anyone has had great success with the Wordsmart program and its guarantee or the College Prep Genius Programs. Thanks in advance.

Has anyone used the brave writer curriculum and classes? Do we need the "e book" help for high school and writers jungle or just the classes? I am looking at a 12 grader, 10 grader, and 8th grader. Thanks, Adelia

Our experience has been an increase of 3-4 points every time. It isn't that expensive and release of the pressure on the child of a "one" time test is nice. They go into it with the expectations of taking it again.

My daughter loved the Apologia's "Human Body". It has been her favorite science. It should fit in well with your daughter's career plans.

We use the chalkdust series and have been very pleased. The DVD with "Uncle Buck" are great. He is gifted in explaination. It is pricey but I have 3 children to use it and then can resale.

We went ahead with the Algebra. I guess our "hurry" was to get as much math under our belt as we could before beginning to take the ACT tests. We begin testing in our family in 9th grade. (it is a cost issue..other standarized test are $100---ACT $35) It has been helpful to us to have Algebra and Geo before taking the test. I also agree with the posts about the science series.

We have always just read. Occasionally if we need to look at a map we will. We are on again off again timeliners. As the kids have aged (17,15,12) they love going back and looking at the timeline figures they did draw. Perhaps more time could have been spent there. Over all we just did what fit in our schedule.

Side walk chalk also worked well for us. It worked better with my girls but my boy enjoyed it also. He enjoyed seeing how BIG he could write his words. Then there was always the fun of having Dad see the words when he came home.

Use whatever minipulatives you will be using in K. Let them play with them and understand them and bond with them. My 3rd child hauled cuisenaire rods in dump trucks, built towers with them, made roads with them for years before he actually started math. When he did start math with them the values and sizes and understanding of them were with him deeply. It was almost like taking friends to math class! We loved Miquion.

Singapore (7th grade) NEM 1 has beginning Algebra first semester then a good hunk of geometry but no proofs in the second half. NEM 2 is structured the same way. We are doing chalkdust geometry this year and it has lots of Algebra requirements. Many people do Algebra 1 and 2 then Geometry.

When my kids were young we loved the Games for Learning books by Peggy Kaye. There are several...Games for learning...Math...Reading...etc. They are books that teach you to make games for learning particular educational goals. I loved it because sometimes we constructed the game board together and sometimes it was just learning the rules and we could play fun math games while waiting for the car or doctor. It helped me make learning more fun.

I have used some of the LA for my children. I loved the old style dictation. It was full of grammar (we worked on it together) and I felt gave them a great handle on grammar issues. That has since been toned down in the new LA and I miss it. The writing assignments were rather hard for me to find in the manual and I felt I didn't have enough to correct or help them with it. For example, do a character sketch on this character but no sample or example for me to evaluate their work. If you are comfortable with that, it does a great job tieing it all together - history, readers, writing and in the younger grades even some spelling. So we just mainly picked some projects I felt comfortable with and had the time for and skipped others. I always bought it but never did all that was contained in it. The instructions on writing research papers was excellent. Hope this helps it is but my experience with my family.