I don't consider preK to be real school either, since you asked. There are Headstart programs for kids who have quite literally never held a crayon before in their own homes, nor seen a book, let alone had the socialization taught at home to learn not to interrupt, or to sit still for twenty minutes at a time. Once upon a time, these kids could have caught up in kindergarten, but now there has been this weird and IMAO (in my arrogant opinion, because I don't even entertain the notion of eing wrong here) harmful trend of full-day kindergarten everywhere and pushing first grade skills into kindergarten, so it is becoming more needful to ensure those kids have the basics down before kindergarten starts. There is an abundance of preK around-- so much so that as many here have noted, it is sometimes considered weird not to put your kid in preK. They often have elementary licensed teachers and curriculum and even report cards. My kids went through this-- built into their daycare day as I was working FT at the time. To me, it was just daycare, not school. Those kids were too young for school, and I was one of the few who opted my kids into half-day only kindergarten as well (older went back to daycare; younger I picked up at the bus stop). My kids are both on the gifted spectrum and ready to do neat stuff, but still needed to play first and foremost. I oppose universal preK at every opportunity; I hear teachers discussing how it is necessary to take kids away from their parents as early as possible because parents don't know what to do with kids. How sad :(. We are raising a whole generation of kids being raised by people who think parents are bad for them. I am an increasingly irrelevant voice on this side of things, however, as many two-working parent families are grateful when offered preK as a reduced child care expense.

So perfectly said. I mean . . . all but the most incompetent parents, including those whose kids are in daycare because they work, play with their kids at home, teach them their numbers and colors and letters and talk about animals and plants, and throw and catch and laugh and just talk with them and read with them when you are together . . . and this is not with curriculum or workbooks . . . this is just . . . life! It's just what you do with your kids, because you like them! It doesn't matter if your kid will be identified as gifted or special needs or anything else now or in the future. You still talk and play and sing and laugh with them. That isn't homeschooling them; that is raising them. Now that is a completely different question from shutting families out from coops; I would have no problem with a young family who is interested in homeschooling hanging out with a homeschool group, to learn, research, ask questions, and find out what homeschooling is really like. Okay, I don't do any "real" coops with taught classes or anything-- in our Classical schedule, we don't have time for that really-- but I am all about assisting other homeschool families whenever possible. Homeschooling is not for everyone, and there are days when it is hard. Some days it is fantastic. I have no regrets other than not starting sooner than we did. But some days it just SUCKS. Young families should hang out with experienced families and get to know this, and lose the all roses illusion that can happen when they read blogs and books that fail to show the down side of homeschool life. There are days when nobody likes school very much, and young families should see that this happens from time to time, but that this too shall pass, and life will be good again. I say include these families. Answer their questions and let them hang out in the social groups. Let them see you be uncertain. Let them see you have doubts sometimes. Let them see you say, "oops." Let them see you turn it around and succeed anyway. Then when they start and it isn't all a bed of roses every day, they won't get discouraged and quit. But the homeschooling name? I agree it is silly if they don't have a kid at least in Kindergarten. If the kid isn't school age yet, you aren't schooling-- you are really just raising them :). Some people might argue that for homeschoolers that state never changes-- well, okay. We just differ in opinion. It is an opinion poll after all!

The Pandia Press timeline is hole-punched and accordions into a 3ring binder, FYI.

The people I hang out with do it for mostly academic reasons, but the religious folks are out there too.

A recent thread which shall remain unnamed got me thinking... how tame was my reading material as a kid? How did it affect me? I actually remember buying a copy of Eric Segall's "Love Story" from a neighbor's yard sale as a 10YO 4th grader; I just thought the cover looked cool. Whew-- end of some innocence there LOL. In 6th grade a friend handed me a copy of "Flowers in the Attic" or something like that and promised me more if I wanted them-- I gobbled down the book with interest as it was all new info to me, but declined more of that genre; I was more Isaac Asimov and Mark Twain. Neither book ruined me for life or despoiled me for literature or ruined my heart in any way. They were books. I chose not to spend more time living in those worlds, but really, looking back, no harm was done; maybe I was just a secure, resilient kiddo. If anything, I learned from them what questions to begin asking about love, sex, the connections and differences between the two, and how my body worked. What I did miss, later in my high school years, was a chance to read well-written literature that contained any mature themes in a classroom setting where I'd have a chance to discuss the piece with other kids in roughly my same life stage, with the help of an adult mentor. That's a shame, because as a science major, I also never did in college, which means I never had the chance to have that conversation with peers while forming who I was going to be as an adult. In the late teen years, peer interaction is super important. Yes, we read and discussed many amazing books in American lit and AP English, but nothing of this sort, and this is an essential aspect of each person's development. One reason we read and discuss books is to reflect upon ourselves and our society. Here's the question: What books about human development and sexuality did you read when you were young (or even "too young?") and how did they affect you? Did you ever have a great book like this in class that spawned useful discussion? Does reflecting on this alter how you will plan books for your kids, or respond if you find them reading something "unexpected?" (My Dad's response to finding me reading "Love Story" is a response I will always love him for). Not interesting: why young people should never read this stuff; why my parents were evil for allowing it (my parents were amazing, actually); all such material is evil, etc. this is not a controversy thread-- it's a thread for positive discussion about how books can impact you in a good way when you weren't expecting it.

People with foot fetishes are seriously turned on by bare feet. By your definition, we should not read any books with characters flagrantly displaying bare feet, because somebody, somewhere, might get turned on. At some point you must realize when an argument has become ludicrous. Saying that something not written as porn and not serving you as porn because it is not intended as arousing and most people would never find it anything but repulsive, but some person somewhere, unknown to you, might possibly find it arousing, so it is still therefore porn... Eeeyikes. I can see an individual finding the sexual explicitness personally distasteful; but "it passes my threshold of discomfort and is therefore porn" is not really the definition of the word. The linguist in me was just becoming agitated.

Hands of a child has great (secular) unit studies for history-- many can be purchased as lap book or notebook projects, and adapted for different ages.

When I went through school, back in the stone ages (think early 80's) at least in my district, pre-algebra was reserved for students "who needed extra help" before embarking upon that fearful subject, algebra. Typical students simply started algebra, and the top students started algebra a year early, skipping even the last year of general arithmetic, expected to have picked that up on their own time. Pre-Algebra was seen as a mere reinforcement year, and not particularly necessary for anybody destined to apply for college. Pre-Calculus simply never existed. A student would move from trig straight into calculus, if there was time before graduation, and there was no desire for a different course such as consumer math or statistics instead.

You can get the books through whatever resource you can! Just don't skip the labs-- they make the program!

DS10 finished US Edition 5B last year and popped right into DM7 with no problem. Negative numbers are no big deal, and the rules for working with them can be explained to the student, including why they work, in about twenty minutes. It's really no big deal. Exponents are explained at the beginning of DM7, so learning them earlier confers no particular advantage, as again, using them is not difficult. Waiting until the child is a bit more academically mature just means they can learn them more quickly and readily in most cases.

I thought the AoPS preA book was hideous-- they took a pretty easy and straightforward set of topics and made them unnecessarily difficult without adding much value in return. Now the AoPS Geometry book I am finding to be a different story; it doesn't feel as wordy, subjectively, nor as difficult relative to the level of the material being taught, and there is actually some real depth to the program. I feel the book and program are in far better balance with the topic being intoduced. Results will still vary by kid. I have two very math capable kids, but each is following different pathways. We are fine with that; there is no single magic bullet best text out there.

DH teaches calculus through graduate classes at a research U and gets a lot of notice for his teaching-- unusual for a researcher-- and he is very happy with the depth and topic coverage in Fred. He pretty much wishes even half the students would arrive "Fred prepared." Yes, it is deep enough, and covers all the topics. One thing it does not do, particularly from algebra on upward, is spoon-feed the information. It is better for students who prefer to draw their own connections.

Why do you want to switch, this far long? DS10 finished through Singapore 5B US Edition and is having no difficulty in DM7 now (we skipped 6). Now, he is also using LoF alongside it, which is itself a standalone program, but he is only in Fractions there.

He was doing Life of Fred and Singapore before; if AoPS doesn't suit him, is there a reason not to stick with Life if Fred or Singapore? We come from a pretty mathematical household-- DH is a full professor of mathematics at a research university, and I am a former researcher in the sciences-- and we've been pretty happy with DS older's experience in Life of Fred Beginning Algebra; DS Younger went through Singapore PM and Fred, like yours, so he is sticking with Singapore DM and Fred now, since he likes both. Either one alone would be fine, though.

Mine are 10 and 12. We are alternating weeks between Hey Andrew! Level 3 and Greek for Children, and it's actually going quite well-- this is their introduction to Greek. They have already been doing Latin, so they get the idea of the different endings and conjugations. Mostly, I just couldn't pick between the two, but the kids aren't complaining about doing two different programs. We just alternate weeks.

I have found several textbooks that teach that airplalnes fly due to the Bernoulli effect; the big problem lies in how they explain this to the kids-- they start off fine: they state that the air flowing over the wing travels faster to reach the back of the wing than the air flowing under the wing, and this produces lift (okay, so far, so good; physicists generally agree that a combination of the Bernoulli effect and Newton's 2nd law are responsible for planes not falling from the sky). However, the explanation for how the BE works is fatally flawed; they tell the kids that the air over the top travels faster because it has to reach the back of the wing at the same time as the air flowing under the wing. This part is just . . . wrong. Even a moment's thought should tell you that it is wrong-- why should the air on the bottom care whether it wins a footrace with the air on top of the wing? It doesn't. The molecules aren't friends. They didn't go to school together. They are moving indpendently of one another, and this explanation is a fallacy, sometimes called "The equal transit time fallacy." Better than our thought experiment, actual experimental data have proven that this line of thinking is in error, and if you encounter this fallacy in your physics books, please do not teach it to your kids. So why does this explanation persist in physics books? Because the real explanation is a bit more difficult, and I'm not even qualified to say whether there is a universally agreed-upon, satisfactory answer. Here is one reference (yes, it's wikipedia, but you can follow threads to more real sources to your heart's content): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_transit-time_fallacy#.22Popular.22_explanation_based_on_equal_transit-time

His videos hit a range of ages, and he is funny but accurate and to the point. He has been rearranging his site to organize his videos topically to make them easier to find. At $10/year, Robert Krampf is a bargain!

We use graph paper for math still, and DS12 is in algebra 2. It's just easier to line up decimals, keep track of division, and when you have to sketch or graph, you're all set.

Singapore is pretty much fully interactive. You introduce things in a concrete manner, then pictorially, then in the abstract-- lots of interaction. Then they can do some practice problems alone just to solidify the concept and practice to get it into memory. So how to keep from losing it at that point? Can she work on a white board in a room where you are doing something else, instead of doing it on paper?

DS younger used HO level 1, all four levels (though we did it at double time so that he could start Level 2 ancients this year at age 10-- just my personal choice). We started out using some history pockets, and then ditched them. We did use a few Hands of a Child unit studies for a few topics such as the Civil War (again, my choice) where I wanted just a bit more background. My kids (older DS is in level 2 already) love HO and request to continue using it. They are absorbing the geography, and the book selections and additional book suggestions from which to choose are wonderful. My kids are developing a solid sense of history and time-relations in history. DS just turned 10 loves reading the Landmark books, literature, and other books as we have time, and really enjoys history time. We do projects "when we have time" but focus mostly on reading and starting to learn how to take notes and organize information, which is one strength of the program.

First of all . . . the teacher is nuts. Sorry. But that consensus has already been reached by the PP in this thread, so I have nothing more to add there. Ah, to HIG or to not HIG, that is the question! Whether 'tis nobler . . . oh, sorry. Here's the thing. As so many have mentioned, the Singapore method is very different from how you learned math, unless you learned math outside the US, or probably unless you learned it in the last decade or so in an Asian country. So if you buy the books and then teach it the way you know it, you should have probably gone with Houghton in the first place, because you're not really getting the SIngapore benefits. There are all kinds of homeschool parents, and one is not better than another. But our styles and brains and amounts of time we have available for prep and affinity for math and intuition all vary, and this means some of us do great without the HIG and some will benefit greatly from the HIG. The book Kai mentioned, "Elementary Mathematics for Teachers," is even better; it's available on the SM website, and is the college training text for teachers and gives examples of concrete lessons to use when teaching (and if you're not using concrete lessons, you're skipping part of SM) as well as explaining how it all works. Some people will do very well to buy and read that book. Some people will have difficulty recognizing which category fits them best. If you look at a book such as Life of Fred and don't see games and extensions naturally jumping off the page at you, you will probably be a great candidate for the HIG or Elementary Math for Teachers. If you see a problem in a physics book such as, "What do you think will happen to the period of a pendulum if you increase the weight on the bottom of the pendulum?" and you report back that that book has no labs in it, because the book did not tell you to get some string and some objects of different masses and try it to see what happens, then trying to wing it with SM without a guide book might not be a great idea; coming up with the concrete and pictorial lessons on your own in the SIngapore way will require this type of thinking. You can still easily teach SM on your own! It is NOT hard! But having a guide book in the form of an HIG or the EMT book to provide guidance on the activities to do and how to present it in a way consistent with the Singapore Method just might be helpful to you. Also, some of the word problems in SM can start to get tricky; as you get to the higher levels, some people may find an answer key to be a very nice thing. Particularly if you have multiple children, or an outside job to work, it can cut down on grading time-- as nice as it sounds to say you will personally work every single problem you assign to your children, let's face it. There are families here who have 7 kids. Answer keys serve their purpose, though always be open to the possibility of an error existing in the key. So . . . I didn't try to give you an answer outright so much as help with the decision tree so you can decide for yourself; I hope it was helpful. We never needed the HIG's, but I definitely respect those who do. I think the HIG's are great and should be used where they are needed. I have other subjects in which I feel very comfortable, but I use the equivalent of an HIG, just to help me cut my planning time! It's tough when many of us are working on a budget. But unless you are really in the group who just reads these books and sees ideas jumping straight out at you from the text (and please, don't skip the texts in Singapore; they are key) and you can get your mind away from how you were taught math, the HIG's or the EMT book are a good idea for many. To thine own self be true.

We are just embarking upon DM7, so I probably can't contribute too much, but I did look over their comparative s&s chart, and I thought the cc version looked just fine-- that is what we are using. My son tends to catch on quickly and need very little repetition, but because he is only just turned 10, I decided to go ahead and get the workbook-- we are going to work each chapter, then do the workbook as independent work at the end of each chapter as reinforcement. We will also do the math journal assignments at the end of each chapter.

More labs in LoF Physics... In the Chapter 3 Your Turn to Play, Stan asks the student to predict: how will the length of a pendulum affect the length of it's period? Will it change? What about the weight hanging on the pendulum? My just turned 10YO did not want us to turn the page to check his predictions yet. He ran off to gather string, some different objects, a stopwatch, a yardstick and a tape measure. He is going to test his predictions before looking at the answers. Mom, can we try some really long pendulums out the second floor window? Yes, there are tons of labs in Fred Physics. Just do the problems in real life.

"Chuck Norris knows all the prime numbers." (If you don't get it, google chuck Norris jokes)