Zoiks, there was a problem there, but it had nothing to do with lab skills!! I went to college and had a year of general chemistry, a year of O-chem, biochem, and more, and went on to a career when I was essentially carrying out biochemistry for my career. Nobody was ever stabbed for poor lab skills, though we did give a few individuals who threatened lives a serious talking to, and I ended up having one individual practice pipetting colored water for about two weeks before I would let her touch even her own chemicals again :) There are reasons why in a professional lab, you make and use only your own chemical solution stocks! Across two different universities in two states and my employer I never had a problem in chem lab as a female. I never did P-Chem or chemical engineering, so I can't speak to those environments.

If you want Fred to be a check off the checkbox, do only the problems written at the end of the chapter as the only "math problems" your child ever does, you will find Fred very frustrating and incomplete. If you buzz through Fred at the rate of several chapters a day because that is how fast your kid reads, you will find Fred very "light" and lacking in content. If you are willing to think about math in a whole different way, and stop and smell the roses the author tosses at you in each paragraph, Fred can be a very complete experience. The author is teaching the parent how to chat about math with the child throughout the day and how to play very interesting math games with the child that will illuminate math properties and really drill in the math facts right from the start in Apples; you just need to be paying attention and not looking for that checkbox to check off so you can be done. Make math a conversation between you, the author, your child, and Fred; that's how Fred can become a complete curriculum your child will beg you to do. This approach will not work for everyone; some parents really do want that, "Give me a list of problems to do so that I can see what was accomplished" approach, and for them, Fred elementary will be really frustrating, or else just a fun supplement. I have posted numerous times (just search for Fred threads throughout this message board or check my blog) for one example of all the things you can do with just the photograph of the pencils that add to 7 in the Apples book! We did not use Fred Elementary exclusively-- my son was already 8 or 9 by the time this series was released, and well on his way through Singapore-- but he has definitely greatly benefitted from it, and my older has been a Fred scholar from Fractions on upward, where the instruction is more explicit (but still different from the standard textbooky approach). I think there is room to use Fred however it best fits your family-- if you are not comfortable using it as a complete curriculum, then go ahead and use it as a supplement. But I suggest slowing down, and trying to take time to not blast past some of the really cool stuff in there . . . the program really is loaded :). In the upper books, he does tell the kids, "You may not start the next chapter until you know your 3X multiplication facts. You must EARN your way into this chapter. Make some flash cards, and use them until you know these facts!" Don't be one of the families who posts that their kid finished the series and never learned his facts because Fred doesn't bother to teach them. The author lays down a rule, and if you blast into the chapter without asking your kid (assuming no learning problems) to follow that rule first, then the fault is yours, not the book's. Most kids old enough to be that far along have the capacity to learn 50 Pokemon; they can certainly learn 10 number facts if they are motivated, before starting the next chapter of the book. I suspect those posts come from families who are not actually reading the books with their kids and didn't realize the kid broke the rules :). The kid probably didn't bother to sit down and learn most of the other math, either! The elementary series is a kid-in-your-lap-with-you series, definitely.

And I am just diving into the OP's thread ;). My kids already have 2 years of Latin under their belts (plus German and are starting Spanish) and have been asking when they can learn Ancient Greek. I say, strike while the iron is hot!

Has anybody tried Greek for Children?

Download the level 1 and level 2 samples to see what you think... The samples are pretty generous. L2 modern will have a lot of writing and research.

There is more math in them than adding to 7. Even apples includes set theory and a gentle introduction to algebraic concepts. You can also easily expand the activities. In Apples, there is a photo of seven pencils that Fred rearranges in different ways to show all the ways to make 7. Dump over a box of colored pencils and let your younger child do this. Tell your older child to PROVE that 3 + 4 = 4 + 3, a very important mathematical law. Now, does 4 - 3 = 3 - 4? Why not? How many ways can we make 7? Does that commutative law work for all of them? Will it always work for addition? What about multiplication and division? Count out 24 pencils, how many ways can we divide up 24 into equal piles with no leftovers? Can we do fractions like this? Can we show the commutative law for multiplication with these pencils? (Yes). You can spend a week just on that one photograph in Apples. Or, you can just zoom through, enjoy the story, and limit yourselves to the five problems at the end of each chapter. But there is plenty in there for your older child if you are reading with them and pay attention to the chapter content. These are pretty much books of games. My 9 YO who is starting Singapore 7DM loved them, and he just finished. We took over a year to get through the series, because we really explored them.

We're enjoying Meet the Masters quite a bit. Although each week focuses on one artist, the lesson discusses the artist's place in the art world, and explains the Paris Salon, or expressionism or cubism or who was friends with whom and even what music he artists listened to, and where they lived and what was going on in the world while they were learning and creating. In addition to a short hands-on technique lesson, MTM really places the art world in a context. It is pretty neat! edited to note: watch the VanGogh unit. No punches are pulled on how his life ended.

Our state requires nothing. I give the Stanford Achievement Test for three reasons: 1. I do want an objective measure of year to year growth 2. In the unlikely event that life forces us to replace the kids in school, they may assist with proper placement. 3. I make note of any difficulty one of my kids has completing it under standard conditions (ie how long does he take). More important tests later require, among other things, a history of test accommodations. Technically, the test is untimed, but noting a need to take 2X the suggested times is worthwhile.

History Odyssey Middle Ages-- I would go with level 1 for a 9YO/4th grader. With History Odyssey, the difficulty level ramps up each year, so it will be more difficult than the Ancients level. The level two Middle Ages program requires pretty advanced reading, writing, and note-taking skills that have been gradually built through the years of the program. The readings for level 2 include Beowulf, Cantervbury Tales (with literary analysis) and library research projects with multiple sources required. Level 1 Middle Ages still uses Story of the World and Usborne, plus dictionary copy work among other activities and readings. It will be much friendlier to a 9YO. You can always ramp up by the readings you select (there is a large list provided).

Okay, I've missed the kilt threads, and I just ran across this (from the Happy Scientist of all people LOL). The Badpiper is performing AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" on . . . flaming bagpipes. Yes, he's wearing the required kilt. Great show for any thread that needs to be kil't. Gotta love it. http://laughingsquid.com/acdcs-thunderstruck-performed-on-flaming-bagpipes/

DS12 used it as his sole program from Fractions through the beginning of Beginning Algebra. He dabbled briefly in AoPS (just discussed in a different thread) and now he also does Elements of Mathematics (iMACS) just for fun, because it's really cool :). But through most of this time, Fred has been his sole math program. DS9 has used Fred as a supplement (he is the one who has been through the elementary Fred series, and is just now starting Fractions; we skipped the intermediate series-- my house looks like a DIY curriculum fair, so I am cutting back on purchases a bit!! You'd think I was homeschooling fifteen kids here LOL) to Singapore PM through level 5B. Because I am a fan of "don't fix what isn't broken," I plan to keep him in the Singapore program, and this kiddo will move into level DM7 in fall, after taking a break to do just Fred and Penrose over the summer as a reward for working so hard-- he adores Fred, so I won't make him stop, even as we continue Singapore. Clearly, for him, Fractions will not be a first exposure. Beginning Algebra does ramp up the difficulty level quite a bit.

Somewhere on here is a printing scheme that will let you print double-sided but still arrange the papers the way she suggests (all history together, all lessons together, etc).

DS12 started in Fractions around 2 1/2 years ago (I think; I am starting to lose track now :D ) as his sole math program, and it was his introduction to fractions. We found it very complete, and he worked it independently. He loved it BECAUSE it was not incremental; his words were, "Finally! A math program that treats me as if I have a brain and doesn't spoon-feed me every single step!" We did think it was very organized, and did a great job of showing him the why behind the way fractions worked, and provided a ton of practice problems for such a one-track subject; after all, there are a load more fraction problems in the next book . . . and the next . . .and the next . . . and the next . . . and pretty much for the rest of mathematics. It is not exactly a topic that will ever be set aside and need to be refreshed again once introduced-- fractions, once learned, are practiced continuously ever after. They are also pretty straightforward to learn; once you've reduced two or three fractions, reducing thirty more will work pretty much the exact same way.

I am. The OP can verify whether she is.

Also not Crimson Wife, (and we use Human Odyssey as a supplemental reading for History Odyssey, so got the bases covered for whichever HO you meant LOL). I started using WHD with DS12 this year, and made no attempt to match them up. In fact, he is nearly finished with logic stage medieval times, and we just started book 1 (ancients and medieval) about 2 1/2 months ago; we only do history every other week, so we aren't very far into it yet. We are simply working through the book sequentially, starting at chapter 1. It has been a very good review for him, and he enjoys it. I like the review, because we will mess with the four year cycle in rhetoric stage, probably condensing world history down to 2 years, spending a year on American government and economics, and a year for history studies of his own design (AP, university courses, library research on a specific topic . . .).

I'm moving into DM for a couple of reasons. First, and probably most important, Singapore has been such a great fit, why fix what isn't broken? Second, his older brother has done fabulously well in the upper levels of Life of Fred as a primary program; having read through them and evaluated them for myself, I am very impressed with the depth and content of the series at all levels (with the exception of the somewhat nutty leanings in the PreA with Economics book, but we simply discussed our impressions of that with our older child as he went through that volume-- and who knew? Economics is actually his favorite subject now, to work through on his own time). So if DM doesn't work for some reason, LoF will be our second round draft pick for younger DS as well, because we know it is rock solid. Our oldest will continue in Fred; we started homeschooling when he was older and we didn't know about Singapore yet, as we found Fred first, so again in his case, why fix what clearly is not broken? Third, I was very unimpressed with the AoPS PreAlgebra book. It was written after the rest of the program, and I really feel as if they have gone astray a bit in the PreA book, kind of so in love with their challenge model that they made a pretty simple part of the math sequence far harder than it really needed to be, instead of just adding interest and challenge, without actually improving the fundamentals to an equal degree. My math professor husband read the book as well and reached the same conclusion. We both feel there are many options available, of which AoPS is simply one choice among many for gifted, bright, or merely solid students-- there is no reason to think that it is the "must have" curriculum for top math students. It is popular and gets a lot of press on these boards, but if you read the "My favorite" or "biggest bust" threads on these boards, they get pretty funny-- for everybody who loves a particular book or series, somebody else found it a bust to an equal degree, and vice versa! LOL!! I know that for as much as we love Life of Fred and Singapore around here, there are people on these boards who could take them, leave them, or send them off to the recycling center quite merrily! And that's okay, as long as they find something else that works! Who knows; I am looking over the AoPS geometry right now-- we may even give this upper level book a shot for DS, since we'll be doing geometry and Algebra II at the same time, and I think two Fred books at once might be a little confusing. AoPS isn't evil; the PreA book just wasn't our cup of tea.

DS12 started LL at 10, and really enjoyed it. He is now in LL2, partially finished (we took a detour through Minimus after LL1). He was able to work on it independently, and had no difficulty. DS9 started PL at age 7 and it was just about right back then, a little easy, but we want Latin to be easy, particularly at that age. I would start a 10YO in LL.

For pure fun, don't forget the Myth O Mania series by Kate McMullen (Have A Hot Time, Hades! Nice Shot, Cupid! Phone Home, Persephone! Etc) and Robin Price's Spartapuss Tales-- Catligula, I Am Spartapuss, Die, Clawdius, and Boudicat!

Hi Nicole, request granted! The pictures are spread out among a few different photo albums.

I have a kiddo who has gone through four levels of Singapore Primary math in less than two years. He also tests well above grade equivilancy in math (surprise) despite his learning difficulties in certain areas. Here are my thoughts. 1. Remember what grade equivilancies on those tests mean. A 5th grade equivilancy for a 2nd grader does not mean your 2nd grader is ready for 5th grade work; it is just a statistical measure that says your daughter performed the same on the test, approximately, as a fifth grader would have if taking taking her test. This is not the same as saying she should be doing fifth grade work. (you did not say this, and may well already know it, but a lot of people do get confused on that point, because it IS confusing, so I thought I would toss that thought out there). 2. With my son, we did stick with the traditional Singapore approach-- I did not skip any sections in Singapore's text, and I still introduced it all with concrete methods first, then the pictorial, then the abstract. Sometimes he caught on so fast he was already ahead and writing things down before we were done playing with manipulatives; his brain is NOT linear!! :D. Sometimes we would knock out an entire chapter in a day. We would work through the exercises (except for reviews and some Practices-- this is the US Edition) together on the white board before he would start the workbook. I did NOT make him do every problem in the workbook! As Sue noted above, overdoing the drill with my son would often result in a case of "Well I don't KNOW what 9 + 3 might be!" That was not a need for more drill; it was boredom. If I instead asked him to find the remaining angle inside a trapezoid given an outside angle and an inside angle, he would tell me without lifting a pencil. He certainly did know 9+3 :). 3. On really short, fast chapters, I would, despite his protests (I am sometimes really mean, like Bill! :D ) make him do the IP book a day or two or a week later, or a second problem set a day or two or a week later. It's fine that he can bust through a chapter in a day, because he is a smart kid, but retention does require some repetition, even for really smart kids. Review is fine, but that first exposure still requires more than one day of practice, IMHO, and probably separated by a day or so. I dislike spiral, but I think sometimes a concept needs a day or two physically for some neurons to start making connections, and then another strong exposure for those early, tentative connections to firm up instead of withdrawing contact in the brain. We really are creating wiring. Fortunately, Singapore also does continuously review concepts by integrating problem types into their subsequent word problems-- money, measurement, fractions, decimals, geometry, and so forth will all appear in word problems after they have been introduced, so once the foundation is solid, it is constantly reviewed. 4. This kid has had a steady diet of Khan Academy, Life of Fred, Penrose, Hands on Equations, and Dragonbox on the side all through levels 2 through 5. With that in mind, and evaluating his abilities in other ways, I am going to allow him to skip level 6 and move straight into Level 7DM and work on LoF: Fractions (he has already begun Fractions; he will start DM7 in the fall, just to wait until he turns 10-- very arbitrary of me). That sixth book just feels like a very incremental step forward to me, and it looks like an increment he can very safely skip; however I would never have skipped any of the prior books. Singapore PM builds in a very logical, deliberate fashion, with quite a lot of thought built into the design. That is not something I am willing to mess with, even with my mathematical background. 5. There were many times when we did need to slow things down over the past two years; there were times when I could just sense that we had hit a concept where he needed more time, or where we had perhaps moved a little too quickly past the previous concept. In those cases, we simply slowed down and picked a few more of the review and practice exercises that are available between the book, workbook, and IP book (Singapore is simply LOADED with practice and review; we use the US Edition) to give him a chance to wrap his head around whatever was missing before we moved on. I would always remind him that there was no race to get anywhere; we were simply trying to learn math at his speed-- to keep it interesting and fascinating, but to do it deliberately enough to really understand and be good at it, too.

Odd! Well, if you wish to friend me on FB to see them, I won't be offended if you do so and then unfriend me right away-- I promise not to go peeking through your life ;). I don't know what else to do!

We put Flipboard on DS12's iPad. It provides a customizable news stream by content area, collected from different news sources. He also checks Khan Academy for understanding of some things, such as the economy of the EU. We use current events as a springboard for researching the events of the past that led up to them.

Andrea (or somebody) could you satisfy my curiosity-- does clicking on my links above now give you access to all of the photos in my album (by hitting "next") rather than just the ones I linked? It won't freak me out much, I would just like to know what exactly I just made public-- informed is better than not informed. I can't really test it myself, because of course I have access to all of my photos, as do my friends and family . . . Thanks! I think I just set all of my photos to public by default :/. So these links may become "inoperable" in a week or two, and need to be re-opened by request in the future if others wish to see them.

Okay, I have set some of the photos to public; see if these work. Please do remember that I take these hand-held, mostly with my ipod or ipad, and very quickly. The actual image through the Brock microscope is actually of much higher quality. Please do not distribute, but use for your own use freely. DS12's first attempt at making his own slide-- onion skin, stained with eosin: I wasn't sure whether these were the brine shrimp eggs or the yeast we put in to feed them-- I think they were the eggs: interior of chicken bone at 100X, from our bone dissection and muscle lab: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201019374388635&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater interior of chicken bone at 40X: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201017573183606&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater prepared slide of paramecium: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4724627595722&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater Random flatworm from local stream water: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3910199555530&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater Center of dandilion: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3560479252741&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater Center of another flower from my lawn, at 20X: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3541118688739&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater Stamen and pistil of another flower at 20X: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3541228251478&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater Lotus root prepared slide at 40X: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3478960094813&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater Copper ore at 40X: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3477422696379&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater Dragonfly wing at 40X: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3477372935135&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater pistil of an azealea (one of my earliest photos-- not the best quality): https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4651852976402&set=a.1274450383448.42189.1295583256&type=3&theater Okay, that's a pretty wide sampling. Clearly, the kids and I have fun taking photos through the 'scope :) It's pretty easy to do when you aren't super fussy about making them perfect!

Delaware thinks it is *very* special. <koff>. It claims that if you are a "non-public" school (this is different from a private school; it basically means homeschooler) then they are not required to include you under IDEA. Our school district has been sued over and over and over again by entire groups of parents, even the public school parents, over IDEA violations, and lost every time, and it has not stopped them from trying to cut corners and intimidate parents out of seeing to their children's rights. They are simply, flat out, not interested in helping kids. They base all decisions on special needs-- on both ends-- on how you test on the state NCLB tests. If you don't test well enough to make the school look good under NCLB, you qualify for special services under IDEA, and they make sure the school psych evals come out that way. If you do not make them look bad under NCLB, they make sure the school psych evals indicate that you do not qualify under IDEA. If you make the school look VERY good, they qualify you as gifted and talented, on a year to year basis, so you can achieve the very puzzling ability of being gifted one year, but not the next. I once presented the school with an external evaluation proving my son qualified for services under IDEA, and they simply stated that their interpretation of his results was different from that of the professional evaluator. We were out of state for a while and came back with an IEP, and they simply refused to comply. I volunteered in the school, and noticed that the kids getting "reading assistance" under IEPS were being parked in the library for an hour each week, chasing each other with pencils with no supervision. I talked to their parents and informed them of this fact, and their parents told me, to a person, that they were "delighted with the services their child was getting; they get really glowing reports back from the therapist on a regular basis." I asked if any had dropped in unannounced to watch a session. No, none had. I realized that even if I sued to get my son services in this school district, I would have to be there every.single.day to ensure he was actually getting the services, and become an expert myself to ensure the services were for real. I realized with that kind of time commitment, it would be much more efficient to simply teach my son myself and get him private services. I am still upset for the other kids, but I can't force their parents to pay attention or care. I did try. And if this many lawsuits have not changed the district's behavior, one or two more won't either; the only loser would be my kid, for all the time lost doing nothing (the school's solution was that he should have a 504 plan stating he did not have to do his schoolwork-- my 9YO who is starting algebra, they labeled as incapable) and the other kids in the district.