I think you have to teach the kid you have, not the kid you wish you had. Not everyone processes information identically, and there is plenty of room in the world for people who just want to know how to balance the checkbook. I get equally irritated with parents who try to turn a mechanic into a mathematician and parents who try to reign in a mathematician and force him to be a mechanic, all because "this is how it ought to be" or because of their own fears and biases about mathematics (ie rocking excessive drill on a kid who doesn't need it, or excess theory on a kid who just wants to be functional). NB by mechanic I am referring the approach to mathematical problem solving, not the profession of auto repair. I am not disparaging the intelligence of auto repair workers.

My 11YO loves it. He laughs until he cries and wears them out. There is some questionable "educational" material in there that is a bit old for him, but depending upon the material, we either answer his questions or just tell him it's so far past his experience he would not really want us to answer, and he's okay with that. The occasional nude graphic doesn't bother us-- he has a body, after all, so seeing one should not exactly be a shocker; I am pretty sure no new parts have been invented lately :lol: YMMV. My kiddo is not one to get confused about what is or is not appropriate just because he reads something, and he is firmly grounded in our beliefs. We believe strongly enough that we don't feel threatened by opposing ideas. We are also not uncomfortable answering questions as they arise. I would not recommend the magazine for a kiddo in any family for whom those things are not true or who try to shelter kids-- MAD is not shelter compatible :). If you are a pretty open family and you have a kiddo with a zany humor-- go for it; he'll love it.

7th was roughly early 80's. In our district, preA was strictly remedial, and very few took it. Formal proofs were introduced in algebra; concepts were always part of math from the ground up in K-8. Most kids didn't need a transition course for parenthetical and dot notation; it was introduced, then you used it. If you were advanced, you simply walked over to the high school and took algebra in 7th, or were among the few who took algebra in 8th. You had to pass the high school mid-term and final. If you were a typical average to strong student, then you took whatever math they offered through 8th and started algebra in 9th. If you needed more time to develop, then you were offered preA in 9th.

I have back, knee, and neck issues, and my physical therapist told me to specifically buy New Balance for the quality. I agree with a PP-- depending upon the frequency and intensity of the workouts, it is possible you may have broken them down, or (even more likely, as NB shoes last longer than most) you may have selected the wrong shoe for your type of foot or the use you are putting them to. For example, my kids both use the New Balance shoe that has a built-in anti-pronation bar, because they both pronate badly. When they use these sneakers, they don't need orthotics. Somebody who does not pronate would probably find that style kind of uncomfortable, and might even end up in pain if working out hard in them. I would buy at a NB store and get their advice on what to wear for that type of activity at first; after your first pair has been a success, then you can buy them elsewhere if you wish. Our local store is family owned and run and they really know feet very well-- the prices are higher, but you get fantastic service in exchange for paying that price, so I like to give them my business.

I call it 'vaguebooking.' No, I did not coin the term; I saw it elsewhere and liked it. When somebody starts a string of those look at me posts, I sometimes follow up with the comment, "Are we Vaguebooking again?"

Most of us back in the day never bothered with "pre Algebra." It was offered to kids whose math skills were not strong enough to handle algebra after a standard arithmetic curriculum; it served as a bridge course between arithmetic and algebra. Theoretically it should still no longer be necessary, as it does not exist as any type of mathematics (just as pre-calc is non-existent). The thing to watch for is whether a publsher writes the scope and sequence as if everyone needs PA now that it is popular; skipping it could lead to skipping exponents or other instruction.

Given that Life of Fred is a standalone curriculum already, if you supplement it with Keys to ... That should be fine. My Mom is a former 5th grade teacher. My husband is a university professor in mathematics. I have tutored high school and U students in algebra through advanced calculus on the U payroll, and we all give Fred our stamp of approval as a primary program. Just as with any other math program, the student still has to do the work though. When I hear, "There's no math in it. My kid read the book in two weeks!" I find that to be self-explanatory.

Check local places... Our local natural history museum has a small terrarium with live snakes, a Gila monster, a huge frog, and a few other beasties. The docents will take them out. Let the kids handle them, answer questions, let the kids stay and observe, etc.

My MIL loves humiliating my husband by telling about how proud he was to bring home his first 'holly bibble!'

Mine will announce he dislikes school, but once he gets rolling in a week, he actually enjoys it. 1. He has never liked change, and he wants reassurance that he will like the next topic as much as the last one. 2. He's a perfectionist and bright. What if we go so far I find out he dn't smart? I continually reassure him he is loved for his personality, not his brains. I tell him (would not do this with every child) I don't care about grades; I care about learning, so if we need to stop and repeat something, that's cool-- the ability o do that is one awesome thing about homeschooling, because nobody gets it all on the first try if they're being challenged enough. 3. His brother has some special needs and gets more of my attention. Although DS1 will tell you he thrives on independent work, he really wants some conversation too. He wants to discuss books and ideas and get help and feedback. 4. Some of what he's using: Life of Fred Beginning Algebra, History Odyssey 2 Medieval, IEW Medieval, Magic Lens level grammar/vocab/practice/poetics, Rosetta Stone, Fallacy Detective, Red Herring Mysteries, homemade biology curriculum, based around Prentice-Hall Science Explorer Series and plenty of labs, lots of literature, and some other stuff.

I'm lucky if people even get the correct long form of my name, as in the correct name. From there, getting the correct spelling of the name-- wahoo, I feel as if I owe them birthday cards for life just for paying attention. I don't think it's that hard to pay enough attention to a person to spell his or her name correctly (maybe I'm bitter after a lifetime of being called Jennifer when my name is NOT Jennifer??) But a name is personal. It's one of the most personal things about you. Failing to learn your name . . . kind of tells you where you stand with a person. (and that comes from me; I have a horrific time learning names and faces; I have to introduce myself six or seven times before I figure out who a person is, typically; but I will get it if I am around them enough. If they are really important to me, I learn how to spell their names. I have nieces with a really amazing Celtic name. I can spell it; she's my niece). Strangers and office workers get a free pass. I wish strangers and office workers would not make assumptions about names and fill out the long form for you though! < my name is NOT Jennifer >

I'm having fun now. I had a neighbor who called everyone "an iggernit pig!" I still miss my younger DS calling pajamas "Jomamas." That was my all time favorite. Second was "Hammerman Minkin" for 'Abraham Lincoln.'

My father never understood the song in Sunday School: "Jesus lives me, the Sino." My friend's mother is French. She proudly proclaimed her rural status one time, declaiming, "We're now just a couple of country pumpkins!"

Okay I have two, one cute, one very politically incorrect :Angel_anim: My nephew apparently sees a lot of Amazon boxes arrive at his house. At Christmas he unwrapped a box, and exclaimed, "ALL RIGHT!! I GOT AN AMAZE-ON!" I had a very (very) elderly great-great aunt when I was quite young. Whenever she was crocheting, if you asked her what she was making, she'd give you a big smile and announce, "I'm making an African!" <afghan>

There is no promising 170 days part, but otherwise, that's it-- no testing, no portfolios, etc. All can now be handled online, as well. In Sept/Oct you register the names/grade levels (or ungraded status) of your students, and in July you record how many days they attended. Sometimes you can make a quiet deal to do some extracurriculars at the PS with a sympathetic activity advisor (I don't want to name specifics and get any particular one in trouble, but I've gotten my kids into a program here and there with the permission direct from the coach/activity director. Obviously this would not apply to high school sports). I've never seen a need for a third-party diploma-- we have DE homeschool friends who have granted their own recent diplomas, and their kids have all received scholarship offers from very well-known schools with no problem. Delaware students can register for classes via PA Homeschoolers for AP courses, and take courses at Del Tech or the University of Delaware. The compact size of the state means that many homeschool gatherings or co-ops stand a good chance of being within driving distance :). Northern Delaware is also an easy drive or train ride from Philly, DC, Baltimore, or NYC, and a very short drive from an amazing amount of culture and history available in the Brandywine valley and in Delaware itself, from Chadds Ford to Gettysburg to Fort Delaware and of course the beaches (which are about to be torn asunder by a hurricane).

The State of DE posted an interesting tip I had not considered. If you have solar powered walkway lights, they can become temporary indoor lighting for you at night if you need it during a power outage. Just bring them indoors at night, then poke them back in the ground again the next morning to recharge.

Indeed; as with any form of study, you can lose the forest for the trees; one role you will fill as the teacher is to help discover that tipping point to nudge the student away from the checklist crutch and into more natural writing-- perhaps using a pressure-timed essay or some other device, just as fluent martial artists find they must train under some level of stress in unchoreographed fighting in order to gain that next-level proficiency. . . . and there is always that return guarantee :)

I am starting to wish I had gotten our broken upstairs window fixed...

Halloween is one of the few nights per year that you can have all the candy you want. It's kind of self-regulating-- eating too much is such an unpleasant feeling it isn't a mistake they will make very many times :). Most kids are actually reasonably self-regulating. I let them have at it for about 24 hours, then we ration it, and they're pretty okay with that. I have one kiddo with a massive sweet tooth, and another who is pretty indifferent to candy and sugar in general. He usually gives his candy to his brother after a day or two.

On one side of my family, everyone goes white by age 30. On the other side-- well, people assumed Mom was dying her hair, as she didn't even sprout her first grays until around 73 (she is now all gray). I seem to have received a mix-- I am in my 40's and I have a few dozen grays blended into my brown hair opposite my part. I don't worry about it. I look younger than most of my friends, grays and all. Frankly, I think the gray looks awesome-- I've earned it, along with the life lessons I've learned along the way.

PS: On SWI-A specifically-- I wanted DS9 to learn he could learn from someone other than Mom all the time-- sometimes he gets a bit stuck on the Mom channel :). It's fine that he works with me a lot-- he will only be 9 for one short year after all-- but big brother needs my time too, so he needs to learn to deal without me some too. Success here; he loves listening to Andrew on the DVD! He also loves the writing samples provided, and is very proud to work on this work alone even though he used to hate writing. DS11, using the Medieval book, is grudgingly admitting that it is helping his writing to get better, and that he is even starting to see some value in editing his work to improve it, which for him is huge. I see a day and night difference in his writing from before we started to work on it-- though some of that also goes back to the time we spent with WWE; we covered books 1--3 in a year, plus a small chunk of WWS, and that helped him tremendously.

:iagree: My younger is using SWI-A and my older is using the Medieval Writing book. My older son particularly resents the checklists, and we finally had to sit down and discuss why the assignments are the way they are, and I explained it this way, when he got to one where he was instructed to remove all state of being verbs from his essay: I explained that in this assignment, he was getting intensive practice on rewriting passive sentences, and because he had to rewrite ALL passive sentences, he was being forced to think up several different means of coping with this task instead of just thinking up one or two ways of doing so. Now in the future, when he needs to rewrite a passage of his own writing in a more active voice, whether because a professor demands it or his own writer-spidey-sense demands it, he will have a variety of tools in his writer's toolkit to draw upon, rather than always tackling it the same way and ending up with boring writing. Similarly, with respect to the repetitive charge of having an -ly word and a strong adjective and a vocab word in each paragraph, having to do accomplish this week after week after week in a manufactured setting will, in an effort to avoid boredom, force him to come up with creative ways to think about how to incorporate these features into his writer's tookit, and to see for himself which ones work and which ones don't, and what each method accomplishes for him-- forcefulness, concision, precision, scene or tone, whatever he needs-- so that in the future when he is free of this artificial checklist, he will have enormous experience using these tools and will be able to call upon the appropriate one at will to accomplish what he needs to accomplish in his writing. I likened it to his karate. In karate, we practice many types of drills-- we do isolated basic techniques over and over again. We practice prearranged sparring drills, pre-arranged self-defense techniques, and pre-determined sequences of moves called kata. We do these moves over and over and over until they can be performed automatically. There is no intention that if caught in a self-defense situation, the student will suddenly stop and perform Seisan Kata from start to finish to ward off his attacker, or stop his attacker, request that he reposition himself into a particular wrist hold, then proceed with the attack so that the student can get out of it properly. However, it would be the height of foolishness to believe that these drills-- the individual techniques, the prearranged sparring and self defense, and the kata-- would play no role in the student's ability to defend himself. Of course they would. The idea is to drill the techniques into a student so that he can use them fluidly without needing to plan out each move any more than we need to stop and plan out each word of a novel sentence before we can speak it in casual conversation. IEW is providing the student with a repertoire of techniques from which to draw as needed when writing. I hope that makes sense.

Sent you a PM.

We love our PS3, but I am not making recommendations because our tolerance for violence and some language would make many WTM'ers hair curl. We don't engage in those things personally, but don't shun them in games. To answer your question, though, yes, the Move controllers are indeed very fun and a step up from the Wii. You can still get Lego games and stuff for it, but the games do bend farther toward teen land than the Nintendo stuff, and there is a heavier bent towards more violence and language in general (though not exclusively). Are there any Jedi or hunting games? Those could be good. There is an excellent boxing game that gives my son a serious workout, but the language in that one makes even my ears curl a bit. I wish they had a 'clean it up' option :). You can box just as well without turning the air blue, IMHO. Fortunately my kds are good about not parroting what they hear; they get that we simply don't believe in speaking that way.

In our former school, it would have been a less benign meaning. They said outright, and told the kids that now that they were in school, the teachers and principal had more say over rules and their lives than families and parents, both in and out of school, and that in case of a conflict (in or out of school) to follow school rules, not parents. They were very particular about guns (we are in an upper class suburban area, not a gang area or violent area); they were not to even say, 'gun' or use their fingers to play guns at home, and Mom and Dad didn't have the authority, apparently, to say differently. Needless to say, since my kids are Nerf armed to the teeth and DS the elder owns a BB gun, but hates violating rules this presented a conflict, resolved when I met with principal and teachers and explained that primary rule-making, at home or school, resided with ME. If they wanted easy compliance with homework, dress codes, and behavioral policies, they had better respect ME because my children behaved at school with MY support from home, which they would not have if they undermined the family.