I've been tutoring public school kids in our wealthy and award-winning school district. The average public school kids in my area would not do this kind of work before 5th or 6th grade. Of course that will vary depending on the curriculum used by the district.

Statistics would probably be the most useful to him, if he's not mathy and does not plan on a STEM field. We all run into statistics every day.

:001_smile: I hope it works for you!! I was originally just going to do Singapore, but having previously done Saxon with my DD, I knew how much I liked the meeting book. And, my son LIKES worksheets! (Go figure!) Plus, there are so many fun lessons in early Saxon, like the pattern blocks, and the price tags, and stuff like that - I didn't want to pass those by!

I too had never heard of the yoga thing - until my old co-op was actually kicked out of the church we were meeting in because we did some Mommy and Me yoga classes!!! When we found out why they wanted us to leave, we didn't know whether to laugh hysterically or roll our eyes and snort. Fortunately we soon found an easier church to deal with!

You've had some good ideas so far, but also I'd see what she has in mind - if she's asking for more rigor, there must be some area where she feels a specific need for challenge, y'know? As an English major, the first thing I think of is heavier reading :) I'm not clear what she is reading right now, but it's easy to find lots of challenging literature for the time period she is studying in history. Heavier literature and heavier math would be the starting point, for me. Once she has those underway, look for heavier science and history options. Don't try to change everything at once, let her get used to the changes at her own pace.

Saxon - it is, in fact, what the writer of GWG uses herself with her two.

If you are planning on doing both programs in their entirety, it would be overkill. But I do something very similar with Singapore 1B and Saxon 1. We do Singapore text and workbook, and then do an abbreviated version of the Saxon meeting book (takes about 5 minutes) and then do the worksheet (another 5 minutes). We rarely do the actual Saxon lesson unless it's covering something that he doesn't know already (like a recent lesson with measuring liquids) or something really fun like the pattern blocks. He really likes it, but this is a mathy boy anyway. It can definitely work if you pick and choose.

My DD, over her time with Saxon, skipped half a book three times. Each time, as it became clear that she already had figured out most of the material, I went through the rest of the book and put a post it bookmark on each of the lessons on material that she had not yet been exposed to. She then only did those lessons. And typically in a sequence of lessons there was a lot of material we could skip. For example, let's say she hadn't yet been exposed to adding fractions with different denominators, and for this book there was a lesson on that, followed by variations of the same lesson, but showing how to add fractions with negative numbers, mixed numbers, etc. Knowing that my daughter was strong in negative numbers and mixed numbers already, I'd have her do the first lesson and the last lesson. She'd get the basics in the first lesson, and then the last lesson, because of the way Saxon does review, would include problems from all the other kinds of fractions too. This took a little time on my part, and you have to know where your son is on various topics, but it worked really well for us.

Y'know, one thing to keep in mind might be that so far, the Beast Academy people seem to be good about erring on the side of caution. For example, originally the Beast Academy stuff was supposed to be released in summer 2012 - now that's been updated to early-mid March, which is a lot sooner. Quite possibly they are figuring that it's better to promise a conservative, later date estimate, and then release early if possible, than promise the early date and then have unexpected problems and have people howling at them when books are later than expected. I see this a LOT in the boardgaming world (which a lot of the AoPS guys are part of too, BTW) - few experienced publishers list their 'best guess' release dates - they list their 'worst case scenario' dates and then everyone is happy when things are released 'early.' There are a couple major game publishers who DON'T do this, and they get a lot of anger and frustration thrown their way on a regular basis because of it. My bet is, the Beast guys are going, OK, it took 4 months for the first set of books, so even though the subsequent books are unlikely to take as long as the first books, let's tell everyone it'll be four months between sets. And if they are smart, they will stick with that with all their communications with the public, until they get to the point where things are actually going to the printer or whatnot so they can actually give a reasonably firm date. Not that I know anything, I'm just guessing that this is what I'D do. Still, my potential BA student is only in K, so I've got time :) (Except for their decision to do second grade last, argh!! :( )

I'm divorced and remarried and homeschool kids from both marriages. That right there puts me in a class by myself as far as I know.

67 in winter, 76 in summer.

You might wait a year and do AoPS Pre-Algebra later. My DD does AoPS Pre-Algebra, last year she did Saxon Algebra 1/2 and the year before that Saxon 76. So technically, she has already mastered all the material that is covered in a normal pre-algebra course. AoPS goes SOOOO much more in depth and the style is SOOO different from any other curriculum I have seen that it is still COMPLETELY challenging enough. There really is a lot to AoPS, and even just changing the style of math learning can be a challenge, especially if your daughter is also going to be adjusting to homeschooling in general. A better guide than the pretest would be to go to Alcumus - it is part of the online component of the AoPS online course, but anyone can use it for free - http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Alcumus/Introduction.php Set the focus topic to Pre-Algebra and let your daughter try to work some of those. Those problems on Alcumus are MUCH more indicative of the program than that pre-test.

Super! Thanks so much for the prompt reply! :-)

Our co-op is thinking about using Miller-Levine with the Home Biology Experiments for a class next year, is the experiment book synced up with the 2010 edition of Miller-Levine? Thanks for any info!

I remember using the Norton Anthology in high school, my senior year, for a world lit class. I think you could go ahead and use it for a strong student, if you wanted. Otherwise, Glencoe World Literature I believe has discussion/analysis questions in it. Not sure of any others, but I'm sure there are more out there.

More than reasonable.

My six year old is learning the Animaniacs song - there are some brief and unflattering references to whiskey and smoking, tho, so not suitable for all families -

My daughter's assignment read - "Imagine you are a sailor accompanying Magellan on his voyage. What might you say in a letter to your family back home?" Daughter wrote - "By God, Lapu Lapu's warriors are surely created by devils! They killed the Captain! Now I have to help carry the coffin." :lol: I am dying!! I am SURE something considerably more boring was intended!! :D

The 3B table of contents is up! Chapter 4: Multiplication - St. Ives - The Times Table - The Commutative Property - Block Blob - Multiplying Big Numbers - The Associative Property - Multiplying by 4 and by 5 - Winnie's Notes - Penny Rows - Grogg's Notes Chapter 5: Perfect Squares - Perfect Squares - Squares that End in 5 - Squaring Up - Winnie's Notes - Dots and Boxes - In the Garden - Dissections - Alex's Notes Chapter 6: The Distributive Property - Order of Operations - Big Rectangles - Pirate Booty - The Distributive Property - Math Meet Looks pretty awesome to me! :)

If you are definitely going to use Saxon from Algebra 1/2 on up, I would use Saxon starting at 5/4. Saxon has such an unusual method and presentation that I think it might be distracting to the student to switch around.

I used olive oil on my son to get his out, he was 5 before it went completely away.

I wonder if the skip counting will be used as an introduction to other kinds of counting problems? That sounds like something the AoPS guys would do :)

It's not really like that. Each unit in the book has 2 to 5 multimedia presentations in it on topics in that unit. Each presentation is like one of those online books (like on Reader Rabbit or Jumpstart) where the audio is reading the words, the words are at the bottom of the page, and in the middle of each page is a picture, video, or interactive game. Like one 'page' might explain characteristics of animals with a visual illustrating birds, mammals, reptiles, and fish, and the next page might be a game with a bunch of animal cards that you have to drag and drop into the correct pages of a scrapbook. Some of these are better than others - some are little virtual labs that have some good info in them; others were just 'jigsaw puzzle of a bird' kind of thing. Hope that explains it better. They used to have an online sample of one of the fourth grade ones, but the link no longer works :(

I'm using it this year with my first grader. I like it, BUT it's too expensive for what it is. It is basically a big, full color worktext with several online videos & games for each unit. He liked the online stuff - ONCE. For $150 I was really hoping for stuff that we could use more than once, but he watched each video & played each game ONCE and never wanted to do any of them again. Almost all the online stuff is geared towards classroom tracking & not very useful in a homeschool. I'll probably just do living books for science next year.

No, we never really looked at any of the DVDs or CDs because she always grasped the concept being taught very easily from the book. It never seemed necessary, so sorry, I've got no opinions for you there! :(