There is a lot of teacher input in the Iowa Acceleration Scale. If this teacher really does have a say, her opinion is going to turn the results towards not accelerating, even if you convince the school to fill out the questionnaire. You may have to work with this teacher more. Do you already have an IEP and was she involved in the process? Perhaps the school can offer a compromise between skipping a grade (if that is off the table for the school) and whatever they are doing for your dd right now. Good luck. I have been here before.

I'd say if he likes Story of the Middle Ages, then use that one. I personally think that Story of Europe is on the dry side, but dd hasn't complained yet, so we are still using it. I figure that there is no way that we are going to be able to cover every single thing that happened during the Middle Ages, so we will just get what we can. As for accountability questions, you can always give him the teacher's notes, if the chosen book doesn't end up covering one of the questions.

We do both science and history everyday and it works well. We do history in the morning and science after lunch. We are using TOG also, and since we do our history projects on Thursday, that is a science reading day. It is never too overwhelming that way.

I have always brought the younger ones with me when I volunteered. You will just have to ask the teacher to make sure she is comfortable with it.

I see that the information on the 2011/2012 EXPLORE test is starting to come out. For those who have had your children test in years past, were you happy with the experience? I like the idea of an out-of-level test, because I would like a snapshot of where we are at. Could I get that from the EXPLORE? Or is the test only good if you want to go to an award ceremony or participate in one of the talent search programs? Were you happy with the organization/talent search that you tested with? Did they give you useful information with the test results?

Did you see the sticky on the Logic board with the links to SWB's ALL? I think that this is supposed to be FLL for 5th graders.

Here are somethings that I am doing with my dd (D level). 1. Give her small chunks of reading and then we talk about it immediately afterwards. 2. Have her read through the thinking questions that go with a particular resource so that she knows exactly what to look for. 3. Do the reading with the SAP right in front of her, so that she can answer questions as they come along. 4. Spread the weeks out. We are doing Y2 and there is a lot of reading, so we are spreading some of the weeks out, so that the amount of reading/answering questions is not completely overwhelming. 5. We are also working on narration skills using SWB's books. It is much easier to build general narration skills on those passages than using the TOG books. You can probably start by giving him small assignments and then getting bigger. "Read this paragraph and answer these 2 questions, while I am reading with your brothers . . ." and then talk about it immediately after you are done. Then gradually give longer assignments. Another thing that I am doing is using some the UG books as read-alouds for all of the kids. That way the older dd has a general overview of what we are talking about before she has to go out on her own.

Do you know what you want use the DE for? If you have the Loom CD, then you probably have most of what you would get with the DE. I have both versions, and I use the print version all the time, and rarely use the DE, except for the Loom.

It is going to depend a lot on the child. My dc have gone to full day Kindergarten and I had two who were fine with afterschooling and one who couldn't handle it . You might just ease into and see how it goes.

It's very possible that they really don't do that. In my district, there is no way to get an IEP until you are enrolled, unless your dc needs services on the other end of the spectrum.

There are lots of people who afterschool their bright children. You can do some research on the afterschooling board, but I don't know you will find anyone who was able to have a child accelerated because they did homeschool while having their child enrolled. It would be very dependent on the state and the individual school. Your district or state may have a liaison who can help you with answers for your specific state. In my state for example, I can homeschool for kindergarten, but my child would be placed with their age-mates for a 6-week trial period. Then I could request a meeting with the school to ask to have him moved up. I am pretty sure I know what the results of that meeting would be and so I homeschool. Have you looked into private Kindergarten? We have one accredited, private Kindergarten that will accept children who miss the cut-off date. Then, since the school is accredited, the public schools will accept the child into 1st grade.

My dd was in ps 4th last year, and she had to write a 5-page research paper at the end of the year.

I test my kids until they have 5 words to work on, which means that if they are getting all of the words in one list right, then I move on to the next list. With my good speller, I will sometimes just choose the hardest words of the list and if they get those, then we skip the rest. This way, most of the time, I don't use up the 5 minutes without finding anything new to learn. We do some skill building, but I don't require it. Sometimes painting their words appeals to them, and other times they just follow the steps and move on. I put the activities on note cards and let them choose which ones they want to do. There are plenty that have never been chosen.

We are doing something similar: Y2U1-U3 in one year and then moving Y2U4 to next year.

When the kids have to be out the door at 8:30, we do some beforeschoooling. Each dc has to make a lunch, eat breakfast, do chores, do 20 minutes of math and practice the piano. They usually have to be up by 6:30 and someone has to start the practicing rotation by 7:00 to get everyone through. One kid is doing each activity at a time and they rotate through. I try to schedule them so that the kid who needs the most help with math is working while the oldest (who needs the least help) is practicing. But there are still times when it is somewhat chaotic - getting breakfast for the baby while telling someone to play something 5 more times and explaining fractions to someone else. I have to be up and ready for the day before the first kid makes an appearance in the morning, or we get out of sync. So I don't cover all of the subjects that you want to do, but you might be able to use the rotations anyway.

I am using Spelling Power with my 5th grader. There would be very little repetition, since he would only work on words that he doesn't already know how to spell.

Good luck!

Apologies. I thought that you were asking what you should do, not what you should use. I haven't used any of those options so I cannot be helpful.

The best advice I ever got was to use a small blow torch . . . but I haven't tried it yet. Here are things that I have tried with some success: Squish them individually. Even better, pay your dc to squish them. Insecticidal soap - spray each bug repeatedly. You can't just spay the leaves and hope it gets the bugs. Tear out the parts of the leaf that have eggs on them or remove the whole leaf. You can also use pesticides. Look for something that specifically says it will kill squash bugs. Good luck. I hate squash bugs.

I feel like my dc are getting a decent LA education at school. The teachers are pretty strong in LA and I would rather spend my afterschooling time on things that they are completely lacking at school. So I guess that my advice would be to wait a little and see how things go before deciding for sure. If you are already afterschooling, adding another subject later is not a big deal.

In your quick start guide, it lists off the steps to do every day. Here is what I do: Test them on the words from the day before. If they miss the word, I immediately give the correct spelling and they write it off to the side. Then I test them on more words until the have 5 new words to study for the day. Next, they go through the steps. I am not positive of the order, but: they have to say it, write it, visualize it (which is what I think is helping dd), write it on a textured surface with their finger (we use a scrap of fabric or the carpet) and then write it again. Then they choose one of the extra activities from the back of the instruction manual. I put all of the activities onto colored index cards so they can easily choose. The testing takes about 5 minutes, then the write/say/visualize part takes about 5 minutes and then the activity can take longer, depending on what they choose.

You could use STOW for two history cycles if you were able to supplement from the library on the second cycle. TOG could be used for all three cycles. Spelling Power has all levels. I bought the PE Science Explorer books to use with my logic dd, and I am creating unit studies on the same topics she is studying for my younger ds. So you could possibly use those over a number of years, again with library supplementation.

I have not seen Sequential Spelling. We use Spelling Power, and it certainly isn't boring. They can choose from a long list of activities to do for their words. It is not something that I just hand to them, though. I have to spend a few minutes with them on spelling everyday. But my terrible speller is improving, so it is worth it to me.

You could possibly use the library if you were willing to substitute some books. There is a list of retired books on the website, and my library had many of those, and not as many of the ones listed in the DE. Also, you can always switch out books if your library doesn't have the right version - you probably don't need the exact version of Beowulf that is listed, for example. The library also has fewer of the religious-leaning books than the completely secular ones, so if you are using TOG because of its religious content, then the library will be harder to utilize than if you are going for a more secular approach.

Even if the books change, you can always find the worksheets/helps for the out-of-date books on their web site. It just depends on how much this will bother you. I have an older print and the DE, and there were some changes between the two. I didn't go through and count, but maybe 10(?) (for LG, UG, and D).