I could start a thread with a similar title, except 2E boy. My youngest is currently 3rd grade, and we'll probably finish BA 5 early next fall. He has dyslexia and dysgraphia, and is hitting these books at a younger age than his older brothers did...so he isn't going to end up with the same level of skill at organizing work and working independently that they had by the end of BA5. One of his big struggles is mapping math terminology to correspondeding concepts - like he will forget the meaning of the word "exponent", but if I point to a problem with an exponent, he totally understands the concept and can do math operations related to it...but the word "exponent" isn't firmly in his brain. So I know we need to work on that. As of right now, AoPs Pre-A would almost certainly be too "wordy" for him. I don't have a lot of advice...just commiseration I guess! I still have a few months to think about it and I'm eagerly following the advice other people are getting on this topic. 😊

I'm going to guess that the OP means procedural vs. conceptual, but maybe doesn't think of it using those terms, necessarily. Also, for multi-digit multiplication and long division (which the OP wouldn't have gotten to in BA yet), BA never gets all the way to the traditional algorithm most of us grew up using. I taught my two older kids who used BA the traditional algorithm for both as a "shortcut" once they were comfortable with the longer way. My youngest refuses to hear me out about the traditional algorithm...and I'm just left getting annoyed that big multiplication problems take a lot of writing...and he has dysgraphia so if he writes it is slow. At least he let me teach him short division, which is definitely my favorite math shortcut. 😁

At least in the past, 2nd grade was the last year read aloud, and 3rd graders were expected to read it themselves. I know the Iowa tests have been updated (No longer called "ITBS" at it was before, not sure how much else has changed), and I'm not sure if that changed when students are required to read the tests. It's been maybe 6-7 years ago that we were last testing with the Iowa test.

Requirements are so different from state to state and district to district that it is hard to imagine colleges are really going to "care" if your PE credit looks like an extra curricular. My DD is in public school, and to graduate they needed a 1/2 credit (aka 1 semester) of PE. That's it. There were several choices and she picked "personal fitness" - which essentially amounted to daily walking around a track, doing a group fitness activity like zumba/aerobics, or some very basic weightlifting. Meanwhile, friends in other districts have to take a full credit or more of traditional "gym sports" PE. It's already very different between different schools, so I would have no trouble "counting" for the purpose of graduation any equivalent amount of physical activity, no matter the form, if we were homeschooling for high school.

Oh, I also forgot about Skyjo: https://www.amazon.com/SKYJO-Action-Magilano-exciting-Adults/dp/B082YWGB3R/ We have a slightly different version but I am assuming it's similar. It's a lot like the card game Golf, but with negative number cards too.

https://store.rightstartmath.com/rightstart-corners-games/ There's also an app version for iOS.

In the Orton-Gillingham facebook groups I'm in, Writing Revolution gets a lot of positive recommendations. The groups weigh heavily toward classroom teachers and school interventionists though. Having read it and investigated their website a bit, I think there's more content in the seminars they offer on how to apply it, and also a "subscribers" site you can pay for that I assume has a greater number of pre-prepared worksheets and lesson plans that correlate. There's also lessons and worksheets on TpT that coordinate. I've been dabbling in it a little bit for my DS9, and there are a lot of things I like about it, but it is definitely a method to implement rather than a full fledged curriculum like most homeschoolers would be looking for. The audience is classroom teachers who are going to be making their own lesson plans (or maybe buying them from TpT). ETA: Here's a link to resources for TWR. I have used the free book resources to create a template, but I just now clicked the "School resource library" that I had the impression was a paid subscription and it let me into the page with many templates to download, etc. So maybe it isn't actually a subscription site? Or maybe it is just free temporarily? Not sure, but might be worth checking out

I would say that we've had better luck with games aimed a bit younger to use when my kids were PreK thru 1st or 2nd grade -- Sum Swamp, Zeus on the Loose, Alien HotShots, the RightStart math card games (especially Corners and different variations of War), and Speed (this version). I have had my eyes on Proof, but haven't gotten it. I own both Equate and Smath but we haven't really pulled either out more than once or twice.

We love both math and board games here but my kids never pull it out. One DS really disliked the "sorry" style mechanic of purposely sending another player back. Youngest DS was almost too young for it when we first got it though, so I should try it again with him.

I only did SWI A with one of my kids (oldest DS) before moving on to theme books. After watching the videos of that and listening to an "overview" lecture that was available for download on the IEW site, I felt confident to teach the theme books and jumped right into theme books with next DS without SWI. DD only did theme books as we did different things when she was younger and her exposure to IEW was at an academic tutorial style co-op in middle school. You really don't need SWI - I think parents like it because if the video instruction and I'm sure it's a profitable product for them to sell (so it would make sense for them to encourage everyone to use it). All IEW books follow the same basic pattern of instruction, just using different texts as the basis for the assignments.

We have the ikea style bed slats in a wood frame that was originally designed to be a waterbed frame, I think? We currently have a Purple brand mattress on it, and it's always worked well for us. I feel like exercise is a bit noisy due to the bed frame itself creaking, but I don't think that's the fault of the slats.

LOL...that is my household's pet peeve as well so you might not be the only one trapped by that question. 😁 My boys are constantly complaining whenever they find a reference to a "poisonous" snake...last year I even corrected the trainer I for a course I was talking on teaching reading. The choice of snake clip art and example sentence for the poison -- poisonous suffix addition bothered me so much I emailed her to explain and suggest she change her example to a poison dart frog. 😁😂🤣

That's incredible!!! I'm so excited for you! I hope you have many biking adventures!

You might run across one used! We sold ours for $125 when we were done with it. I think we maybe paid $350 new - not sure if that was a sale or if the price has increased over the years.

We discovered a WeeHoo bike trailer with our youngest and loved it: http://rideweehoo.com It's a nice happy medium in that kids can use them starting at age 2-3 just to sit in, but also has pedals that can be optionally used for slightly bigger kids to pedal along. We used it until youngest DS was about 6.5 (when going on long rides) - until he was old enough for a big bike that could keep up with the rest of the family on an 8-10 mile ride.

We do an annual standardized test because it's required for homeschoolers here. 13 year old D.S. really likes math competitions, so he has done pretty much everything I could find for him to do - I think that was five different competitions last year and a similar number last year. 11 year old D.S. wanted to try mathcounts this year but specifically asked me to NOT sign him up for any others. One competition was plenty for him. Oldest and youngest kids have had no interest in academic competitions. Youngest might be more interested by middle school though, perhaps.

I voted "no" but really it's mostly because the outside places I go are nearly empty of people. I usually am wearing a mask walking across a store parking lot (because I put it on before I leave the car) or maybe in the summer while waiting in line for an outdoor ice cream shop (but that was also so that I would be masked while interacting with the employee). I might be more likely to say I masked outside more often if I lived in an urban area with many people walking down the street at any given time.

I wonder if what might allow them to continue in many districts (after this year, of course) is that in a normal year not every kid has a device. In our district it took a huge effort when they went virtual in the spring and again this fall to check out devices to all students who don't have a dedicated device at home (many families have 1 computer and/or tablet but may not have 1 per kid). I don't think they intend to assign individual devices in a "normal" year so it's hard to see how distance learning for a snow day could be required.

Last Christmas DS13 asked if he could get "weird snacks" so I hit up an Asian grocery and the international section of a regular grocery store and put lots of weird (to us) edibles in his stocking...he loved it!

My family (all six of us) had mild cases and no gastro problems. Our niece who lives in another state said she and a group of co-workers all had positive covid tests and gastro symptoms were common among that group (all mild cases as far as I know).

Yes...I make it all just for "us" every year. If we are traveling on Tgiving in a normal year, I still make a feast at home too, either after or before travel. I love, love Thanksgiving food and would probably make my self a feast even if I were alone and would spend a week eating the leftovers every day. 😁

Very easy and accessible here. For the PCR/nasal swab with 24-48 hr turn around, it's somewhat more limited to those with symptoms or exposure, but there is nasal swab with longer turn around and saliva available to anyone, regardless of symptoms or exposure. I don't actually know about cost for those that don't have insurance. We gave them our insurance info, and haven't seen any billing.

We're all done isolating here (I'm now three weeks post having gotten sick) and it really was pretty mild for everyone. My DD ended up losing some degree of taste and smell and hasn't gotten it back yet. My sense of smell was only gone 5 days! I have an occasional lingering bit of cough and slightly uncomfortable feeling in my lungs, but it's not much beyond an annoyance. We never did figure out how we got it, and as far as we know we didn't get anyone outside of our household sick (we checked in with people we might have exposed and it sounds like they have all stayed healthy).

My DS13 took the AMC8 on Wednesday. Apparently local test managers can opt for video proctoring by a designated party while students test online at home. Our test is administered locally as a partnership between a middle school and our local math club. All the local students taking the test had to "call in" to a Google Meet and have their camera on, and a teacher from the middle school proctored/watched all the students taking the test. It's too bad they couldn't have done that way everywhere - I thought it was a good set-up. This was DS13's third and final year taking the test, and he was happy that he felt like it went much better for him than the past two years. I told him he's studied a lot of math in the past year and is about to age out of the test so I certainly hoped it was easier. 😄

Here's our ball...Her name is Mousetrap. 😁 She seems shy even by ball python standards and immediately tries to find a place to hide if we take her out. She belongs to DS13, but his younger brothers already know they are on for snake care chores when he goes to college!