One of the main criticisms of SM is that there isn't enough repetition, compared to other math programs... I particularly like the CWP books, though some of the problems are very "C" indeed, being able to do these kinds of problems really shows a mastery of contextual math.

It's not really an assessment, per se, but over at the lexile site, they have the "lexile map", which is a big PDF file. This file has example paragraphs at every hundred lexile scores, and the names of sample books at intermediate scores. If you are familiar enough to know the reading level of your student, this is another way to get a good feel for reading level, and more importantly, to be able to find other books at roughly the same level.

Several studies I've read show that bilingual kids score less well on language tests in the early years in both languages than their monolingual peers. However, they do better, on average, by the high school years than their peers. Studies also show that it if one of the languages is so rare in the outside community that the child never hears it, it is easy for the child to think (perhaps subconsciously) that the language isn't important, and not to focus on it. So, keep up the good work, keep speaking both language to both kids, and remember that in some ways, it is good to be worried about your kids -- it shows that you care and are paying attention!

World Lit is rather a lot of ground to cover, even over the course of one year. I might narrow it down a bit. Maybe cover just modern world lit, or maybe only classics from non-western traditions, or ... ?

You can do it at home, but there are requirements about the color of the background, and the head in the picture has to be a certain size, etc. I think you can download a PDF from the State Department (Uh, this is a US passport we are talking about?), with all the details. Otherwise, there are a lot of quickie photo places that should do it cheaper than $15, but maybe not by much. Try local camera store, maybe costco.

That money might be better spent just listening to the free Grammar Girl podcasts -- in her episode on "Colllective Nouns", she discusses this. Collective nouns, like "family", can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the group is acting as one unit, or as independent members. So, it depends on what's after the ellipsis in your sample sentence. ETA: I didn't see your followup before I posted. I find it odd that the company cites some random web site as "proof". I would have preferred a more formal citation to a real grammar book.

Are we talking Beowulf, Chaucer or are we talking Shakespeare here? The first two would be fine, the final, unacceptable.

It would appear so. Every now and then, I trip over a head-scratcher in WTM, like the recommendation for first graders to read about Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. I could never find a good book on those subjects at that level.

What is your goal for vocabulary?

It is late here too, so I can't give this the response it deserves. However specialized science has become, the results of science have become deeply interwoven into the fabric of our everyday lives, and it is critical that everyday citizens understand the basics of science and math to help make and understand public policy decisions that are vital to our future, and personal decisions relevant to only a few. More importantly, there are many charlatans who would exploit scientific illiteracy and mathematical innumeracy to the detriment of our children. Teaching the fundamentals of math and science are a vital inoculation to this problem.

MBM: Thanks for the data! So I was complete wrong about the number of AP tests jumping in the last four years. :-( But I still think that this 850 kids taking 2,000 tests is significantly higher, than, say, ten years ago, and that the high achievers are working much, much harder than ten years ago.

I think the above is very true. In talking to a few current college kids I know, they all say that they worked much harder their last two years of (public) high school than the first two years of college, and the first two years of college are essentially a repeat of their AP-heavy high school years. This correlates with a recent study (sorry, no link) that shows that college kids don't learn much in their first two years. This seems to jive with the statistics that the number of AP classes has skyrocketed in the last ten years. I'd love to know how many AP tests MBM's school took in, say, 2005, or 2000 -- I bet the number would be less than half the current number. My guess is that college curricula haven't changed to match this sea change in their incoming student body. At the same time, we hear complaints from college faculty that students can't think or are sub-par in fundamental fields. How can this be true, given the above? I believe they are both true -- that there is a large cohort of high school grads who have worked very hard in high school and taken many college-equivalent classes, and are much better prepared for college work than the good students, say, ten years ago. At the same time, the lesser prepared students have passed by focusing on test-taking skills instead of really learning, and they are much less ready for college than their peers of ten years ago.

Old? Old? Those aren't old movies. (and I'm not old either...) Fun old movies might be "Safety Last", or "The Philadelphia Story", or any of the Fred Astair/ Ginger Rogers movies.

For those of us with children who are reading above grade level, it is hard to find modern books that are thematically appropriate while still being textually interesting. Or, in the vernacular of an eight year old, "I don't want to read baby books". That's not to say they aren't out there, but they can be hard to find. While it is hard to say that older children's books are "more literary" or "better" than modern ones, it certainly seems generally true that the writing of these older books which have stood the test of time is at a more challenging level for a given age level. I believe that computerized leveling is to blame. Every modern editor can measure the "lexile" score of a book, and I believe that editors have a target lexile score in mind before they publish a children's book. Surely, they must often edit it down to a lower lexile score in order to reach a greater audience.

The spray-on sunscreen works wonders.

That page is different every time you re-load it, so if there's anything specific causing freaking-out, you'll need to be specific about that here.

If you are just starting out, any of the beginner's dictionaries, such as Cassell's will do just fine, and usually have the bonus of a small English -> Latin section. If you really want to get into Latin, though, start hunting around used bookstores for Lewis' "Elementary Latin Dictionary". It is expensive new, but a good college Latin dictionary. Latin -> English only. Fr. Reginald Foster, the former Vatican Latinist, insists on Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary, which is very expensive, but very complete, especially with medieval words, which classical scholars often ignore. There is an online, searchable copy at perseus, which is a good place to go when you want to be sure of all meanings for some word.

The Teaching Company has a set of lectures on DVD or CD about opera, with a small section on Wagner. It's very expensive, but very well done -- I would strongly recommend trying to check it out from the library: Here's a link

First question: Do you absolutely need color? It adds a ton to the price of consumables.

The difference between classical and ecclesiastical is indeed just pronunciation. I think what the OP was getting at was that most Christian latin is from the medieval period, not the Classical age. Medieval latin is somewhat different from Classical latin, as the language has begun the slide to the Romantic languages. Usage is less inflected, prepositional phrases are used more, and you generally don't see the monstrously long sentences of, say, Cicero.

I'm sure that your child is clever enough to make any one of a number of worthwhile goods or services. This may sound counter-intuitive, but the first thing I'd think about is not what to sell, but to whom will he sell? Family? Peers? Internet Folks? Roadside Stand? If you can think of a good answer to this question, it can narrow down the options of what he can do. Oh, and if he hasn't already, "The toothpaste millionaire" is a very inspiring book to read.

Smithsonian Museum of American History Monticello

Huh. That's odd. Can you get to the books.google.ca version? http://books.google.ca/books?id=xhZAAAAAYAAJ&dq=archibald%20maclardy&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

One great thing about Latin is there are a zillion out of print Latin books, that Google has thoughtfully scanned for us. Here is an example, perhaps, of exactly what you are looking for: http://books.google.com/books?id=xhZAAAAAYAAJ&dq=intitle%3Aparsed%20intitle%3Acompletely&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false

I would drop the Spanish and take the Latin, for a number of reasons. First, foreign languages are much easier to learn with a teacher expert in that language. I don't quite understand your question about phonetics. Latin is much simpler, phonetically, than English. Latin has just a handful of dipthongs, and regardless of which of the historical pronunciations you choose, each letter pretty much makes only one sound, and there are no silent letters. You can learn all the pronunciation rules in one sitting, there's just not that much there. As far as colleges, I'm not an expert, but I've never heard of a college that wouldn't accept Latin to meet their foreign language requirement. If I did find one, I think I would reject it on that basis alone!