In this sentence (from Grammar Town): She quickly ate his sandwich, too. How would you explain why too is an adverb?

Bill, Do you have a plan or schedule for how often you work out of the supplemental books, or how many problems you do? Right now, I make sure that my daughter has mastered the material in the textbook and workbook before we move on, and I am hoping to use IP and CWP to gain a deeper understanding and provide more challenge. I'm not sure, though, how best to combine them.

Are there any charts or resources that recommend which problems from the Intensive Practice, Challenging Word Problems, or Math Sprints books should be used with which Units/Chapters in the Textbooks? The Home Instructor's Guide tells you what to do from the Extra Practice and Tests books, but not from these additional books.

For those who teach creation science based on Genesis, which version of the two creation stories contained in Genesis do you teach is the true one?

I keep a library of magazines in the car. My girls never read magazines in the house, but love having them available to grab and read an article during a car trip. (They actually fight over the new ones when they get added.). So I've subscribed to magazines on a variety of topics that I thought might interest them. They usually have a book with them, too - whatever they're currently reading, but that doesn't stay in the car. I'd be worried about the heat in the car affecting the books (e.g., the glue in the spines). Nobody has had any problem with that?

Another (perhaps less conventional) option are bells (or I suppose boomwackers would also work, but they take up a lot more space). Our church has a children's bell choir, and my older daughter began playing in it last year (before she learned to read music or had played any instruments other than a little recorder). I bought a set of inexpensive bells for her to practice with at home, and my younger daughter (who was 6/almost 7) at the time, jumped at the opportunity to play with them. The benefits that I found to the bells are: * They introduce reading sheet music gradually. You can begin by simply learning the rhythms of the notes, but you don't need to read their pitches. We marked the notes to be played with colors that corresponded to the bells. Then, you could gradually introduce where the notes fall on the staff by not color-coding the notes, and instead having your child watch for her particular note to come up on the staff. * They allow kids the experience of playing with others. My two daughters and I can sit down to play songs together. And pretty much anyone can join in for a song or two - my girls have played with their grandparents and with their friends.

Just adding some more resources & ideas, in case they're of help to anyone: For The Early Human World * AMNH is definitely worth a visit if you're in the NYC area. My daughter couldn't believe we got to see the actual skeletons of Lucy and Turkana Boy. * The NOVA series Becoming Human is great. We watched parts 1 and 2 (of 3). Part 1 features Lucy, and part 2 features Turkana Boy. * National Geographic has a documentary called Human Family Tree. (We haven't watched it yet but plan to.) Their Human Origins project offers kits that allow you to have your mitochondrial DNA tested (pricey). * My daughter really enjoyed trying to make her own stone age tools. I sent her outside with safety goggles, heavy gloves, and some rocks that would split easily. The shards were surprisingly sharp. We tried cutting lunch meat with them. * The 2010 documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams gives a 3D tour of the cave art in the Chaveaux Cave in France (chapter 16). If you're in the NYC area, two theaters are showing it in 3D over the next week. * Hunt for your own fossils! Big Brook in Monmouth County, NJ is a prime location.

If I have a regular worksheet book, what are the steps I'd need to do to allow my student to complete the worksheet on my iPad? Do I need to scan or take a photo of the worksheet page? What software or apps do I need? I'm trying to figure out if it's worth doing it. Thanks!

I didn't know you could use a stylus for the iPad - that's awesome! I like to use either the Sketchbook or Magic Marker apps as a substitute for a whiteboard, and the stylus will be much better than using a finger. (The Magic Marker app has colorful backgrounds that you reveal when you write or draw, kind of like scratch art paper - my daughter loves it.) I also want to check out Noteshelf recommended by Xanadu. I downloaded Class Organizer to try to organize and plan, but I'm not sure if it's quite what I'm looking for. It does have a cool feature that if you are recording a lecture and taking notes at the same time, if you double click on a word in your notes, it will play the part of the recording that happened when you were typing those notes.

Veggiegal, those are awesome - thanks! I especially like the card/dice game because it would be easy to limit it to only the factors she's memorized so far, for review & practice. (And I requested the book from my library.)

I'm really pleased with the card game "Snap It Up!" that I got from Singapore Math. It has a series of factor cards (1-10 + wild cards) that you deal out to the players, and a series of Product cards that go face-down in a stack in the middle of the table, and you turn up one at a time. Each player can look at 3 of their factor cards at a time, and try to find two that make the product. The first player to make 3 equations wins. If all the players know their multiplication facts, it's supposed to be a fast-paced game. But my 3rd grader is just learning her facts, so I adjusted it for her. After we turn over the product card, we discuss what all the possible factors might be. Once we know what cards we're looking for, we begin play. I pace myself to my daughter's speed, discarding a card and taking a new one when she does. This lets her have time to think, and gives her a fair chance to win. What games have you found that work well to learn or practice multiplication facts?

Thanks for the recommendations on the loupes. I had never seen those before, and they're a great idea. I ordered a set of 3 with different magnifications from Amazon, and a little microfiber cleaning cloth in a clip-on pouch to keep with them for cleaning the lenses.

That is truly amazing! I'm wondering - is there any indication that she has photographic memory? I'm wondering if she remembered the signs from the house, and later realized what the words said, but to her the two just blended together as if she could always read it?

For my younger child, it was obvious since she was a toddler. She has always believed that she could do anything her older sister could do (and generally she could). For example, when my older daughter brought home homework from kindergarten, each night I had to photocopy it so her 2-3 year old sister could do it, too. When she is bored with something because it's too easy, she lets you know loud and clear. With my older daughter, it didn't seem so clear to me - mostly because of what I now realize are misconceptions about gifted kids. As a toddler/preschooler, she was as advanced as her sister. But she was more shy and quiet. Once she started kindergarten, I could tell that she was capable of doing harder work, but I didn't want to push too hard, and I figured that she'd let me know if she felt bored and frustrated. I also thought it was more important to let her work on social skills. This continued until third grade, because she never complained about being bored or that the work was too easy. Now, looking back, I realize that she was bored, but instead of complaining about it, she was perfectly content to get lost in her own imagination to pass the time. Once we hit third grade, though, we started to have some problems. I went to a lecture about gifted kids (mostly because of my younger daughter), and realized that they were describing my older daughter, and the problems we were having, perfectly. At that point, I had her tested and enrolled her in gifted classes on the weekends and at summer camp, and she absolutely thrived - so much so that she begged to be homeschooled so that she could learn more, faster than she could at public school. This sounds exactly like the asynchronous learning that is typical with gifted children. They can be accelerated in some areas, at age-level development in others, and even lag behind their age-level peers in other areas.

:lol: Love it!

Hi Lee, Giftedness absolutely creates unique social and emotional needs, as well as intellectual needs, in kids. I've spent the past two years learning about this with my own kids, and by learning how to meet their needs, we have all been happier. Plus, it's so reassuring to learn that your kids' behavior is normal for a gifted kid and can be worked with, instead of being misdiagnosed. Some books you might want to check out: * A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children by James T. Webb et. al. I worked through this with a parent's SENG group that met weekly to discuss a chapter at a time, which was helpful for me because it's not a quick and easy read. But it is absolutely packed with info, and we all found the strategies suggested to be very helpful with our children (although different strategies worked or didn't work for different children). * The Survival Gide for Parents of Gifted Kids by Sally Walker * The SENG website has tons of resources Hope this helps!

In answer to the original question, being gifted absolutely matters. It affects all parts of who a child is - intellectually, socially and emotionally - and how they interact with the world. These are two of my favorite essays on the subject: Is It a Cheetah? By Stephanie S. Tolan A response to the "All children are gifted" comment by Michael Clay Thompson Also, the introductory chapters in any of Kenneth J. Smith's series of books Challenging Units for Gifted Learners do an exceptional job explaining how and why gifted children think differently, with lots of citations to recent research. (Sorry, I don't have time right now to read the whole thread, so I hope I'm not duplicating what others have said.)

This was my daughter's frustration with the spiraling curriculum she did at her school - she was offended by the review of things they had done a year ago, and would say "it's like my teacher doesn't think I learned it when they taught it last year!". She hates reviewing things she already "knows." That was the primary reason I chose a mastery curriculum. If we come to a concept she's forgotten, she doesn't mind a review.

Any suggestions for a book of journal writing prompts? Sometimes dd needs a fun starter. Thanks!

Yes, you can solve it any way you want. Here's the drawing they give in the problem: (In my original post I wasn't sure if I could post the image, but I figured out how to! )

This week's Elementary Brain Teaser at the University of Mississippi's website is: One side of a rectangle measures 5 cm.* Half the length of the diagonal of the rectangle is 6.5 cm.* Find the perimeter of the rectangle. * Is there any way to solve this problem without using the Pythagorean theorem? My girls haven't yet done the Pythagorean theorem, squaring and square roots. It is a good opportunity for me to introduce those concepts, and let the girls use them to figure out how to solve the problem. But I wanted to see if there's a simpler way of solving the problem that I'm overlooking. Thanks!

Three days a week, we use Singapore Math to cover the traditional scope & sequence for 5th grade. We started off slow, since we are transitioning to it from another curriculum, but we are starting to pick up the pace. I also ordered the book of Challenging Word Problems, and plan to use them to provide a daily challenge problem. One day a week, we use Harold Jacobs' Mathematics: A Human Endeavor. My daughter loves it and wishes we could use it every day. It is much more focused on logic and mathematical thinking, with lots of real-world examples. It is really engaging; I highly recommend it for kids with an aptitude for math.

I just learned that tomorrow (Sept 21st) is the International Day of Peace. I was wondering if anyone had any quick, easy activities that would be appropriate? Thanks!

I would like to have my daughters memorize a poem about autumn, and am looking for suggestions. What is your favorite poem about autumn?

My daughters are begging for pets. (We already have a dog; they'd like a whole menagerie). We have a limited amount of space in our house, so I'm not sure we have the space for another pet, and I'm not sure I want to make a long-term commitment to another pet. I was wondering, instead, what kind of creatures we might be able to raise and release. We've done butterflies. My daughter's class raised quail from eggs, but I'm not sure they have a decent chance of survival after release. What other creatures might we raise? Can you raise tadpoles to frogs?