I don't know if these are mentioned before, but I found these recently. Ds, who has had ZERO interest in art, says these books are very good and they made him want to go to an art museum to see more. All of these by Anna Nilsen: Art Fraud Detective The Great Art Scandal Art Auction Mystery The setup of these books are very similar, here is the editorial review of Art Auction Mystery: "Grade 4-8–Following up on Art Fraud Detective (Kingfisher, 2000), Nilsen offers another opportunity for detail-oriented students to pore over fine works of art and solve a mystery. The night before an auction, Henry, the auctioneer, is sent an anonymous e-mail suggesting that 16 of the 34 paintings are fakes. He enlists readers' help by providing information on four gangs of forgers, including their level of expertise and how much they get paid for their copies. Readers are then asked to identify the fakes and figure out how much money the crafty collector paid for them. Henry suggests creating a spreadsheet to fill in all the relevant data. This is a complex task made more interesting by the addition of the mathematics component. The meticulous solution is provided at the end. The high-quality glossy paper allows for excellent reproductions of paintings by Whistler, Warhol, Fra Angelico, Cézanne, and Renoir, among others. The auction catalog itself shows the paintings above short biographies of the artists and includes a description of their style. There is also a smaller image of the actual work of art that readers can use to determine the authenticity of the piece. This is a nice browsing title even if students don't solve the mystery. If your library has budding sleuths who are ready for a more complex challenge and who like art, this is the book for them.–Linda M. Kenton, San Rafael Public Library, CA"

I am not familiar with FLL4 so I don't know what's covered in there. However, we have finished Grammar Island series this year and ds has been peeking through next year's Grammar Town on his own for the last couple of days. I can't say enough good things about the program. It makes grammar seem so simple, and it is easy to use, too. If you tell me what FLL covers, I'll probably be able to tell you which level your child should use. P.S. If you have good experience with FLL series, I wouldn't want to change though. Why not continue with R&S as Susan suggests? We've used FLL (the first one) when ds was in 1st grade but did not finish it. Part of it was his maturity and part of it was the presentation. It wasn't a good fit for him. MCT is a great fit for him but might not be a good fit for your child. MCT and FLL approach LA very differently, and I think choosing something that fit you and your student is probably more important. Just my 2 cents:001_smile:

We have a very similar experience with Donna T.. Ds was reading only non-fiction for pleasure at your son's age although I did strive to find some fiction work he liked as required reading. Now at 9, he is more willing to read fiction but I still need to do my homework in order to find things he likes. If you are wondering whether reading only non-fiction books will hurt his reading ability in the long run, don't worry, it won't. ;)

At mindware.com, they have a sample page for each level of grid perplexors. You might want to take a look at them or print out all 4 levels and have him do all of them to see which level fits best.

I have a pay-as-you-go phone from AT&T and I am happy with it. Dh has a trac phone and he is happy with it. His is cheaper though (both phone and minutes).

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is very helpful. I won't use CPO next year but plan on using it for 6th-8th. Do come back in June and let us know what the reviewer says about CPO.

Liberty's kids. We got them through Netflix.

I second Cricket Magazine line, they have many to choose from. Ds likes science type of magazines as well. We've been having Ask magazine for the past 2 years. I asked him recently if he wanted to move up to Muse, he said he still wanted Ask which is geared toward 7-9 yo. Another good magazine to consider is Kids Discover.

I don't know....I hope you get some answers. But if you work the levels backwards, your list makes sense because the program says level K is 12th/adult level. We've been using the program for three years now, ds who is NOT a natural speller is at the end of level F. Judging from his spelling skills though, I would say he is spelling at 4th grade level, not 6th.

Disclaimer: We have not used ChalkDust pre-algebra yet. But we will be using it next year as ds is finishing Singapore 6B this year. I have CD's textbook and DVDs. After reading through the textbook quickly, I found about half of the material is either review or something SM covers briefly. The other half covers the topics you listed. Because of that I feel we should have enough time to finish pre-algebra next year by going faster on review topics and slower on new ones.

I second K9. We've been using it for over two years now and are very happy with it. You can even choose how much you want to block and which categories of sites you want to block. If you block some sites, you can still have access to them if you know the password. For example, we have YouTube blocked, but I have access to it because I can type in password to unblock it for 15-60min. It's free!

I wish you can come pick up our big Erector set that's been sitting there. Ds who enjoys Lego, Lincoln Logs, and Knex did not like it. The little nuts and bolts are too small for him to manipulate with tools. They do have sets that are geared toward younger children, you might want to try those first to see if he can handle it.

I second Boyhood and Beyond and Created for Work. We did these books together this year and really enjoyed them. I have not heard of Practical Happiness, I'll have to check that out.

We have the geography one. We used it two years ago with SL2, ds enjoyed it a lot and had learned all those countries by heart effortlessly. Worth every penny.

www.johnleemd.com Go to "Articles" and you will see a wealth of information on natural hormone. HTH.

Ds discover our copy of George Washington's World that I intend to use for next year. He read it for two straight days (during his spring break) and exclaimed, "Mom, this book is so good!" I have to agree.

You can't go wrong with any of his CDs, but if I have to choose, I'd probably choose them so they align with our study (and call it "school":D).

I vote for doing 5A. You can easily finish the first 2 sections of 5A which are Whole Numbers and Multiplication and Division before the school is out. Those 2 sections are not new concepts but extensions of old ones, they should not take long. Then you can start in September with Fraction which is what gets difficult in 5A. After that 5A gets easy again with some geometry topics. I would not recommend this if your child is not doing well in math, but since he is, there is no reason not to continue. Hope this make sense.:001_smile:

I can't even begin to express how I feel. I went back and watch 3 times and each time I was deeply moved. I am so happy for her that she is finally realizing her dream.

I read both Tobias's book and this book at least twice. While Tobias's book is a good intro and I still own it, I found Discover Your Child's Learning Style more thorough. It gives you a pretty comprehensive test to do to find our your child's learning style. I recommend both, but I would read this if you can only pick one.

My 9yo went to the shower/locker room at the swimming facility once and decided he wanted to wait until we get home to shower. It suits me just fine even though it's a 20-25 minutes drive. I think it's not only safer but also cleaner to shower at home:001_smile:

Ds enjoyed many of the books already mentioned here. He also enjoyed Henry Reed, Inc. series, The Mad Scientists' Club series, and The Great Brain series.

You are describing my 9yo. I share you frustration. No word of wisdom for you, just like to let you know that you are not alone.

Thank you all for the suggestions. I wrote them down on a list and plan to go through them one by one. I am in the middle of John Adams by McCullough, it's a great book by the way, I shall start the list after I finish it.

I have not had mine either.