Sparknotes - They point out themes/ motifs/ symbols, give you the scoop on characters' personalities, and some of the quiz questions are okay too (but avoid the - In what place did Anne of Green Gables sneeze? - questions). Is Anne interested by the real world, or in imagining the world a little different than it is now? Why did Marilla initially hesitate to let Anne stay? What are Anne's thoughts on fashion? What are the other characters' thoughts on fashion? Does Anne like having red hair? (Her opinion changes over time, so just asking the Q will help daughter pick up on the theme) Also, there's a list of generic questions that work well for any/every book. What was your favorite passage in the book? Why? [creates a love of language] Does a character in this book remind you of a character in any other movie/book? [helps with the reealization that characters are the same throughout works, and that the author influences character actions] Describe a conflict that happened in the book. Why was that conflict inportant? [highlights themes, perspectives of different characters] And a few other questions like that. For years growing up, my school had those same questions for summer assignments, and I was amazed how the same question could spark so many interesting journal responses from me about very, very different books. Ben Carson - the neurosurgeon who assists conjoined twins - was required to read a book each week and give a oral book report to his mother. It wasn't until he was an adult that he figured out that the reason his mom asked him so many detailed questions about the book was because she couldn't read. He ended up with a medical degree due to the fact that his mom cared and ensured he read constantly, not because she herself had read Anne of Green Gables. Ignore the naysayers. :-)

That is definitely a common complaint about IXL, that it can be frustrating to get a 100. You could be tantalizingly close, then miss a question carelessly, and then have to solve another six problems to get back up to a 100. Make one additional mistake, and well then you're in a vicious loop that can be frustrating for a kid who is doing 6 out of every 7 problems correctly. The good news is that a 100 isn't the end-all-be-all, and IXL representatives encourage setting the bar at 80 or 90 for this reason (they view a 'Smartscore' of 80 as mastery). Now if only they'd adjust that Smartscore a little .... :-( That reminds me, one of the benefits is the reports you can generate (with Khan Academy too). It'll send you a weekly update by email if you'd like, and on the website you can monitor how long your kid practiced for, and whether they were on-task or not! Many parents go a week or so before discovering that their kid spent their thirty minutes maxing out kindergarten skills rather than shooting for an 80 on their sixth grade skills...

Homeschool Buyers Co-op has it now for $49 a year. I was guesstimating when I said $35. Schools pay $7 a student per year for an IXL license. Between the reduced cost, the program's attention to state standards and test-prep skills, and the many generated reports on a teacher's thirty kids in a classroom, it's easy to see why it has become popular in schools. It's cheaper than a workbook, and yet students can perform 10,000 problems on it, across hundreds of math skills, over the course of the year while getting instant feedback. As to your question about Khan Academy, Khan Academy has instructional videos, while IXL has none. IXL only has practice problems without lessons, although they give detailed answers when you get a question wrong. I've watched plenty of Khan videos, but hadn't tried Khan's practice questions until just now. From testing out a couple of skills, I feel that Khan's question software is decent, but it is not as good as IXL. IXL is more kid-friendly in its interface, while Khan Academy's practice questions were a bit too math-major/collegiate in appearance for me. It was also marginally easier to click through Khan's questions and get the right answer without understanding why. That can be cleared up by having students watch Khan's videos first (increasing the likelihood that they'll know how to do the problem in the first place). On the other hand, If you don't know how to do an IXL problem, the website explains the procedure very thoroughly so you'll know how to do the next one correctly, and you'll see that your score is going up/down so you feel motivated to get the questions right the first time, rather than click different answer choices until you achieve a Khan smiley face. Another issue: The celestial "math web" of skills on Khan Academy looks cool, but it makes it extremely hard to figure out what skills are grade-appropriate. While Khan's developed a thorough library of videos, I'm not certain if anyone's held him to a checklist of state or common core standards to see if he's got enough of everything, if you know what I mean. Khan Academy is used as the primary learning method in some California elementary schools, so he might have had to demonstrate to the schools' liking that he covers ALL the material the students need to learn. So to answer your question, Khan Academy is what I suggest to people who want to learn a concept whether that's a fifth grader struggling with division or a forty-year-old wanting to catch up on Algebra (or Introductory Econ, or Physics, or any random STEM subject). If you mean remediate as in "do math practice problems" or "practice important math skills", then in a classroom setting I highly recommend IXL, especially for the upper grades (there's a million multiplication practice websites, but IXL is awesome for remediating / practicing Algebra and there aren't really any sites that come close). If cost is a concern, Khan Academy should get the job done too although not as well. If it for a 1st -6th grade student, I would also suggest Math Mammoth as a remediation program. I do a lot of math tutoring, and if someone couldn't afford a tutor but wanted similar results, my suggestions would be Khan for the teaching, and Math Mammoth or IXL for the drill. For the cool problem-solving "brain stretching" parts, they'd need my resourceful lessons and my magic bag of math manipulatives. I would also like to say that both of the programs (Khan and IXL) miss out on teaching the "why", the "so what", and the beauty of problem-solving in math. For that, Miquon, MEP, Math Mammoth, Singapore, Beast Academy, Zaccaro's books, Life of Fred, Art of Problem Solving, and Math Contest books are what I would suggest to get students loving math, savoring math, exploring math. For some people, math is not going to be savored, it just needs to get done. For a struggling student, or for a family that isn't entirely comfortable with math and needs to rely on outside resources to get it done, Khan Academy for instruction and IXL for practice would be a excellent pair of resources.

Rosie, thanks for introducing me to Auslan. I mean, now that I think about it, it makes sense that it being called *American* Sign Language would imply the existence of sign languages of other English speaking countries, but I was taken aback for a moment (plus the name is cool, "Auslan", like the Narnia lion). What was most surprising is that even the basics, like finger spelling, is completely different. In that way, it seems learning ASL and then learning Auslan (even though both are loosely based off of English) would be more difficult than learning English and then learning Spanish, because at least English and Spanish share the same alphabet and many words are easily adjusted or are even identical once you accent the syllables differently. After watching countless ASL-translated music videos and all of Switched at Birth (an American family-show with many deaf characters and 'hearies' who make the attempt to communicate through ASL signing), I thought I was pretty well-exposed to this subculture and now I'm amazed to learn about the existence of added communication barriers across country lines for people who are deaf. America just aired its first hour-long TV episode entirely in sign, and yet a deaf Australian wouldn't be able to comprehend the signed dialogue - Crazy.

Also, since writing is a weakness for him, he could practice his oral speaking skills through the recording of his worksheet answers. Find something that allows him to start/stop the recording (so there's not all the wasted pause time as he formulates answers). That way he can complete things independently without getting slowed down by his processing skills in writing when you're assisting others or doing other tasks. You could then check his answers later. Him hearing himself on the play-back will also help the concepts 'stick', because we're naturally self-conscious and self-interested in our own voices. And let him try out his "announcer voice" to keep him interested in the recordings. Who knows, he could be the next Ryan Seacrest, ha!

Do a google search on "Five Levels of Gifted". There's a book and even an assessment test. I don't know how accurate it all is, and I've only read the online portions of the theory without reading the whole book, but I was impressed at how it described me. Your daughter seems to have a lot of level 5 traits, and I was level 4 mostly. Public school testing showed that I had high school level reading comprehension in third grade, and by fifth grade I could have scored the average SAT for graduating seniors (I took it in 6th grade and got a 1200). I graduated early, and still ended up by all measurements being the best student in math in my city (pop. 200,000) among my grade, the grade above me, and grade below me. When I was 17 I was taking senior-level college classes, and a professor mistook me for being in graduate school. Yet I was one of the youngest 85 students on a campus of 50,000! The weirdest phase growing up wasn't taking challenging classes with older students, it was transitioning into the workforce when you're highly credentialed and yet too young to go to happy hour. ;-) Your daughter is hitting milestones faster than I was, so I suspect you might see her in the Level 5 categories of gifted. Which means that every day she is more and more functioning at an adult level, and she'll have to navigate the waters of "biding her time" until she gets treated like one while using that time to become an expert (yes, expert!) in the topics that interest her. By the time she's ten, I hope you'll start treating her intellectually like an adult. Yes, she'll play with legos, cry after a stressful day, etc., but don't discount her ability to think through things as an adult. When decisions need to be made, include her fully on the decision-making process like you would to an eighteen year old child. There's something stunting about being deeply rational and being excluded from decision making that you'll want her avoid feeling during the touchy teen years. Bookstores sell a Mensa Tests For Kids IQ book. Don't buy it! They have different measuring systems for both tests so they aren't consistent. When I was 11, I topped out on both and found a mistake in the book. Your money is better spent elsewhere.

Kitchen Table Math has three volumes that will run you up through middle school. They are sorta like the BFSU threads, but they list all the math topics you should hit upon without delving into very detailed lesson plans. Following just this book, you'll have to get creative on your questioning strategies and the exploratory activities you do with each math topic, because "playing with nickels and dimes" just doesn't cut it. If it's the structured teacher manual aspect of BFSU you like, I like Mathematics Made Meaningful by Quine. While I don't feel that his books are accurately aligned to each grade level (they build up fast and then peter out in difficulty in the upper grades) nor do they cover every topic in the state standards, they are great for creating weekly sit down math exploration sessions led by the parent, and they do an excellent job of setting up division and algebra from the early grades. Like the title says, the book's goal is to "make Math meaningful" in the same way that Dr. Nebel wants science to be in BFSU. Kitchen Table Math was also designed by a mathematician parent wanting to instill a love of math in his daughter, so that's why these books have a similar flavor to them.

When a child's inattentiveness and multi-track mind are more of a personality quirk, they could be managed without needing medication. When it affects their ability to do ordinary daily tasks, like writing a word or being able to complete a conversation without flitting about, then I'd advise medication. I fall into the former category (people come up to me a lot at my job and say, "You have ADD, don't you", but it affects me the same way that being short or being bilingual might affect someone else, making things not necessarily worse, just different). I know a lot of people in the second category, and the medicine takes them from having "attention seizures" (not a medical term, just my description) to it being a manageable personality quirk. ADD is the result of overactivity in the brain's neural networks, so it's like there's too many sparks of electricity flowing at once. Medication helps quiet the sparks and static, allowing the important electrical connections to flow smoothly without all that interference. I teach low-income high school students, and some parents put their children on the ADHD medication they need and then don't give it to them for some reason or another. It seems cruel, because I'm standing there trying to teach the child one-on-one and the child wants to learn, but they simply cannot focus long enough to obtain the simple information I'm showing them. Most teachers wouldn't dedicate their five minutes like I do, and even more importantly it's wasting the child's opportunity to learn because I've seen them be successful in learning on the class on days they've had their medicine. For one student, he was hopelessly failing and getting suspended constantly last semester until they got his ADD meds straightened, now he has a C and he was smiling with pride as he reported his grades to me. Like your daughter, he couldn't control his inattentiveness and his thoughts and dances (which disrupted the class and caused suspensions), and now that he's on meds he's getting compliments for being studious and helpful, rather than having his name shouted a million times to sit down and stop singing.

AP is a trademarked name, so schools and individuals can only list that they took an "AP .... course" if they get the approval of the syllabus. For a homeschool, what really matters is what your kid scored on an AP course. You could go through the whole CollegeBoard approval process, but if your child gets a 1 (out of 5), then it's not like they were successful. A child who doesn't take an official AP course yet earns a 5 still demonstrates that they have mastered the course content and are ready for college. [A 5 shows that they are a capable, advanced student, a 4 is admirable as well, and a 3 demonstrates to admissions staff that the student took challenging high school classes and did well, though they shouldn't necessarily receive college credit for their efforts.] One thing to reflect on is that AP courses are great for teaching a high school student how to efficiently and effectively store large amounts of information, and how to put that information down in a way that's connected to many related pieces of information. It's not necessarily a class for long creative "bunny trails", or for deep pondering and reflections. But I think that the ability to process large quantities of information, make connections between events/concepts, and write coherently about them is nothing to sneeze at either. Kids in AP classes have a lot of reading assigned and they are forced to manage their time well. But again, the difficulty of an AP class is largely in the sheer quantity of material that will be tested on, not in the complexity of concepts within that material or the level of deep thinking they'll be required to do on the test. (Again, it's not a bad thing, nor is it the ideal way to learn, it just is what it is, and I really value those lessons/methods for that age group) The good news is that you can get a book like "5 Steps to a 5" and spend a portion of your time learning/drilling AP-testable concepts, facts, and their applications, and if you make sure that this is one of your priorities (as opposed to willy-nilly teaching stuff), then you can free up time for the bunny trails and the deep thinking like you've said you enjoy. Find a efficient way to teach the "Must Know" facts so you can spend some time with the interesting "Want to Learn" explorations. If you happen to be thinking about US History, I've made some posts a while back that get into the nitty gritty of structuring a course.

Sadlier Oxford's vocab is available at Vocabtest. It might be a good site to check out to determine what level is correct for your daughter before you order, or if you wouldn't mind vocabulary becoming more of a online game activity rather than a structured workbook.

Also, since you want to teach him to 20s, teach it as (10+4) x 8 instead of 14x8. 10 x8 is 80 and 4x8 is 32, so the answer is 112. Personally, I draw a box with the 10 + 4 above the two empty box/squares, and the 8 to the side. Then I do the two multiplications, writing their individual answers in their boxes (similar to a tiny multiplication chart) and add the products mentally. I wasn't taught this way, but after learning the box method for multiplying algebraic polynomials I have since converted everything into the box method. Similarly, when doing multidigit multiplication 4567 x 34, you could draw a 4x2 box that's essentially (4000 + 500 + 60 + 7) on the top, and the two rows are 30 + 4. After you complete each one digit multiplication, you write it in the boxes. There becomes a simpler method, but it's a good conceptual tool for beginners.

Before "drilling" them, color 100s charts, or do patterns (circle, circle, triangle, circle, circle, triangle, and voila - all the triangles are threes. Same for 1,2,3,Square). Color by 2s, color by 3s, color by 4s, color by 7s, etc. You can laminate a paper 100s chart for reuse, or buy a 0.60 one on Resource Resource. Having ten paper ones colored out is a really cool tool. Go to youtube and check out "Sixty Second Sweep" and get the gameboard by googling Sixty Second challenge. The multiplication chart is good for filling in/ learning the pattern, but it's not ideal for practicing all of the facts. Sixty second sweep covers all the same facts, but reduces the duplicates. Fill out multiplication tables, or specific lines of the multiplication table, or a multiplication table with blanks in it or with specific numbers already filled in. Again, no pressure with this, this isn't for drill but for pattern discovery. You can blank out the higher numbers, or just fill in the bottom left half, the uncover the top right half and the kid will realize they can cheat (a.k.a. use the associative property). Math Mammoth does a good job of demonstrating these concepts, but I couldn't imagine using every page the way its laid out. You can find Multiplication War cards. I think I got mine on Amazon for less than $3, and they've got a yellow box with blue cards and fish on them. I tutor, and I know a third grader who jumps up and down requesting that we play at the end of each session. A cool thing about them is that the kid has demonstrated the commutative property (that 3x4 and 4x3 are going to be equal) and he can compare the sizes (he'll see 6x7 and 3x5 and say, "aww, you won!" before doing the calculations). In my style of play, he calculates all the cards, and he gets to keep them whenever his card is higher than mine. I totally rig it and peek at my cards to have him win, though! Also, some of those patterns aren't going to memorize themselves easily, so practice skipcounting. There's songs (7s is song to Happy Birthday, I think), but you could also have them read through a list of numbers like you would have them memorize a prayer. After a week or two, they'll have their skipcounts memorized. Do area arrays. If you have pattern tiles from RightStart, you can lay them out and then have the kid count them (21) and then point out the edges are 7 wide and 3 long, and 7x3 is 21. Then once they've gotten the concept, hide most of a rectangle so they can't count, and have them guess then number of squares. They'll start using multiplication to get the right answer, and they'll feel smart because it was a "guess" and they didn't need to count. For patterns, artistic problems, here are real-world examples of each number. 2s:legs, eyes, feet, hands, pairs (If you have four pairs of socks, how many socks?) 3: tricycles 4:chairs at a table in a Multiplication Restaurant, wheels on a car, legs on a dog/cat/horse 5:fingers on hands (great craft), or counting nickels. 6: insect legs 7: days in a week (on a calendar, every month has a 7, 14, 21, 28 pattern on it. Find one of the months with an extra line on it because it's a five week month, and have them predict what the next 7-day would be, answer: 35) 8: spider legs (Which is more, 3 spiders' legs or four insects' legs? Answer 8x3 = 24 = 6x4) 9: nines trick ( fold down the finger you're multiplying. Fingers to the left is the tens digit, fingers to the right is the ones digit. Also, in another method, show them that you take the number and subtract one to get the tens digit, and the tens and ones must add to 9. Thirdly, find 10x the number, and subtract the number.) 10s: dimes You can also practice mental math by saying "Bob is having a party and he's inviting five people. Each of the five is getting three cupcakes. How many cupcakes does Bob need to bake?" Okay, Bob has eight friends, and they each get two cupcakes... Then for division, Bob has 20 cupcakes and needs to share them equally among 4 friends. Change Bob and his cupcakes and friends to whatever floats your child's boat (dinosaurs, hobbits, aliens, unicorns, carrot sticks, tea party princesses) Finally, how to memorize the tricky facts: 56 =7x8 (five-six-seven-eight). That math fact is referenced in The Little Princess, and that's where I memorized it as a kid. 7x7=Forty-Niners (tell a gold rush story or maybe your son knows football.) The perfect squares are hard to remember, so have your kid color them one day on a multiplication chart, and buiild them. Out of square objects. Count the squares on a tic-tac-toe board, draw a 4x4 board, a Bingo board, a Chess Board is 8x8, and a multiplication chart is 10x10). Which reminds me, on a multiplication chart, you can go the row and column, and count the squares within (3 rows, 5 columns: 15 squares). It works well visually with two pieces of string vertically and horizontally, lined up to cut across the multiplication chart. Again, it helps students see the relevance of the chart, because the chart predicts the counted answer) Hope this helps. As you can see, I really like being hands-on with the multiplication tables, because it applies to so many concepts down the math pipeline. Saying "4x5=20" is different than being able to point out eight different ways in which you see that in real life.

That's sufficient. Can they state how VA was important both in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War? Can they explain how the state is and has been affected by the military more than most states (Norfolk Naval Base, Portsmouth Shipyard, Pentagon, Langley, etc.)? And how we are nearby Washington, D.C. and how Northern Virginia supplies some of the workforce for the nation's capital? State history is just a fourth/fifth grade class in the public schools, so that's about as deep as it gets. You've hit the highlights through the fieldtrips (Williamsburg and Yorktown are the only ones you've possibly left off). My suggestion now would actually be to visit or study Boston, because that fills out the other half of the American Revolution. For every Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson and Battle of Yorktown familiar to Virginians, there's a John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Battle of Lexington awaiting in Boston.

Yes, at Ohio State there was practically no way you could be in ROTC and band. ROTC required a 4:30am wake-up time for PT, while band required several hours of afternoon rehearsals. Band required travel with the football team a couple weekends of the year, and ROTC likewise had their own weekend fieldtrips. To us laypersons, it looked like bandmembers were in a musical branch of the military with all their marching around with a hefty sousaphone around their neck. I guess there was a second-string Athletic Band for people who weren't diehards, but it didn't seem that rewarding if band was their primary interest, nor were they easy-on-the-ears if you know what I mean. Of course, not every college is the same, but I dare say it would be easier to merge military & music at an academy than by doing ROTC at a big band university. Let him play with the band, while keeping a sustained focus on meeting the athletic requirements through Winter/Spring and during the summers. Getting and staying in shape can't hurt in his quest to achieve varsity in soccer, become a 'catch' for the ladies, and get admitted into the academies. Even if he doesn't achieve these goals, he'll be strong in advance of those hours-long university band practices!

Peggy Kaye's Games for Math is an awesome book. In fact, I was trying to remember an old game my teacher played with us in first grade (counting up the "cost" of each letter in a word) and lo and behold, it was out of this book. There's plenty of Kindergarten-aged games in there as well. Used, the book is less than $10. Speaking of games, do you play Uno? Or Addition "War" (even the modified version where the kid keeps the cards as long as they can add them, thus creating an easy win)? There's also "Yellow" / "Go to the Dump", where you play Go Fish but you're hunting for number bonds of 5 or ten (like 6&4, 7&3, or 8&2) rather than matching cards. Wait, Wait, I just realized that it seems like you've not looked at Miquon Math. Go to educationunboxed.com and look up Rosie's videos which give a good demonstration of the Miquon math method and cuisenaire rods. My suggestions above were for playtime math, but if you're looking for another curriculum to add then Miquon is exactly what you described. The whole Miquon set (6 books, K-2nd grade roughly) is $35, but you could just get the Red & Orange, First Grade Diary, and the Lab Annotations. Using the cuisenaire rod manipulatives, it takes students through all the major concepts. And, when the kids are not using them to discover with proof that 5 + 4 = 9, they can build colorful houses and faces and shapes with them while mom is making dinner!