1-D would be a line 2-D would be a plane (or any shape in that plane -- square, circle, etc.) 3-D would be a space (or any shape in that space -- cube, sphere, etc.) I wonder if she didn't understand or if she just wasn't communicating well! If you want a good book for dimensions, I really like Flatland. It's a pretty hefty social commentary (Victorian) too, but it involves 2-dimensional figures learning about the 3rd dimension.

"At a musical concert, class A tickets were sold at $4 each, class B tickets at $2 each, and souvenir programmes at $1 each. 3/4 of the audience who bought class A tickets and 2/3 of the audience who bought class B tickets also bought the programmes. The total amount of money collected from both types of tickets was $1400 and the amount of money collected from the programmes was $350. Find the total number of people who attended the concert." This is from a "Challenger" section, which is theoretically optional... but some of my favorite problems are in there! They're not hard once you figure out how to set them up, but setting them up can be tricky. What I like about them is while you aren't drowning the kid in arithmetic, you are forcing him to approach a problem that doesn't jump right out at you, and translate whatever is available into a few useful equations that you can manipulate to arrive at the answer. I can't say that DS is terribly enthusiastic approaching a challenge, but he does have a great sense of accomplishment when he's through!

http://www.lulu.com/content/1585693

I haven't tried Ancient Rome, but I can give two big thumbs up for the American Revolution and the Civil War HPs!

But NEM is quite difficult. I don't think it's too difficult, but it does take teaching. We did take a little break in between, dabbling in Kinetic Books Algebra and Gelfand. Kinetic Books was good but very straightforward (excellent for some situations, but not really like NEM at all, and wouldn't have helped DS place out of any of the NEM levels). Gelfand it very challenging, and would be a lot of fun, but not a lot of practice on any given topic. We still use that on the side. The one book I have compared NEM to is Jacobs Algebra, and while the basics are fairly comparable (similar topics covered and all), NEM seems to go a lot farther in the hard stuff. I haven't gone point by point through the whole thing, but especially the last few problems of each set in NEM (the ones with asterisks...) are well beyond what Jacobs has in Set 4. (Generally speaking, Set 1 is review, Set 2 and 3 are practice and Set 4 is a challenge question or two.) Also NEM has a lot more challenging problems (the quantity, nevermind the difficulty) than Jacobs does. So I think I could say pretty confidently that after Jacobs Algebra a student would still find NEM word problems very difficult. What I do like about the hard problems, though, is that DS is learning not to panic. He can figure out what bits of information he can put together and what leads to what, and eventually he can get to the answer. It's not about the problems ever getting easy, but about developing strategies to attack the ones that look impossible.

Most of my favorites have already been named, but for Physics I particularly like Bite Size Physics. There's a website too, but I like the book in particular -- very well organized, and adaptable for a really wide range of ages.

I've taken it, and it has helped... It has a bunch of caffeine in it so I can't imagine it would make you sleepy!

Things I should have considered before choosing a screen name ;) You're not the first to have done that!

Wow! Glad I picked that one then! ;) Most of the colleges I've looked at (only casually... not there yet!) require TI graphing calculators for calculus and statistics. Actually I think the AP Stats test requires a graphing calculator... I've let DS play with my TI-84 but until we're up to our eyeballs in AP Stats he won't be using it for schoolwork. But the TI-30X-IIS I let him use on any problems marked "calculators may be used for this section" in NEM. They are few and far between, but enough for now! :)

Piedmont Educational Services carries the ITBS and also doesn't require quite as many pieces of paper filled out to "qualify".

He has always tended to repeat much-loved activities rather than dabble in a lot of different ones, so while for the first couple meetings of a new activity he usually wants me to stay, it's not long before he's very comfortable there. For instance by 7 he had been with the same dance teacher for two years, and couldn't have cared less if I hung around to watch the class or not. He had been in the same library storytime and then bookgroup since he was two, and he had been in the more or less the same swimming class since he was three. I could easily have left him at the door and known that he was fine, knew his way around, knew the staff people by name, etc. There are times that he's happier for me to stay, and I do, and places that I wouldn't drop him off no matter what he thought, but as of about the time he turned 7 it has mostly been up to him.

That's an EXCELLENT point... ;)

The calculator is not strictly necessary, but unless he's very fast, you might end up with too much to do in too little time to work it out on paper. The Explore math section is 30 problems in 30 minutes, so there is a time crunch unless you're super-speedy. I think it might be worth introducing one, even at this point, and spending maybe an hour just using it for basic calculations... What I had DS do with his before he tested (since we had never used calculators before) was a stack of arithmetic problems -- just big numbers and decimals, fractions and percents. That got him used to the whole layout and using parentheses and all that. We had more time than you do now, so I had him do about ten problems a day with the calculator for about a month, and I pointed out things like don't pick up the calculator every time you use it, don't turn it off between problems, etc. He might not use it, but he might find it gets him past a tricky problem without wasting too much time. The calculator I got for DS is a TI-30X-IIS. I wanted to go with a TI because the graphing calculators are all TI and the layout is similar (one less thing to learn later...) The 30X-IIS has a two-line display, which I thought would be ideal for a kid who had no calculator experience, because you can see what you typed (and check that it was right before you accept the answer), and you can backspace through the current line if you make a mistake. It's also not terribly expensive. Staples has it for about $15. Hope this helps!

But DS rose to the challenge! I was really, really impressed. We're not really taking a summer break (we generally just go to "light" school over the summer), but we're going to try to start everything together in September, so as we finish things we'll drop them until then. We've fallen a little behind in history, so that's probably going to go right up to the end of August! Basically everything this year was good (yay!) Singapore for science and math (Interactive 1 and NEM 1), plus Bite Size Physics, SOTW 3 and History of US for history, and Lightning Lit & Comp 7 for literature. We also had a Lego team, a science fair project, a book group, flute lessons, and monthly organized field trips to a local science museum and a local art museum. Next year I'm pretty much planning a continuation of everything (except the museum field trips -- got as much out of those as we possibly could!)... So: Science: Interactive 2 and finish Bite Size Physics Math: NEM 2 History: SOTW 4 and the last four (?) History of US books Lit/Comp: LL&C 8. We're also doing a lot more language -- We'll continue Spanish with a reader and Pimsleur. He did Latin this year with our co-op and we're following up with Lingua Latina, which has started well. And he is working on learning the Russian alphabet and some basic vocabulary, so when he has gotten a little further with that we'll start on something more substantial there too. I have the Russian Pimsleur on my MP3 player, so he really could start that any time. We also have Rosetta Stone Spanish, but he hasn't been using it so much lately. We've just started something new that I rather like... I got the aforementioned MP3 player that I can use for library downloads (it works with their security thingy that allows it to "expire" after your 3-week checkout, and then you can keep renewing it for another 3 weeks, pretty much indefinitely), primarily to use with the Pimsleur recordings, but then while I was figuring out what the thing was capable of I discovered the magic of podcasts. :D So I've subscribed to like a dozen different podcasts, mainly science topics and music, and last week and this I downloaded a stack of files for DS to listen to. NOVA topics and NPR, mainly. I'm still learning how to use this thing, but so far so good! Last week I had about an hour of stuff for him, and this week I have two, not including the languages. Oooh... I bet I could find some Spanish and Russian language podcasts! That will be my new quest. ;) Anyway I think about three hours a week is the most I would do, but I really like this random-ish assortment of current news and discussion. A couple of them I've had to pre-screen just in case (knowing that the topic would be fine if handled in a particular way), and there have been topics that I just skip entirely, but for the most part they've been quite appropriate. So it has become my go-to thing for when I can't sit down with him to work on something for a few minutes but I don't want him wandering off and getting distracted... or when we're on the bus going somewhere. So all in all we've had a great year, but we're nowhere near "done" with it yet!

DS is taking me to The Melting Pot for Mothers Day! :) Of course I'm driving... so no cosmo for me... Which only means we'll have to go back when DH is home!! :D

:lol: My mother has had that cookbook forever! The lentil-barley stew is excellent... I think she made it once a week the whole time I was growing up, and I still make it frequently.

ROTFLOL!! I'm sure Ohio will be before NC, in any case ;)

I guess it would make sense that you guys would be first! ;) Still waiting here!

The way we handle email for our eight year old is that I have the password -- he doesn't. So when he wants to check his email he has to get me to log him in (and I do a quick read through of senders and subject lines before handing it over). I personally don't think email is necessary for an eight year old, but I also don't think it's particularly dangerous if it's closely supervised. We don't hand out the address to just anyone, so all of his emails are either from DH, the grandparents, or his two best friends... and I delete spam before he sees it.

I've never felt bad after giving blood and I should be one of those who does (underweight, low blood pressure, barely have enough iron, tendency to dehydration...) I think my secret is that I've never been too shy to take another couple cookies and a second glass of juice. ;) The one time I did feel awful after the fact was my own sheer stupidity... I had no car (impoverished grad student) and although the blood drive was on campus, I rode my bike 2 miles home about three hours later, and I thought I was going to pass out!! Of course I was woozy enough that I wasn't really thinking straight, so it never occured to me that I was woozy BECAUSE I was riding my bike (duh!) and so I kept going all the way home... but that was the only time I've had a problem. So just don't go run your 5K on the same afternoon! :D

You can, but you aren't allowed to.

Ooh mailman-stalking again! My favorite outdoor sport! LOL I'll join you -- it's been all of a month since the scores came, I need something more interesting to read than credit card offers... ;)

For manuscript, I think I might lean just a little toward Educational Fontware because it works as a font in any word processor... although it's got fewer options than Startwrite for things like guidelines and printing the letters grey. For cursive I really REALLY prefer Startwrite for two reasons. First, the EF cursive fonts are not all the same as the Startwrite fonts (and many are named the same that don't match), and I greatly prefer the Startwrite fonts for the ones we were choosing from (italic -- the EF italic fonts are much more calligraphic than the Startwrite ones). Second, although the joining of cursive works in both, the process is seamless in Startwrite, which joins "on the fly" and as you edit. In EF you have to type, cut, join, and paste, and if you have to edit something you have to undo the join first, edit, and redo it. On the plus side, that's what makes EF work with virtually every word processor out there and all the ones coming in the near future (because it uses your clipboard instead of the word processor itself), but it's just a clumsy process. Also from a geeky standpoint, the installation of EF just has "so last century" written all over it. On the plus side for Startwrite, I like the line options (you can have any combination of guide lines), and just the general elegance of the program itself. It does everything I need for regular handwriting and copywork. Also it's cheaper than EF. Since it's a standalone program, it's extremely straightforward to install and use (no issues with having to interact with other programs/ word processors). There is an issue with cutting and pasting long passages into Startwrite, which occasionally becomes a problem. It can only really handle pasting a page at a time. And I do find it irritating that they don't allow you to share your copywork pages, but I grudgingly understand their reasoning. EF on the other hand has some "specialty" fonts that Startwrite doesn't have at all. That's why I have it too, specifically for the Cyrillic (Russian) cursive font which I couldn't find anywhere else. It also has Morse Code, Braille, and Fingerspelling, which are just neat. But in general I find it very clumsy. Where Startwrite has two fonts for each type (one for cursive and one for manuscript) and then options to change lines to dots, adjust the number of dots, print black or three shades of grey, add or remove any of the guidelines, and add or remove arrows and starting dots, EF has like twelve fonts in each type -- regular, with lines, bold with lines, with arrows, with arrows AND lines, with starting dots, with starting dots AND lines, outlined, outlined with lines.... yeesh! Does it work? Absolutely. But it's inelegant, and between that and grumpy notes in the readme files about their difficulty dealing with Microsoft products, it strikes me as not entirely professional. EF does allow you to share your copywork sheets, which is nice. I don't regret buying it, and it was worth the $50 just for me to have Russian cursive and not have to order Russian handwriting books by the dozen, but I can't wholeheartedly endorse it. If you were using it for just manuscript, that would take care of my major issues with the cursive-joining procedure, but in the end, having both, I use Startwrite except when I need Russian. More than you wanted to know? ;)

We haven't seen anything yet either... There was a little pamphlet in with the original test report but I think there's supposed to be something else with more statistics (yay statistics! LOL)

Since DS was big enough to dress himself he has kept his clothes in outfits -- folded and stored in a canvas hanging sweater-storage thingy that we got at Target. Like this: He has a small dresser for the extras (one drawer for socks + underwear, one for shirts, one for trousers), but most of his clothes he wears every week in season. I don't know if dresses and skirts would be too wrinkly to be kept folded, but it works great with his jeans and t-shirts. :)