I've PM'd you with the long boring details... LOL

We do it because a) we have to test annually anyway and b) I like statistics! LOL Basically I chose the Explore for the last two years because it was pretty close to the level he was working at, so I knew he wouldn't be overwhelmed. What I got out of it last year was that while he knew most of the topics (that part I already knew) his speed wasn't up to the time limits. What I'm curious about this year is how much he has sped up... Last year I think he only completely finished one section of the four but this year he finished three of them completely and the fourth he had two questions left. So there's a chance that it's a big difference! :) Since we're out of state for CTD we're unlikely to use their camps... and they're really pricy anyway... Basically all we get out of this is a more interesting test than the ones we might use otherwise -- interesting because you can get distributions for so many different norming samples (8th graders, talent search participants from 3rd-6th, split different ways, etc.)... so you can say "well if she were really an 8th grader that would be a fairly average score, but since she's a 5th grader it's in the top 10% of scores of 5th graders who took it through Duke TIP..." and like I said, I like statistics! ;) Generally speaking I'd say I'm not usually surprised by standardized test scores, so I can't say I've ever changed my plans because of them... and we're unlikely to use any camps or classes that require them anytime soon (although it's good to know the option is open), but they do take care of our annual testing requirement with more benefit to us than most tests.

The talent search places may have minimums (or grade levels) but the ACT people themselves do not. Although DS is working at a pretty solid 7th grade level now (except for spelling...), I still don't call him a 7th grader, and just for that reason we might opt to do the ACT independently. The only things I can see getting out of the talent search route are the program norms (which enough of them post on websites that I can have lots of numbers to play with that way... LOL) and camps or classes, which I'm assuming will have minimum ages anyway. Also we've been using CTD/Northwestern, which seems to be pretty easy with their requirements. I don't think they'd care if I bumped him up to 6th (when they start SAT/ACT), but I might still feel a little weird doing it. I guess we'll see! :) 24 is excellent!! Which subtest was it? (if I may be so nosy... LOL)

Last year I turned 35 and my dad called to say I was old enough to date now! ;)

We've used both Sequential Spelling and Megawords, and both have worked very well. At this point we use more Megawords because eventually we both found Sequential Spelling really really boring.... which if it were the only thing that ever worked we'd just put up with but since Megawords is working too, we felt free to drop SS. ;) Basically what I've found with DS (...NOT a natural speller to say the least!) is that almost anything works, provided he gets lots and lots AND LOTS of repetition and practice. And then we go back and do it again. He doesn't need a particular structure or order to his approach. Actually I have to take that back for a minute to say the Megawords approach was practically magical in turning around his attitude toward big words... before we tried that he wouldn't even try to spell them -- just say they were too hard! But other than that, he can practice any way I ask -- copying, reciting, dictation, chunking, etymology -- they all work, provided he does them enough times. So right now we're using Megawords, Dictation for Spelling, Evan Moor Daily Spelling Practice, aaaaaaaand because there are some days when I need to be removed from the process because I just can't keep a good attitude myself, a Turbo Twist Spelling game. For the OP, the good news is it looks like he is sounding things out -- that is, you don't have random letters thrown in, or sounds reversed (which would make me worry about actual LDs or something)... he may just need more practice to either remember the rules or recognize how words look, or both. I think Megawords would be a great approach for that, as would Sequential Spelling. My personal preference is Megawords, but I don't think you would go wrong with either one.

Then it really would be "just a number" if you kwim? In our case we were concerned about some quirks that we thought might be signs of some real problems, and we were concerned about some areas he had difficulty. The quirks, it turned out, were just quirks, but the difficulties showed up in a huge (HUGE) discrepancy between subtest scores. He's great at some things and just not at others, and when you ask him to combine them you get some weird issues. So the most useful aspect of testing for us was figuring out what all that was about. It was fun to know how high his high scores were, and useful in giving me the confidence to know that I wasn't imagining things. (LOL) But what was really important was where he scored low, because that told us more about what we have to work with.

I think what I would do is find a psychologist (educational psychologist? that's what we used...) and ask him or her. The pediatrician may know about tests, but the psychologist almost certainly will. There are pros and cons to any test, and some will be designed to pick out certain things, so if you have any particular concerns that would probably change what test you end up with. Before we tested DS I had a nice long telephone conversation with the psychologist about what we wanted to know, what we were concerned about and what "quirks" were troubling us. There were several ways we could have gone with testing but after that conversation the psychologist recommended the Wechsler (WISC), an achievement test (Woodcock Johnson) and a test of visual-motor integration. Those three together got right to what we needed to know, and the psychologist said afterwards that the other test he had considered (I don't remember now which one it was) would have completely missed some of the important bits that we were happy to have discovered.... So the crux of it is, I think each situation may be different enough that any one person's recommendation, while perfect for their situation, might not fit your child... and part of the job of the professional psychologist is to know what tools s/he has to find what needs to be found. It's not just a matter of a single IQ number, but of all the various strengths and weaknesses that each test can tease out. Clear as mud? LOL

You're the second person I've heard that from.... I wonder if there's a general delay... eek!

I intended to do the same -- registered for January and everything! but then the local science fair was rescheduled for the same day, and there was no way we could miss that!! Next year though.... Actually if his scores are anywhere in the 20-ish range I might switch him to the ACT next year just so we can get online scores... oh and for more "headroom"... but mostly the online scores... ;)

Same with us last year -- it came on the last day of the sixth week! But that was January test date, and this year we tested in Feb.... I don't know if it makes any difference! I'm just impatient, that's all -- I know what we're doing next year, I just want to have numbers and percentiles to play with! LOL

I did this about a year ago, and the trick was to felt a swatch (or several!) and measure. I used Patons wool and tried several different needles sizes (all enormous) and then ended up crocheting it. The wool isn't any scratchier than it would be not-felted, but Patons isn't the world's softest... Mine is a jacket anyway so it doesn't really matter (I wear it with a scarf) but if you want super-soft I like Lamb's Pride from the Brown Sheep company. It's lovely, and felts really well. Alpaca is another super-soft and good-felting fiber... But definitely felt several swatches first. Even after all my preparation I was terrified when I finally felted the whole thing! It came out fine but I knew if it hadn't I was going to cry... LOL

Did anyone else's kid do the Explore this year? DS took it for the second time a couple weeks ago (first time was last year) through CTD/ Northwestern. I'm impatient for the score report because he thinks he did really well.... Okay I'd be impatient anyway, but last year his report of how he did matched up pretty well with the score report... I'm so completely spoiled by the instant gratification of homeschooling, I hate waiting even a month for results! LOL Anyone else waiting with me?

So I know it sounds completely random and isolated... but...... In my high school (way back in the 80s... eek!) there was an Issue with exactly this sort of thing, only on a much larger scale. You see, we were the geek school. The rest of the city had a problem with drug dealers. We had a chocolate dealer. One kid had a wholesaler from whom he bought Hershey bars by the case. He turned around and sold the cases to his distributors (classmates) at a small profit, and they each kept a case or two in their locker and sold individual candy bars, each at a small profit. It was a very neatly setup organization, and our principal (she really was Dolores Umbridge... and oddly enough this is the second time this week I've had to say that!) was absolutely out to get them. If she had ever managed to catch any one of them she would not have hesitated to suspend him. Never managed it though... She couldn't catch anyone in the act, and even the teachers wouldn't rat them out. :D Certainly not a health issue there either -- you could buy HoHos in the cafeteria for lunch. I lived for weeks on chocolate milk and those "fruit pies" that Hostess makes.... You know... sticky gooey neon colored pie filling in a crust, glazed like a giant donut. It was definitely JUST a control issue.

ROTFLOL!! And then try to explain to DH why I'm over the homeschooling budget by 100%.... ;)

I could always ramp it up a bit.... heheheheh... Given that we're always running this in tandem with a pretty hefty book group (two months of dissecting one Shakespeare play surrounded by various other excellent books and serious analysis), he might not mind if there's some "up and down" with the curriculum at home... You know I always think of myself as a math-and-science kind of girl until I start talking about literature. LOL!! Payday is Friday... All bets are on buying one of everything! :D

Yup -- I like Cutepdf for that, but they say you're not licensed to use Startwrite for anything you distribute. I'm not absolutely sure they'd be able to make that stand in court, but I don't need to be a test case, either! I can use EF for distributing!

I give half credit for a clerical error (concept demonstrated, but something copied wrong/ disappearing negative sign), but make him re-do it on another piece of paper without changing the grade. If it's such a problem that it's greatly reducing his grades I would address that specifically, like with direct instruction and/or practice with carefully formatting work, handwriting practice (if that was the issue), using graph paper to keep everything neat, etc. We've done that in the past, and it has "stuck" pretty well. We only had one test, last summer, that was absolutely a crash-and-burn due to clerical errors. That's when we took a few days off to JUST work on formatting and keeping things neat.

The one thing I don't like about it (despite generally thinking it's great), is that you're not allowed to share the copywork sheets you make. You're licensed to use the software to make your own copywork, but then you can't, for instance, save what you make as a pdf and post it on your blog or anything. So for my own personal use I really do like it, but I am tempted to get one of the others (Educational Fontware) that doesn't restrict what you do with the copywork sheets you make. Actually now that I've mentioned it, I just went to their website and found that they have Russian Cyrillic handwriting too... which Startwrite doesn't have at all.... and I'm two seconds away from hitting "purchase"... LOL

Or buy them all and ooh and ahh over them, right? LOL I had completely forgotten that the high school LLs were meant to be one semester! Even though I just posted about that on another thread regarding the Shakespeare LL (duh!) That makes it sound extremely doable for combining.... Hmmm... I guess my only question would be whether you think doing Medieval/LLfLOTR combined next year would make LL&C8 a letdown the following year. kwim? I think I just need to buy them all... hehehehe

More to think about.... LOL So... If we finish LL&C 7 this year, and we've already done Macbeth (in great GREAT detail, with a book group this year... which was a ton of fun! And by the end of this year we'll have done the Roger Lancelyn Green version of King Arthur) and keeping in mind that we're suckers for this kind of thing and so not afraid of "overkill" (LOL)..... Do you think you'd do a combined LLfLOTR with Medieval LL&C between LL&C 7 and LL&C8? I assume by combined you would mean doing a little picking and choosing between them (not full-fledged both?) or is it less overlap than that? I know our book group is doing Twelfth Night next year, but I don't know what else... If I have ~my~ plan in place before the summer then I can probably engineer to have some overlap in our "real" schoolwork and our book group work.... hehehe... You know by the end of the conversation I'm sure I'll have ordered both "just to look at".... ;)

And DS has no test anxiety. And we have to anyway for our state regs (NC)... but I really do like standardized tests and would do one a year anyway. If DS were anxious I wouldn't do any more than the bare minimum for the state, so in your situation (anxious child, no requirement) I would certainly skip it. But in our situation there's no harm in them and I like having the norms.

Ooh - actually that would fit! Wow! Especially since I forgot to mention the weight loss... :blushing: Thank you thank you!

The ones that come to mind are: Needing to work (for whatever reason DH couldn't support us himself) DS outpacing me in his areas of academic strength Exhaustion Our homeschool group ceasing to be a good support (I really do need people around me...) There's a private school I would definitely consider here, that some of the kids in our church go to, and which I think DS might really fit. We don't need to use it now because he's doing great at home and we're enjoying ourselves, but if we needed it I'm happy to know it's there. There's also a math-and-science school that I'd love for him to go to, if only because I know at some point we'll have done all the math and science I can handle. And while it's way up there (I can certainly go through regular high school level without difficulty, but this school has some college level courses too) he's approaching it rather fast.... eek! I have worked and homeschooled at the same time, and I would be willing to try it again, but I can certainly see situations where that would NOT work, no matter how hard I tried, and situations where trying it would lead very quickly to exhaustion. Not to mention that it would make it more difficult to participate in the homeschool group that I find such a necessary support...

We actually have an appointment next week for this cat but as a public service I'll ask you here too ;) He's 12, indoor/outdoor (due to long term relationship with litter box as a place to poop NEXT to), very mild-mannered, fixed male. Good pet and all that. Has asthma, and heartworm positive but without symptoms (unless you count the asthma - one vet thought they might be related, another didn't.) Lately he's gotten really really stupid. He was never the smartest cat in the world, but it's like he can't do anything without huge numbers of cues -- can't find his food bowl until you go through pulling out the bin, getting a scoop of food, putting it in the (already full) bowl, scoop back in bin, lid on bin, bin back to the corner and Oh My GOSH... THERE'S my bowl! He doesn't seem to be blind or deaf, but just acts like it... And he's started missing his target when he jumps. He sleeps on the arm of the sofa, and a week ago launched himself up there only to smack right into the adjacent window. And he has suddenly started jumping on the kitchen counters in search of butter, after 12 years of no interest in people food (or counters). If he finds it he'll eat about half a stick (eewwww!) And he spent two weeks last month insisting that my pillow was in fact his bed. He gave up on that, but it was weird. I can't imagine any of these are good signs, but are they really bad signs or just generic elderly cat things?

Ooooh... I hadn't even looked into this but now I have to ask... If I were considering LLfLOTR specifically for the extra unit studies, do you think I'd like LL&C Medieval better? The one thing I've heard generally about LLfLOTR that came across as not-quite-perfect (not a bad thing, just not the best fit for us) is that it's heavier on comprehension than on analysis... We've used LL&C 7 this year and enjoyed it, and we plan on using 8 next year and found them "just right" for analysis.