C, G, and E-flat go into a bar. The bartender says "Hey! No minors allowed!" So E-flat leaves, and C and G have a fifth between them.

A brown bear and a white bear fall in water. Which one survives? The brown bear. The white bear is polar, and therefore dissolves in water.

This is a real issue. One of my friends is a (Christian, old-earth) biologist in the Bible Belt. He has had multiple students having a crisis of faith in his office during or after the evolution unit. FWIW, he is *not* presenting evolution in an anti-religious manner, and he tells his students that they do not have to believe it, but they do have to be able to repeat it on tests.

He should have broken into song!

You know the type ... I'll start: An infectious disease goes into a bar. The bartender says "Hey! We don't serve your kind here!" The disease replies "Well, you're not a very good host."

Intermediate is by Hake -- I haven't looked at it, but Cathy Duffy's site has a review which compares intermediate and traditional to some extent -- http://cathyduffyreviews.com/math/saxon-math-intermediate-series.htm

I would recommend skimming through the first few chapters and see which ones conflict with your religious beliefs.

Yeah. It's kind of like, if you're used to driving a car with cruise control and you switch to/borrow one without. For the first couple of weeks after I got my latest car, I spent a lot of time alternating between 'Holy cow how am I going so fast?!' and 'Why is everyone tailgating me? Oh oops I'm 15 under the limit again'. Then I got my speedometer-watching eyes back and things have been fine since.

Most of the ones I ran into in OH, PA, IL, IN, MO, TN, MS, WI, and MN had hold-open latches. Most in NY did not. I haven't driven enough in the other states to have a reasonable representative sampling.

I have no recollection of not being able to do fractions, and I seriously think this is why. From the time I was a little child, my mother was always working with us in the kitchen and quizzing us on fractions. For example: This cookie recipe makes 2 dozen cookies, but we need 3 dozen. If it takes 2.5 cups of sugar originally, how much sugar do we need now? (I tried "let's make 4 dozen and eat the extra", but she didn't like that answer.)

Ohh. So let's look at your example, 20x386. 20 is 2x10, right? So instead of multiplying by 20 directly, we can multiply by 10 and then multiply by 2, and it will give the same answer. Multiplying by 10 is where we tack the 0 on to the end. But why does this work? To understand this, you really need to understand place value. What is 386? 386 is 300 + 80 + 6 -- or 3 hundreds, 8 tens, and 6 ones. When we multiply by 10, it turns the hundreds into thousands, the tens into hundreds, and the ones into tens. Then we have 3 thousands, 8 hundreds, and 6 tens, or 3000 + 800 + 60, which is written as 3860. Now we've multiplied by 10, but we were *trying* to multiply by 20. Since 20 is 10x2, we just have to multiply by 2 to get the final answer. I'm surprised by teaching this *after* the standard algorithm. In my mind, this is essential to understanding the standard algorithm. Here's a khan academy video about multiplying by multiples of 10. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic/multiplication-division/multi_digit_multiplication/v/multiplying-by-multiples-of-10

I don't think this seems like a good fit for Saxon.

I dropped out of college the first time I went because I was gaming all night and skipping classes. It can absolutely be addictive. I would wake up and run to the computer to start killing mobiles again. I got it under control a few years later and went back to college, and life is pretty good. I still play games but not as often and not for as long.

Because they are jerks. BTW, your post sort of makes it sound like it's okay to be rude to someone working a lower-scale job if they can't do any better. I strongly doubt that's what you meant.

The pages will be wrinkly but what I did is laid them open in front of a fan so that the fan would riffle the pages as they dried. Most are readable.

I think this is a good idea :p Remember, don't fix what ain't broke.

Well, if they're doing well with Singapore, but you want to switch to Saxon for Algebra and up, I would continue through 6. Then I would have them take the Saxon placement test and start wherever they placed. I would *expect* a kid coming out of Singapore 6 to place anywhere from 7/6 to Algebra 1, depending on how well they understood the Singapore. I would not put something in between just to slow them down.

A lot of times with *informal* writing I use them to indicate that I would be pausing in regular conversation. Like, when a particularly dreadful pun is coming up :D

Yes. My youngest sibling was still not reading more than cvc words at 8. He always had someone around to read to him. When he finally found something he wanted to read and reread, and nobody else would read it to him, he jumped to grade level in a week, high school level within a month, and within the year he was reading university textbooks for amusement.

It is the "teaches a little more on the new concept" that constitutes "dribs and drabs" for someone who really, really needs to see the whole picture at once.

Put it away and wait for a few months before you try again. Kids knowing letters young and not yet being ready to blend is pretty common.

And I read the thread title and was coming in to discuss ellipses as opposed to hyperbolas, parabolas, circles, and lines. I am sad.

To add to what Hunter said: If you figure out that your kid, for example, usually takes 2 hours to read something that's a 3 hour audiobook, you can estimate future audiobooks by multiplying the length by 2/3.

You'll run into the same problem with inaccuracies and historical fiction with Robinson as you did with Sonlight. Also, most of the books are so old that you can find them for free online and download them yourself. Here's a list with free downloads for most -- http://homeschoolfreestuff.wordpress.com/books-for-reading/robinson-booklist/ There are some really dubious choices for reading material as well.