If he does turn out to need biology for admissions, he could always take a one-semester course at the CC senior year -- in other words, he could make the decision later when he actually IS applying to colleges.

Just remember -- never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. Walking away was better. :)

You might look into some of these, especially if you can get them from the library: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Traditional-British-history-for-children/lm/R3FYTT84CN7X9S/ref=cm_lmt_srch_f_1_rsrrrr0 I like the McCaughrean as well. I've also read the Young Oxford one and I think it's good, but might be a bit old for a 10yo. If you can find any of the old Ladybird history books at your library, they are VERY quick reads by 10 but I still enjoyed reading them then. They are brief but well-done.

I think there's a huge difference between making healthy choices when you purchase/cook and attempting to make sure that your spouse makes healthy choices when he/she purchases/cooks. e.g. I have one big vice w.r.t eating. I really, really like one specific kind of soda. I try not to drink it very often. Occasionally, though, I really want some and I buy it. I don't expect SO to buy it for me. I do, however, expect him not to throw it out/nag me about it when I buy it. Both of us know it's not good for me. :D

I love meat -- if I *must* do without I can eke through on eggs/cheese, but if I go too long without I lose my energy completely. :)

Holy Cow! I wondered what in the world that was! I woke up and I thought a semi had rammed into our building! But then I went outside to look for it and it wasn't there ... so I wondered what it was for a few minutes and went back to sleep. :)

This was me (as a child) too :P I think I finally got them all in the instant-recall memory about the time I hit calculus.

What they said -- even if it were for my own good, as an adult I'd kick up a huge fuss if someone else tried to make me make a radical change in my diet, especially if I weren't convinced that they were right. Just eat the way you want, feed the kids the way you want, and let him have his meat -- but make mouth-wateringly delicious and aromatic dishes for yourself and the kids, and proffer them as side dishes/first courses :)

Putting it this way -- having her continue in a program that she didn't understand at all would be a lot more likely to have her end up in remedial math.

Popcorn

:iagree: Very rarely do colleges have uniformly either good or bad teachers. You *can* get some useful information from that site once you're attending, but pay attention to the comments, not the ratings. Read between the lines as well, a comment such as 'he just hates his students' may very well be an excellent teacher who has the unmitigated gall to attempt to ask that his students check the reasonableness of answers. (If this sounds irritated, it is. My favorite professor ever has dreadful reviews on these pages. Why? His courses are required for majors, and the ones who just want to slide through HATE him because he doesn't give any partial credit if the answer is completely bone-headed (such as, if one is calculating a mortgage payment on a 250k mortgage over 30 years, one's answer should be neither $343,320.04 nor $5.40. If one is calculating the probability of such-and-such an event happening, the answer should not exceed 100%, nor should it be negative.))

Mariah? Delilah? (not sure how you're pronouncing the i in her name atm):)

Why not? You might also consider art of problem solving's books once he completes the MUS algebra 1. Things to consider: Algebra is slightly different at his age. He may well take more than a year to fully complete the course. Or he may continue whizzing through. Also think (just a little) about possible diversions for him if he starts to struggle unduly with the material. At his age, I wouldn't just plow through, but rather take a few weeks off and work with some problems from something like AOPS middle school books, zaccaro's challenge math, or some other creative problem-solving book, and then go back.

I do the same thing ... I feel that I need to finish something I made/bought even if it's bad. My parents didn't even go through the depression, that was my grandparents.

FWIW -- I still do that. :(

Although I haven't used it myself, I really like the looks of Exploration Education's intermediate course, and I've heard good reviews from others. http://explorationeducation.com/intermediate/overview.html

Right, that makes a lot more sense then. Review sounds like a good idea. You could also (if it doesn't cause too many moans, wails, and groans, silly teenagers :D) have him do a small problem set on a weekly basis to improve retention. I'd also check with the precalc placement test at the beginning of the summer and use the summer to fill in any gaps caused by switching programs.

CLEP exams may be retaken after six months. http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/clep/about/retest-policy I also personally know people who have retaken an AP test -- they were allowed to cancel their old score and completely erase and retake the exam. However, since the exams only come once a year it's a bit out of the question for seniors.

Western Civ is the college one, Human Odyssey is the high school one.

Since he's in 9th grade according to the OP, I presume it's a bit late for him to switch the order -- that is, he's already doing alg 2. Is there a reason to switch curriculum publishers each time? While that can be done, and many students come out of it just fine, I wouldn't consider it ideal. IOW, is he doing badly with Saxon now? Is there a strong reason to switch?

Sounds good -- I myself started in Spanish at the university after having taken about a year of Latin at home (we flaked after a year) and found the knowledge I'd gained in even a year plus the knowledge of word roots and grammar in English gave me a huge leg up on the rest of the students in the class. :)

Hmm, in older mathematical notation a line over the top would signify the same as parentheses -- this is actually the reason that the line over the radical symbol extends over everything inside the radical, iirc. It would also make sense in this context, as the student would need to repeatedly distribute the negative sign. In some parts of math, a line over the top sometimes indicates a vector or a complex conjugate, but neither of those seems to fit the given problem...so I'd go with the parentheses. Does that fit the answer key? If this isn't what they mean, then I have no idea. :D

If you want to see the books, they're all on Project Gutenberg.

Usually they give a placement test. If the high school spanish is thorough, you would *expect* (not always true) that 1 yr hs spanish = 1 semester college spanish.

1) They probably would, but that doesn't mean that in and of itself it's a good idea. Another reason not to restrict testing is that I, personally, know of people who bombed their first test due to extenuating circumstances. One of them skipped a question and forgot to skip the corresponding answer, causing her score to drop precipitously. Another one became violently ill, possibly due to nerves. In neither case was it a fair nor accurate assessment of their ability to succeed in college, and preventing a retest which accurately reflected their abilities would have been unfair to them, imho. I also believe that test anxiety would be exacerbated by knowing that this is your one and only chance to impress the college people with your test score, and that if you fail, you will never, never have another chance. In short, I believe that restricting testing is a dreadful idea, for more reasons than simply for gifted children. 2-3) In which way are you planning on measuring achievement other than by tests? If Johnny built a working nuclear reactor in his garage, I guess that's achievement, but is that a real selection criterion? Again, you're moving away from 'takes a test, does well, get in' to something which would be both more expensive, requiring individual assessment, and also more subjective, which is often discriminatory in other ways. 4) Gifted and lazy don't really coexist ... I'm sorry, I think you and they are working off different definitions of giftedness. They're defining 'gifted' as 'capable of more advanced work than average, by a long-shot', not 'currently doing more advanced work'. As a matter of fact, those who are *not* currently doing more advanced work, due to whatever reasons, which could include attempting to fit in socially at school to being completely demotivated and interested only in video games due to the stultifying curriculum presented, are the very ones that it is most important that they reach, to attempt to get them to tune in and discover that learning is fun again before they drop out completely. Added: Also, many gifted children become so used to everything being easy that they become quite intellectually lazy -- when they run into a problem which actually requires thought, they swiftly decide that it's impossible or in a subject area that they "can't do", rather than simply needing to work a bit harder.