Yes the 2.1 Education software is compatible w/ the NXT2.0 set. The bricks (the brain) are the same.

Thanks for the info! Can you just start w/ Books 3 and 4?

Hello Hive, I found this book in my Rainbow Resources list. :001_smile: Did someone recommend it? IF so, what do you think of it? I wonder if it would be a good supplement to MCT Paragraph Town? Capt Uhura

Are you getting enough sleep? I lived like that for years due to insomnia....always seeing the world through a fog. Now that I'm exercising daily again, I sleep very well and the fog cleared.

You can get all your questions answered by the man himself, Jim Kelly, at the NXTStep Blog. http://thenxtstep.com/smf/ If you click on book discussions, there is a forum for each NXT book. There are some key differences to be aware of. The software which comes bundled w/ the retail kit is different from that which you buy separately w/ the education set. I think the Homeschool education set may come bundled w/ software now but you'd have to double check on that. the retail software has 4-5 models to build w/ instructions. It's for kids to jump in and get started building. The education software comes with a tutorial instead for learning about the various sensors etc. the education software also has a data analysis function built in. You can do this w/ the retail software but you'd have to program it and then dump the data to Excel for analysis. W/ the education software, the analysis is done w/ NXT-G and you get real-time data analysis. Other differences, and be sure to check me on this b/c it's been a few years since I've been immersed in all things NXT but the education version (not sure about the homeschool version as that wasn't available when I was purchasing) comes w/ the battery pack. The retail kit does not. When you're doing the NXT books like Mayan Adventure, One Kit Wonders, etc they assume you have rechargeable batteries in it and not the battery pack. The pack adds about an 0.5-1in of thickness therefore sometimes you have to modify the design to account for the pack. That happened to use when we were building the first Mayan Adventure robot. The battery pack is worth it though. As far as pieces, there is a Mayan Adventures parts pack which you can buy if you own the education set so that you have all the required pieces. Most of the books were designed w/ the retail kit in mind. You can start w/ either Mayan Adventure or King's Treasure....If I recall correctly, the difficulty doesn't change much between the two. When Mayan Adventure was written, the 2.0 kit wasn't out yet. I think it's a sequel b/c it continues the story line. I would still begin w/ Mayan Adventure. I can't imagine you wouldn't be able to do Mayan Adventure w/ a 2.0 set. If your kid has lots of LEGO Technic kits around, you likely have what you will need. You can post to Jim and he'd tell you which pieces you need that might not be included in the NXT1.0.

I think it really depends on the kids and the patterns set. If the kids have a habit of jumping around from topic to topic, then I'd treat Middle Ages as an outside interest. If they have covered Ancients extensively before, why put the kids through it again when covering new ground could make history exciting for them? We're doing history chronologically and my DSs study WOrld War I and II on their own time. My DS7 had done some Ancients sporadically so when I brought him home, I wanted to start from the beginning w/ Ancients. My older had just done a year of Ancients but had some gaps. I gave him the choice of moving on to Middle Ages or doing Ancients w/ his brother. He decided he wanted to be on the same time as his brother. I got Human Odyssey which has added a new level to Ancients for him and he has focused more on his writing while using content that is familiar. So it has worked out well letting him choose.

I LOVE IT!!! And it's very true!!!!

Ok those that have perused the 4th edition, what do you think? I'm still perusing Kalmia's but I'm about to hit the buy button. The one question I had was would we reuse some of the student pages. It might take writing several essays for the skill to be more automatic. It might be nice to have extra pages. I have to take another look or perhaps listen b/c I think the author said that you should photocopy certain pages for multiple use. Can anyone clarify that for me? That would make photocopies for the same student legal. I suppose it is easy enough to recreate the forms in Word but it would be easier if they were simple PDF documents. Maybe I'll ask at the LTW yahoogroup.

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=273587&page=3 Check out Kendall's post.

I think DM is relatively new so not many will have used it. In the other thread, someone posted an AoPS and NEM schedule. You might find that useful.

OH so I gather you didn't see my very same post at the beginning of the year when Staples ruined my WWE4? :glare: The plus side was that the books if placed opposite each other, fit inside a 3 ring binder. I had the teacher pages and student literature pages bound separately. I had the student writing pages 3 hole punched and put those in a binder. The teacher's book and lit passages bound w/ a spiral binding fit inside that 3 ring binder. It did bug me. I'm anal about those things but I forced myself not to buy another one. Believe me, I soooo felt your pain. What's worse is that I told her what a hard time the girl had cutting off the binding of WWE3 and how close it was to the edges. well, this girl did an even WORSE job. I mean, from the right most text, at times there is only a few millimeters of white space before the paper ends! But over the course of the year, it doesn't bother me as much. Save the money for something else.

He was working on high school level but stopped and started working on a middle grades book. He posted at the MCT forum that the first trilogy will be Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland and he was finishing the 3rd book in May. The trilogy for older kids is Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Time Machine, and ... he didn't mention the third book.

:party::hurray:

oh my! I'll keep you in my thoughts. Take care.:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

Hoagland's Exploring the Way We Work Macaulay's The Way We Work

What would I do? how about listen to SOTW1 Ancients straight through over the summer? Then start Middle AGes in the fall. They'll be more engaged. Or they could read Gombrich's history, it's all in one book. I'm not sure about an off-color references since it's an older text. Or how about read through Kingfisher up to middle ages over the summer. Something like that will put Ancients fresh in their minds. You'll be happy, they'll be happy. Throw in a some historical fiction from Ancients over the summer and call it done!

You said that as about as succinctly as possible! :iagree:

Did your son, is it the DS9, take the Intro to Counting pre-test? That pre-test looks more difficult than the one for AoPS Intro to Alg1 pre-test.

How did you do NEM and AoPS? Concurrently? One after the other? The "new" NEM is SM Discovering Mathematics (DM). Matroyshka is using it.

Start by giving them the WWE end of the year assessment. It can be found on the Peacehillpress website. If you have the Writing with Ease textbook, the assessments are in there also. I'd start w/ the 1st one and keep going until DC no longer passes successfully then start him/her at that level. Also, SWB's new middle grades writing program will be out in the fall called Writing with Skill. That covers 5th-7th grades I think.

hhm It might not be on the website. She did say the newsletter was a first peek! You can sign up for the newsletter. here are the forums: http://forums.bravewriter.com/index.php?p=/discussions

Resistance is futile......

I started an resource binder. I have tabs by grade. I also have tabs for writing, math, science. I have a tab for high school and a tab for wisdom. When something is really important, it gets printed and goes in a tab. Most of these are resources I want to consider or implementation of things I plan to use. I have several word documents. ONe is curriculum resources. Another is wisdom. But I find I put things in there but I don't go back to them. I've used the binder many times already over the past 4months I've started it. I have a bookmarks folder just for WTM links. I may have to look into Evernote.

Hello Hive, There are many changes happening over at Bravewriter.com. I just got my newsletter! THere is a new language arts program similar to the Arrow and Boomerang, called The Wand which is target for 5-8 yrs old or kids in the Jot It Down phase. There is also a new Bravewriter public forum for discussion about writing. There will also be a new writing program in the fall for the Jot It down. It sounds like she's trying to make The Writer's Jungle more user friendly. Capt Uhura

I've seen that stated in several education books. Granted, many of them were about the decline in boys' academic fitness. Teaching went to less activity especially in K,1st grade, more sitting at desks, more written work, more written work earlier, books which mainly appeal to girls, no adventure stories, etc. I've not seen anything regarding minorities however.