I've done every lab in the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments and I teach from the book. It sounds like what you'd love doing. Feel free to private message me for more information. I don't have time now.

Brave Writer online classes has been exactly what my reluctant writer needs. We've done some of the family classes as well as a couple of the high school classes. My son has responded way better to someone else telling what to do and the constructive criticism. I also know I cannot give that type of feedback. I haven't done any classes with my middle schooler (other than family classes). He's a much more natural writer, but I am no good at guiding him. They are very expensive, but I've given myself permission to spend money in this area. It's been amazing how my son's writing has improved.

Yes, it was a lot to organize and think through. It was all approved on first try. College Board gave the most important things asked for, but not quite everything. ACT approved what was asked for - national extended time. I applied this year before the PSAT (in 10th) grade so that if we needed to reapply it wouldn't affect AP, SAT, or the 11th grade PSAT scores. They listed out accommodations for each different test - extended time, extra breaks. He took the PSAT this fall. Now that he has been approved, the accommodations will be in place for any college board testing he wants to do. It sets us up to be able to take AP exams in the spring, which I wouldn't feel comfortable letting him do without extended time. He'll be taking the ACT in Dec. with extended time. Some people find the way ACT does extended time to be difficult because the student is given 5 hours to break up any way and can use as much time as they want on one portion before moving onto the next. However, this will set up some students to not have enough time at the end to finish the last section of the test. My son will be fine and prefers this method of extended time.

I filled out the required forms. I sent a copy of the neuropsych report. I made a "Homeschool Educational Plan" which summarized accommodation and evaluations through the years. I summarized elementary years, and then listed accomodations by grade year from there out - mostly the same thing each year. I provided a simple cover letter stating what I was asking for and why.

My oldest has been approved for accommodations (extra time) by both the College Board and ACT. Just wanted to share with someone and no one in real life really understands.

I'd stick with a short answer - "no" and skip most of the explanations. If you want to say you're not taking more students, etc, then that is fine. I'd stay away from trying to explain the difficulties of tutoring a public school student. I think the more you try to explain, the more likely you are to just aggravate your friend.

Apologize and then move on. If you keep trying to explain yourself or post explanations of what you mean then it will keep stirring the pot. I'd go the route of I never meant to offend you. I'm trying to do what is best for my family. Then don't bring it up.

I'd figure out a way to let her cook. It sounds like it needs to be without you. Options include enrolling her in the cooking class, hiring someone to come mentor her cooking at home, sending her to someone else's home for cooking, etc. I would encourage her to try any type of recipes she wants. This requires some planning as you need the ingredients and supervision.

I'd start with Algebra since you've already learned the concepts once unless you are weak in math. I also found the Counting and Probability book fun and mostly new to me even though I have an engineering degree. I agree that you might set up an Alcumus account and try it out for free.

I haven't been there done that, but I would encourage you to let her follow HER passions. Ultimately that will make her happier and I think it will make her look better as she can talk about what really interests her. I do think you should challenger her academically - it sounds like you do. I don't think you should try to arrange her life to fit a mold that is aimed at scholarships. Who's to say she wouldn't get the same scholarships by perusing a passion of art. I'm not convinced that a single passion or excelling in everything is the road to scholarships. Good grades, solid academics, good test scores are a must, but does someone who pursues one passion over a person that is well-rounded really make such a difference in scholarships - it really depends on the scholarship as well as the evaluator - it could go either way.

I definitely wouldn't reduce your child to only working on remediation. There's too much other stuff out there to keep learning by listening to books, experimenting, playing, learning orally. Be sure to keep a balance. How do "I" determine how much time - I go by mom's instinct. We generally work 5-6 days per week. I try to challenge my child without overwhelming them. If we're getting frustrated with the new learning, I may set it aside and work on review. If we hit a real battle between mom and child, mom needs to win for that day, but then I try to step back and reassess. If anything I err on smaller, shorter lessons than others. I also will try to split the teaching up into morning reading, after lunch reading, and maybe bedtime reading. Along the way, I've touched base with professionals who've encourage me to keep doing what I was doing. Hang in there. You can't predict the future, but hopefully it will keep improving with time and otherwise, there are ways to accommodate. Three of my kids are 2E - very smart with learning disabilities: oldest - 10th grade - dyslexic and severely dysgraphic - he was relatively easy to teach reading compared to my younger kids. His huge problem was severe dysgraphis - years and years of work and various therapies. Mostly just accommodated through middle school. This year is the first time he's writing without a scribe!!! (I think most of his writing improvement was due to vision therapy this past year). 6th grade daughter - has taken off in reading for the first time this year. Last year she was finially getting to where she could decode the words easier, but then also needed vision therapy for convergence insufficiency, etc. She started picking up books for the first time this past spring and is now reading hours every day. She's on level 7 of Barton and I think she needs to keep going slowly through some of the upper levels. I want to give her more "school reading" but she is balking at that and all my instincts say to just let her read right now and not to force "school reading". We are still working on finding a balance as it is still work for her. She's still listening to literature for school and I'm reading textbooks, but she is reading 300 page age-appropriate novels at a rate of about one book per week. She remains a slow reader, but is spending lots of time doing it and loving it. 2nd grader - at the beginning of level 3 of Barton. Plugging along working on Barton. I've started a marble jar with him - he has to do a minimum of work with me on Barton, but can do more work to earn more marbles. I've been giving him one to five marbles for each section (a,b,c etc) in Barton as well as for the extra fluency pages. I break it down into one marble per two sentences or one per 2-3 lines of fluency drill. (Do you have the extra practice pages and fluency drills from Susan Barton's website?) He can cash in the marbles at a rate of 1 marble = 1 extra minute of computer time or he has spent some of his marbles for other things (50 marbles got him a roll of duct tape to make things with). The marbles have been a good motivator for him recently.

Yes to what Merry and OneStep said above. Barton does introduce sight words. About 16 every third or fourth lesson starting with level 3. I agree that it seems like a long time before silent e in introduced, but it words. There are controlled readers out there that can be read earlier. My daughter didn't take off in reading until this year (6th grade) and now she is outpacing all her friends and one of her older brothers. Hang in there. I'd encourage you that if your son needs Barton to actually embrace the system and take it one step at a time.

My daughter was in SM 4 when we started BA. My son is doing SM2 and I plan on starting him in Beast as soon as he finishes 2b. However, he sees math easier than some kids and I wouldn't be surprised if it is better to have some of SM3 done before starting BA.

I'm not a fan of lots of memorization, but knowing your squares especially as well as cubes is very handy. I'm more of a person that says as you use it more, you'll probably learn it. I'd also decide based on the child and what they want to do. ... my son has now memorized the first 50 digits of pi which is way less useful, but comes in handy as he's on an ultimate Frisbee team named team pi.

Last year, I combined SM and Beast. This year, my daughter is continuing Beast, but doing it with MEP7. (I've gone back to SM to reinforce some fractions, but I think I'll continue MEP and Beast in general.) I'm hoping at the end of this year, she might be ready to start AoPS Prealgebra.

Follow your heart. Know what the risks/limitations are. Don't go into major debt to follow your heart. Consider a broader education such a minor in something. ... basically what most everyone else has already said.

I think it is very hard to "plan" your progression through AoPS. It is so hard to predict how a student will do. Of all the books, my oldest found Intermediate Algebra the hardest. Geometry is often hard for kids, but he loved that book and whizzed through it. Some options: 1) You can overlap some of the core books. You can start the algebra book after you get through the square root chatper in prealgebra (the rest of that book has more to do with geometry, stats, counting, probability); You can start geometry while doing the algebra book, etc. 2) You can do the Number Theory and/or the Counting and Probability books concurrently with any of the other books. We would stretch out the end of chapter review in a core book while meanwhile doing a chapter of number theory or counting and probability.

That's how I learned it and teach it. I had never heard of PEMDAS until a tutoring student asked me to help with it.

150 Captivating Chemistry Experiments with Household Materials http://www.amazon.com/Captivating-Chemistry-Experiments-Household-Substances/dp/0971848025

Bravewriter online courses. My high schooler wrote like a 3rd grader last year - super smart math kid that couldn't write physically or put language together well to dictate a paragraph. We started with the family course - Kidswriter Basic last spring. This fall he has done Kidswriter Intermediate and now doing Expository Essay. His writing isn't nearly as good as the other kids in the class, but it is improving with every assignment, and it's tremendously improved from a few months ago. I've come alongside and helped him manage his time for when to do the writing assignments, but I've tried to leave all the critique to the instructors. It's expensive and it's working!

Some books are just easier to listen to. I think it is fine to do it as a read-aloud or listen to it on cd or audible. I don't make my kids read-aloud when listening. If my child is balking at reading all classics then I'd take a step back and reevaluate. If it's just a few books here and there I'd just listen to them. SWB says in her lectures that it counts as "reading" a book whether you read it yourself or just listen to it as long as it's the real book.

I found some wonderful gems here on these boards and also tried out a few things that have flopped. When I ask about specific subjects, I get a lot of information, but I often don't find it the most helpful. I find searching for curriculum reviews by name or subject the most helpful. I've found lots of great things accidentally, just by reading the boards. I've noticed there are some posters that seem to have similar philosophies as me and use a lot of the same curriculum. When they mention something new to me, I often find it works in my home as well.

His biggest problem seemed to be how he perceived space and distance and it affected his writing in that he didn't know how far away the paper was and how big to make letter. When you tested most visual processing skills he did great on them. He had some mild convergence issues as well as tracking? issues - basically his eyes jumped all over the place and he would read pieces and put it all together. He reads over a 100 books a year before and after VT and tested off the charts on reading comprehension before VT - at the same time tested less than 1st percentile on writing abilities - huge discrepancy and very frustrating for a smart kid. The VT doc described his reading as spending a fraction of the time he needed to spend on each word, but jumping all over the place; he described it the same way. He was putting the information together and comprehending, but that type of reading was not conducive to reading a chemistry or even math book. Last year I was reading physics and math and now he is. Math we had always done orally together since he couldn't write the problems, but I had begun to notice that he wanted me to read any long problems. Now he reads his textbooks himself. The speed of reading is no different, but he describes how he looks at each word as very different now. As I said before, the biggest difference is in his writing and it's remarkable. Timberly, sorry I didn't mean to sidetrack this thread. Finishing level 4 is a huge accomplishment as it's a very long, hard level. Congratulations!

OT and HWT did nothing appreciable for my severely dysgraphic son. He was still making letters an inch big as he started high school (really a random mix of BIG and little), didn't know how to form all his lower case letters from memory, and couldn't fit his name on a line. He also wrote in mixed upper/lower case letters with upper case throughout the words. His numbers for math were usually a few inches big. He also has college board accomodations for his dysgraphia. (This is my math geek who also won math scholarships as a middle-schooler, so nothing wrong with his intelligence.) What helped his writing immensely is vision therapy. I had asked the question in the past to OT and neuropsych if VT might help and was told no. As my daughter started VT for convergence insufficiency, I started talking to the doc about my son and became convinced that VT might help. The VT doc describes some kids as "lost in space". He has amazing special skills when it comes to taking geometric shapes in his head and manipulating them anyway he wants, but those special skills didn't translate to real life and I had no idea. If given a string and asked to guess how wide the microwave was he was nowhere near correct. He could look at a block diagram and could copy the pattern correctly, but couldn't get the scale correct - who knew? He also had no "scale" for how big his letters should be. He did 30 weeks of VT and is now writing for the first time in his life without a scribe. He can make the letters appropriate size - still mixed upper/lower case. VT also helped his textbook reading ability. ... not saying that VT would help in your instance, but it made a world of difference for my severely dysgraphic son.

oops - double post