I'd call him the grade you think he should be age-wise unless you want him with a different social group. - Parent decision not based on academics. I have three kids that are 2E. Oldest - 15 year old, it's all beginning to fall into place (I think thanks to VT this past year!) - 15 year old who tests almost flawlessly on math/logic/visual special and less than first percentile on language and writing subtests. Definitely 2E with his strengths and weaknesses worlds apart. Diagnosed dyslexic and severely dysgraphic. It was recommended to hold him back based on his inability to read and write when young. Reading came along decently well and now he's an avid reader - I never counted reading as a major problem. He works at an elite level of math, but has done it all orally for years. After talking to our COVD doc for hours about him, I became convinced that VT might be able to help his writing and other difficulties. He had major problems translating his amazing visual special abilities to concrete things like how big a letter should be on paper. For the first time, he's now writing without me having to scribe everything. He's beginning to learn keyboarding and he's translating his visual images of a topic to words on paper. I think it's because of VT which I was repeatedly told by professionals not to do as he didn't have bad convergence or trouble reading. However, his reading has improved dramatically as well - he couldn't read a textbook like math or science as he wasn't reading all the words. As good as he was in math, he wanted me to read every problem to him and now he's actually looking at the textbook. I'll write up his dysgraphia/VT story someday to share. 13 yo - not 2E 11 yo. - gifted, severely dyslexic - things beginning to fall into place. 7 yo - gifted, severely dyslexic, verbal apraxia - hoping someday it'll all come together for him as well. His speech has improved dramatically, but everything else has yet to follow.

If you search the previous years club materials on the Mathcounts website, you can find links to the games and activities from previous years. There's a lot of fun activities from previous years available. I've been getting the Club in a Box for several years now and it's always a lot of fun - different hands on stuff each year. (However, you do have to sponsor a math club with at least 4 middle schoolers to get the box).

Hugs. You probably know you'll get that question forever. I interpret "What grade is he in?" as a social question meaning how old is he. I answer it as an age question and never as what grade are they working at. As to what curriculum I either give a simple answer, "Sonlight" or a much more vague answer - "oh, lots of things". "what grade is he working at?" is rarely asked and then just answered vaguely as all over the place. You've probably already experienced the fact that some of the questions/judgements never go away - they just change. My seven year old is being judged (and his teacher) on the fact that he can't read or remember how to spell his name. My oldest has been judged all his life. "What he doesn't know his letters?", "he's a middle schooler and still doesn't know his lower case letters?", "he's old enough to fill out the form himself", etc. Now we've convinced people that he's smart because he's proven he's exceptional in math, so the general public says he should be able to do x, y, and z since he's "smart". The boy scouts don't like the fact we scribe (he has formal accommodations and even college board approval). They also want to say he doesn't put enough effort into any written report because "we know he's really smart". Well smart does not equal capable of physically writing or putting language together into a "good" paragraph. Hang in there and know you are doing the best for your child and try not to be bothered of what others think.

Absolutely buy older physical science textbooks.

I'd back off to something easier as well. I'd also not assume that it is an easy skill for him. I have post graduate degrees, but am horrible at a main idea. I'd probably do as he did.

This is my fifth year to run a Mathcounts team and it's a lot of fun. You can register with as few as one individual up to 10 students. Just like a school has to narrow down it's math club to only 10 people competing, one homeschool group can only have one team (not usually an issue as it can be hard to find many kids who want to do it). Mathcounts club practice can be anything from a social club, do some fun math or serious preparation for competition. I always start with some fun math games and some basic problems to get a feel for who I'm dealing with. My philosophy is to make math club partly a great social event and always teach them something. I find that no matter what kids know about algebra and geometry, they often know very little counting and probability so I can teach everyone together on that subject. My group this year will be very different as I have four returning eighth graders that are working hard and will be extremely competitive at both the chapter and state level. I will also have a handful of new sixth graders with typical sixth grade knowledge. I will do some fun stuff together, but separate them by levels to learn some new math. My club meets weekly from Nov. - Feb for 1 1/2 hours per week. Meeting weekly is very important for team building if you want to build a competitive team. We will also work on some team tests during this time. If you have four students you can have a team. If you have more than four, the remainder compete as individuals. If you have less than four, they can all be individuals (or a team of less than four, but a zero will get averaged in for missing students). Their experience is almost the same. Everyone does to same sprint and target round test. The team works together on the team test. The individuals make groups to work on the same test but only unofficially. The top students compete in a countdown round in most states, but often this is unofficial. Early registration for a cheaper price is by Nov. To register as a club, you must have at least four students and then they will send you a Club in a Box. This is a great resource with both fun and serious activities to choose from. Once you register at least one student to actually compete, you will have access to the school level practice tests. Food makes anything you do related to math more fun!!!

I loved Agatha Christie books as a teenager - especially the Miss Marple ones.

I think you are fine, but my kids tend to read more. I wouldn't add more if it will take away from what you are doing - it's better to do less well than to do more poorly. My kids tend to do a novel a month. We may take a month to do poetry or short stories or just intersperse them between novels.

I would sit with him and do the work together. Slowly remove yourself by still sitting there and watching him do every problem. As soon as he makes a mistake correct it. IF it is a reading directions issue, then remind him every problem to read carefully. If distributing a negative, remind him on the next several. Do lots of problems together. As you are sure he understands the problems, give him some problems to do on his own that are the same type. I'd work together to break all the bad habits before letting him loose.

We stared with the ipad version and eventually upgraded to the full version on the pc. I don't have any problems with the content. I would be careful about playing on public servers. It's addictive like any video game. I limit the time on the computer and all is fine at my home. I would not call playing the game educational in any way. It has become educational as my boys have been taking a class through youth digital and they now spend much more time creating mods than playing the game. They are actually getting into the source code and learning how to edit the game and drop their own pieces into the game. Since a lot of computer programming today involves editing programs that already exist, they are learning important skills. They have learned a lot about how computer games are built this way.

I've not done either personally, but I've had family and friends do both. FLL and FRC are very different. FLL is aimed at a younger crowd and the competition involves more than just the robotic challenge. The full competition also involves public speaking and an engineering design challenge (on paper). FRC is a much larger team (like 25 students on average), but all the students tend to break up and have different jobs working and designing their one robot. This is a much bigger, more complicated robot. The FRC is only a robotic competition if I understand correctly. The local team has about 25 students that work 3 hours a day, six days a week for six weeks before the competition. Everyone stays busy. Google videos of both and you'll see some of the differences in the robotic challenges.

I loved Quincy as a kid - today my kids would probably think it was old-fashioned. Now I love Numb3rs and Bones - neither would I let an 8 year old watch. Either just disturbing themes, sexual content, language, violence.

For kids, they might like some of the older shows like Columbo and Perry Mason.

If he's interested in doing more challenging mathcounts stuff, he can look at some old tests and look at the mathcount minis online (free).

Mathcounts problems range from fairly easy to very difficult even for the best students. As a Mathcounts coach I try not to intimidate anyone by starting too hard while I get a feel for the kids I'm working with. An average sixth grader should be able to do some of the problems and if they don't get intimidated by seeing harder problems, then Mathcounts may be an inspiration to rise to the challenge of learning harder math. Mathcounts is targeted at 6-8th only. The harder problems are VERY challenging. How an individual club is run is very dependent on the leader. Mathcounts provides club leaders with a whole range of fun games to easy and hard problems. If you want to see the level of a Mathcounts test the last year's test is on the website. However, don't make the mistake of judging the test by just the first page - the problems get harder as you go along. Top students in each chapter make it to the state competition and the top four in each state go to nationals. I've taken students to state the past several years and would be glad to answer Mathcounts specific questions as well as how to prepare.

My basic goal is to do a section a day and do the review problems over 3-5 days. Sometimes the reality looks just like this with one section a day being done. Other times a few review problems will get done with the beginning of a section one day and the next will have more review problems with the exercise from the first section. I don't worry about spreading it out longer if math is getting done even if it is a lot of time on alcumus rather than the textbook.

I still do family read-alouds with the entire family through high school. My 15 year old will also come snuggle up to listen to whatever I'm reading the younger kids. My 13 year old generally just listens to whatever I'm reading the family but not what I might be reading to the younger ones.

I really like The Magnet book by Shar Levine. http://www.amazon.com/The-Magnet-Book-Shar-Levine/dp/0806999438

I've never seen this book, but I own several by the same author and really like his other (chemistry) books. I've bought neodymium magnets from Home Science Tools and I'd have to look up the name of my favorite magnet book (though it just uses regular magnets).

I always chose one place (or one place plus a bedroom) and designated a certain amount of space. How many toys was dependent on what fit into that space. I also would have set up a train table or other big toy that didn't move. We also had some bins of toys in the closet that we could intermittently pull out.

My sophomore will be taking it.

No. We do have an extra phone that we pay per minute that we have used for when our oldest (high school) started traveling out of state with the state math team. In general, he never uses the phone on a regular basis. We pay for it.

Thanks.

Another request for visible likes. I find them very useful on the educational boards. I don't know what might have been going on over on the chat board recently because I tend to stay away as I find it is often very catty or downright mean.

I'd also recommend working through the book with your child. Also, don't forget that there are free videos for the entire book on the website and alcumus is a great additional learning tool.