Will do. DS is in ch 2 of AoPS Algebra now, plugging along at his own pace. I confess that EMF seems a bit pricey to me, given that I have a math background and can offer an awful lot of help myself (all we pay for with AoPS is the textbook itself)... But I also recognize it's probably about on par (or even less) than many "deeper" options. I'm thinking of giving him the placement just to see where he'd land, but I notice that they say to start at the beginning and work through the whole thing, regardless of background. I'd really love to get him into something that would help him write proofs, because right now, that's an area where he's really struggling and we've made no real headway.

Oh wow- I will definitely look into it more. My three autistic kiddos definitely do better with concrete first. I wonder why AoPS is the main program I hear about for discovery based, math loving kiddos? Oh well. Thank you so much!

I am intrigued by this. I like AoPS a lot, but also really like the idea of making hard math accessible. I love discovery based math, but also have kids who sometimes just do better with direct, clear instruction. I am definitely going to keep an eye on this thread for the future and hope that it gets updated as folks give it a try. 😉 Ha ha - I definitely kept pen and paper next to my bed during grad school. I'd say that 70% of what I wrote down was pure bull and I looked at it and wondered what I was thinking the next morning. But the other 30% was pure gold and all the biggest results in my dissertation came from those night time wakings to jot down proof ideas. Yes, I just had a kiddo take almost 18 months to work through pre-algebra. He didn't do the book problems because there was no possible way he could've kept work like that organized (major EF challenges) and I have three other 2E kids (so no way *I* could've kept his work organized) -- it was all I could do to make sure he had paper and pencil for scratch work when he sat down for math (and even that was pretty hit or miss...) Instead, he read the entire book on his own, section by section, working through Alcumus, reading every solution, and got all bars blue while set to "insanely hard," which was my version of getting him to do some star level problems. He missed a TON of problems - I think his "percent correct" is something like 60%. But he's a kid that learns from mistakes and from reading solutions, so he'd often do something wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and then things would start to click and it'd change to right, right, right, you know? Not a great record if I had to go on "total percent correct," but I don't really care how poorly he started off, so long as he's solid by the end... 😄

Our experience has been good, but I'm not sure how much it actually costs to weigh cost vs benefit (we were super blessed to get a pandemic scholarship through our state IDA chapter for my three dyslexic girls this school year). I let them do it while I'm doing Barton with my other girls, and I do feel like it's helpful. My girls remember the songs and sing them a LOT. It's colorful and fun. Perhaps not AS instructional as Barton, but.... a whole lot less work for me when I need a bit of a break! lol. ETA: I forget there are different components. We only did Reading & Spelling, and my girls who used it are all dyslexic with adhd, and two of them are also autistic.

That would be great!

Anyone have this or have a kiddo with this? Any way to capitalize on it in our homeschool?

We ended up not getting it, because by the time they updated to all courses, ds was invested enough in his Khan academy course that he didn't want to switch. I expect we will still sign up this summer for next year, but it means I don't know if it's back to the functionality it had with Uzinggo. They made it much simpler with the last update, but the last piece I would've liked to see them add was a "continue where you left off" sort of button. I don't know if they've done that in the last three months, but they might if you emailed them about it. I found back in Aug-Oct that they were relatively quick to implement the changes I suggested (like making a full course add-able) - I think they really want it to be homeschool friendly. If they haven't added that feature back in, I'll definitely be emailing them again this summer! lol.

Thanks. It's hard to tell if that's the exact thing I saw or not, but it definitely looks similar!

I have no idea what it’s called, and I’ve tried various Google searches, but a number of years ago, someone had posted on this board a picture of the way that their child organized their task/project list. It was on a whiteboard and had different columns, and somehow it narrowed down into two or three things that are being worked on at a time and then get moved to a different category. I think there might have had a distinction between some that were short term and some that were long-term, but I’m really not sure. I know this is super vague and won’t make sense to anyone, unless they already know what it is I’m talking about! 😂 just hoping this jogs someone’s memory since mine is failing me!

That’s a great idea! 🙂

I don’t mind being nearby. And I can even look at it occasionally, as long as I don’t have to focus on it for too long. 😂 She has good knife skills in the kitchen, and I do trust her with knives of normal sharpness (she routinely chops up all manner of vegetables and fruit for me).

I have a 9 yo kiddo who just got her first opportunity to dissect a deer heart with a friend. I've not seen her eyes shine like that in a very long time. It was love-at-first-slice... And she's desperate to do more. Problem #1: I'm very squeamish. There's NO way I'm going to be able to help her without vomiting, fainting, or both. Problem #2: She's dyslexic, so lots of print is overwhelming and stressful. I've searched some old threads on dissection, but I'm just not sure how many of them will be something a 4th/5th grader could do independently, or if she'll just have to wait until she's older. I was hoping to find something that had accompanying video lessons to guide her through it, maybe? Any recommendations?

I would like to introduce my kids to a greater variety of cultural/ethnic foods. If you have ties with other cultures, would you share any authentic heritage recipes (not sure if this is the right word?) that you and your children love? If there's any cultural or historical significance you're able to share, I'd love it if you could include it as well! Bonus points if the amount of spiciness is adjustable for anyone here who may be a spice-wimp.

My oldest did Dragonbox algebra 12+ while still not finished with Singapore 2. I feel like it was a great introduction to algebra, and gave a lot of intuition re: fractions as well, without requiring much of those older elementary concepts/arithmetic. Elements was also a super fun introduction to geometry for him! 🙂

No problem. I took the video down though because I realized afterwards that it had some personal information on it. Let me know if you have any other questions. 🙂

Ok, so one point of clarification, now that they've extended my trial: you can definitely assign an entire course now, view progress, scores/grades, reports, time spent on activities, etc. The only thing that I've found is still not ideal, and it's relatively minor, but I wrote them about it anyway, is that it doesn't automatically start you where you left off. It pulls up the sequence, and you have to scroll to where the check marks end (I'm attaching a video, and you can see that when I click "play," it automatically starts at the beginning of the course, so I just have to scroll over past all the activities that have tiny checkmarks in them, to the next one that has no checkmark). I emailed them and they said that they made add that functionality, but didn't have it yet because it wasn't really necessary before they added the option to add a full course. 🙂 But yes, once you finish one activity, it automatically loads you into the next one, so it's definitely painless for the student. It's $75 for an annual subscription, and that includes up to 3 students, and all of their middle and high school level math and science courses. If you want less (say just math, or just middle school), then the subscription is slightly cheaper: https://www.adaptivecurriculum.com/us/lessons-library/ac-home.htm

I got this email today. The main point for me is the last one - they've added the ability to just assign entire courses to a student! I asked for a new "free trial" to verify that everything works as hoped, but with this update released, I think we're a "Go" for uzinggo/Adaptive Curriculum again! Yea!! --------------------- The following updates have been released recently in Adaptive Curriculum: 1. The Catalog Tree now shows more granular Middle School courses instead of just Math and Science: Hopefully, this reorganization will make more sense for the Middle School teachers&students&parents. 2. Units and Sections are now numbered in the catalog. 3. Predefined Lesson Plans (PLPs) are now following the same structure with the Catalog Tree and they now have a short prefix indicating the course they belong to. This will make it easier for the students to understand their assignments from its title when they receive multiple assignments. 4. For each course, we’ve added a “FULL COURSE CONTENT” PLP to the end of the PLP list: In this PLP, all content of the course is listed in a meaningful order (though they are not grouped by Units or Sections). Parents who don’t want to spend too much time on assigning content to their students can now just assign these “FULL COURSE” PLPs to them.

Nm. Thanks!

Further update: It seems that they are requesting a new update that adds entire courses to their "predefined" options. Maybe I was loud enough! LOL. Not sure when that would roll out, but hopefully soon!

Well, bad news: They really did make it much more complicated for homeschool parents. I will include below the email and attachment I received back, but the short of it is that they have predefined UNITS, but you still have to assign all the units (10-15 per course, it seems, so we'd have to go through the suggested process close to 60 times for the four HS science courses) for each course to your student. Furthermore, each unit is required to be assigned with an actual due date, and it doesn't appear to me that the units come in order if you give them all the same deadline of next year sometime - then they just get listed alphabetically, rather than the original order that they appeared in the course. I'm not yet sure if I can fix this by assigning them a due date next year, but first unit to be done one day, second unit due the day after, etc. I feel like it's really stupid of them to actual eliminate functionality for the sake of flexibility, rather than just keeping the functionality they had before and adding more flexibility, but what do I know... Thank you for your question regarding how to work with lesson plans in AC Home. Understanding that you were a user of Uzinggo, we want to ensure you that AC Home provides you with an easy way to use our Pre-defined lesson plans to create an environment similar to what your child has used in the past. Please refer to the attached document on how to create lesson plans ( it is also available on the support page along with other documents that provide support and assistance in using AC Home.) Here are our recommended Best Practices for you to implement when making the switch from Uzingo to AC Home. · Create a folder under My Lesson Plans for each course. It will help keep Lesson Plans from different courses more organized. · Assign “one month of work/lesson plans” at the beginning of a month and just prior to the end of that period send another month of work, and so on. That way, the student will see the lesson plans he/she needs to work on at the top of their assignment list. · Make sure that each Lesson Plan has the course name at the beginning of the title, so the list of assignments makes more sense for the student. (IE: Science and Math should be in the title of the lesson plan so that the parent and student know the content area the Activity Objects and Animations are associated with) MAS-UsersGuide-Section7-Creating-Lesson-Plans.pdf

Thank you both. I will definitely incorporate drawing. They do like it, but are perfectionists, so I appreciate the heads' up regarding that challenge. On a different page I'm on, someone just posted rave reviews of this for their dysgraphic son (it seemed she'd tried everything else, but OT was out of their reach). I'm tempted to give it a try since the reviews are fabulous and it's a lot simpler than driving four kids to OT that's 90 minutes away (each way) on a regular basis. lol. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Handwriting-Intervention-BUNDLE-4405410

Yes, I can still se our subscription from last year as well. I loved how hands-off it was. I'm really hoping this home version has what I want! I have two younger kids who want to do it next year as well, and I'd never pay for them to do it (they're young and dyslexic), but if the home version gives me three student licenses for the same price I'd be paying for one anyway.... well, I may let the younger two do it as well (though without the requirement that they finish things). lol.

As best I can tell, they separated out ALLl the activities into neat little modules so that teachers can pick and choose exactly which ones to incorporate into their lessons. They no longer are branded under "uzinggo," and are now only under the parent company "adaptive curriculum." It really is cool how they've made it so customizable - I just prefer something that's not so customizable!! lol. I prefer not to have a thousand different activities to choose from - I want "easy"! (Everything assigned, all in some reasonable sequence that my kid can follow and I can see that he's 67% done with Physics, or something like uzinggo used to have.) All that being said, I'm in conversations with customer service, and it seems very possible that they made multiple products in their new line of Adaptive Curriculum, and perhaps I was just accessing one geared more towards professional teachers, because they have a "Home" version for homeschoolers as well. The trial still gives you access to the entire AC site, but I'm wondering if the Home product retains the very simple format where kids get assigned their courses and all I have to do is occasionally check progress (like you mentioned you did.) I love that it was so hands off when my kiddo did it before, and I'm cautiously optimistic that they have retained the features I want, and I was just looking for them in the wrong place. I will update as soon as I hear back!

Our free trial ran out, but I can request another one. I seem to think he couldn't access anything that I hadn't assigned, but maybe we didn't explore quite enough! That would be a glimmer of light for him, at least. lol. ETA: You are correct! He is free to explore all the content on his own; it's just not in an easy sequence/progression in that case. Thanks! I would've never thought of trying this!

DS11 loved uzinggo for science last year. He did the three middle level courses, and he says he really liked the activities (like "virtual" experiments) and learned a lot. Well, then they redesigned their program, and while I think the redesigns would make me VERY happy if I were a science teacher at school... we are not so fond of them as homeschoolers. In particular, there doesn't seem to be a way to "bundle" an entire course anymore, so I have to assign every single topic and activity within a subject individually if I want him to do them, and I'm just not up for that. (I've reached out to them to ask them if they can make the entire course bundle an option again, so we'll see.) In the meantime, I'm looking to pursue other science program. I'd like something that's pretty hands-off for me (my hands are full with other things right now), relatively high-level input without a lot of output-requirements. I tried signing him up for AP Bio at Khan, thinking it seemed similar enough to me (watch some videos, answer some questions?), but he says it's awful. I don't know what makes it different, but he says it's just boring and he wants to do more uzinggo. lol. Any ideas? The idea is just to keep him interested and motivated to continue learning science at this point, not to get through any particular content.