This is my boy. And I've considered nixing the CWP, except that I've gotten so much advice about advanced learners going deep and not just fast, and I don't want to do him a disservice. I'm really on the fence about continuing it because I am loathe to continue something that may turn him off to his current love of math.

My kiddo is nowhere near that fast, so we've got a bit of time yet, I think. :) How old was your older when he finished up SM then? I'm just curious how long the pre-alg through pre-calc took him.

Good to know that level 6 of Singapore may still be worth doing. That will buy us more time for him to mature just a bit before starting aops. Thanks for the other ideas too. The language one is an interesting one to ponder. He reads and speaks English well, reads and speaks German moderately well, and we're in the process of learning to sign for my youngest. He's expressed interest in learning Russian, but lacks the fine motor skills for too much computer work (handwriting is hard and typing is harder, so there's no way something like LaTex would be a good fit right now) but maybe I'll look into other language learning options for him.

This is good to know. My kiddo took a while on each of 3A and 3B but has been flying through 3C. I thought maybe he just got the hang of things, but maybe not so much! lol. :)

My 7 yo is finishing up Singapore PM 4A and BA 3C right now, but is only on level 3 for Singapore CWP. I seem to recall reading somewhere (though I can't find it now) that most folks finish up Singapore with 5B and 6A-B is not a lot of new stuff (can anyone verify?). At his current pace, he'll finish up Singapore 5B by mid-summer. I realized today (as I ordered him his next PM book) that I don't really have a plan for what to do with him at that point. Currently, he does BA 2x/week, PM 2x/week, and CWP 1x/week. CWP is by far his least enjoyed part of schoolwork. What would you recommend for when he finishes PM (or would you change things now, so that it takes him longer to finish up PM)? I think my default is to just let him do BA 3x/week and CWP 2x/week and that keeps it simple for at least another year (I think it would *probably* take him around a year to finish up all the BA practice books and all the CWP books), while letting him explore his own bunny trails when he wants. Would you do something else instead? Less BA/CWP and more extra fun stuff? I know most folks start the AoPS pre-alg after finishing Singapore, but I'm not sure he's mature enough for that yet. I've never seen the stuff, but have just read that it's tricky. I'm not so concerned about the actual algebra (he finished Dragonbox Algebra5 in a week this month and is mostly done with Algebra12 already) as I am his frustration tolerance that has occasionally caused problems for us in BA. I feel like I should know what to do with him, since I am a mathematician, but I'm only just beginning my journey of teaching my own kids math (as opposed to college kids!) and I don't know a lot of these curricula as well as you experienced folks, so I'd love some advice / insight! ETA: FWIW We already do a lot of extra enrichment, just by nature, since he's a curious kid and I have the background to explain a lot of math stuff to him. So we've explored random stuff like graph theory and coding theory and other rabbit trails already, and I expect we'll keep doing it.

Have you guys seen this article? I found it pretty interesting. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/389

I've never really thought about it that way before, but that makes a lot of sense. If I'm undecided (we've only ever done baby sign with my other kids, but I'm not sure if we'll have to sign long-term with this kiddo), I suspect I should just try to separate all three languages, though I'm ill prepared to do that right now since I am learning to sign right along with my kids. Yes, we're in the US and so ASL is easily available and makes the most sense for me to learn/teach since it's what others around us also know (at least, a little bit!).

Really? I always thought you *were* supposed to voice while signing. That's what my dad always said when he was learning sign bc of hearing loss, at any rate.

We actually have had her evaluated and will begin speech as soon as they have an opening (booked full, right now, unfortunately). :) Thanks for the reassurance.

What do you think would've been the response to a child who looked the right size but was immature? My oldest is large enough and smart enough, but had some social issues (ASD) and it's unclear right now which is more important to him: social relations or robotics. His subjects skills stick out a bit among peers, but I Worry he'll be more lonely among older kids.

Thanks for your thoughts. :) They're definitely not remediation. They're cool stuff like Lego robotics or a spy camp that uses chemistry and cryptography to crack codes. I just don't know how to balance fun content with social needs on this one. I'll think about it more...

I generally speak German with my kids, but have a child who is still non-verbal at 21 months. So we've started signing a lot more with her and she's picking it up very well and quickly. But it's left me wondering what, if any, unanticipated downsides there might be to teaching ASL without the English, since many of the words are related to their English words (i.e., horse uses the "h" letter) and those roots wouldn't carry over to someone speaking German. Am I over-thinking this? It's unclear right now if she's just slow to talk (in which case, we'll use signs for a short while and then ditch them once she's talking) or if there's something else going on (that might cause us to use signing longer term) - and I just don't want to "mess" up what I'm teaching them! :)

In all things physical (i.e., sports) as well as creative (arts, music, etc.), we register our kids as what they are according to the Dept of Ed. But when you register your kid for an enrichment program in an area where they're accelerated (i.e., math, science, etc.) do you still put them at their "official" grade level, or do you compromise somewhere between their academic level and where their peers would be? I don't want them to be stuck with a bunch of older kids where they won't fit in, but also suspect they'd be bored with the content of the ones with all their peers (my kiddos want to do a science/math/tech day camp over the summer).

I don't think this is true for all kids. My 7 yo has been doing DuoLingo happily for the last six months, but still struggles with log-ins. He can change the keyboard lay-out to Russian on his own, but still can't log himself in. :P

I appreciate DuoLingo for a lot of reasons, but am finding it a hassle to use now that I have a second child wanting to learn with it. I wish there was a way to stay logged in and have multiple accounts so they could just click on their name and go, instead of having to sign out (which is a hassle to find) and then log the new child in again. Maybe this sounds dumb, but my kids aren't really coordinated enough to do it themselves, and their user names ended up being kind of long and bulky. Is there an easier way to switch between children, or is there another well-loved language learning app that would be easier for them to navigate? It needn't be free, but should be relatively inexpensive (no subscription services please, I much prefer one-and-done deals if they're not free).

Thanks, All! I neglected to mention that I also have younger kids (1 and 3) who would (presumably!) also get use out of some of the simpler ones, so I went ahead and bought the pack. So far today, I've been a little lax on screen time, and let them each play it for half an hour. So we've used three games today and they seem to like them all, so here's hoping! :)

I've tried Reading Eggs and Teach your monster to read and found them just meh. Any other really good ones? In particular, we use the Spalding method, and I really like how it teaches all the sounds for each phonogram (instead of just teaching one sound at a time and then having to add on to that later). But (forgive me for saying it...) the Spalding app is B.O.R.I.N.G.

Awesome! I never even knew they made chapter books. I've only ever seen the picture books. Thanks!

So here's my current project: I have a 7 yo who read very typically like a 7 yo (I think): not very advanced, not too far behind, mostly lots of stuff like Wrenly, Captain Awesome, Time travel trio, Magic Tree house (though he thought those were boring), Fantastic Mr. Fox, etc. But he's relatively advanced in other areas (math, science, etc.) and would like to read about fun stuff related to those field, but at a reading level that suits him. But does something like this exist? Books that have deep/advanced content, but at an easy reading level? He *can* read harder stuff (he's read Matilda and Charlie and the chocolate factory and Half Magic), but he struggles to stay motivated. I really wish he'd liked the magic tree house books, because there's lots of good stuff to learn from those (it seems - I only read 4-6 of them), but he just never got into them. He's already read as much Life of Fred as he'd like to, all his Beast Academy, and the whole "You wouldn't want to be a..." series (I know it's not stem, but it's kind of like what I'm looking for, still).

Thanks, folks, for all the great ideas!!

I've been wondering about this, honestly. I was great at math as a kid too, but what drew me to math as a child was very different than what drew me to math as an adult (I ended up with a phd in math). When I was young, I liked math because it was easy, logical, and fixed. I could learn the rules and compute quickly and I enjoyed being "the best." Then I majored in math in undergrad because I needed a major I could complete quickly (limited funding meant I wanted in and out in 3 years and math seemed the easiest way to get that accomplished). Lo and behold, during my second year I come across math that I actually considered fun and interesting and even - dare I say it? - challenging. I enjoyed it so much that I did continue on to my phd and I'm now a very outspoken voice for giving kids more interesting math earlier, since there's so much they *could* actually understand and delve into earlier. But it does make me wonder - would this approach have reached me as a child? Or would I have responded the way you suggest you would have - by getting turned off to math? I'm honestly not sure. But it's interesting to consider.

I keep seeing Dragonbox referenced as a fun game. We are generally a low-screen-time family, but my kids would always *like* to play more games, of course... (Who wouldn't? lol) So I've considered getting this, but I'm just not sure, so I'd love to hear your reviews of it and if it's worth the $20 you put out. (I'm pretty cheap - when my kids wanted to do XtraMath for a while, I always did it in the browser on my kindle so that I didn't have to pay the $5 for the app.) I have a kiddo who is in BA 3C and Singapore PM 4B and another kiddo about to finish Singapore 1B. Is there a way to play it with more than one student (different profiles, or something, not necessarily simultaneously)?

Whew! That IS an investment... (For a family of 6, at any rate!) Thanks! :)

I should've been more clear: my children are already relatively fluent (for their ages) in German. But they lack motivation to use it. I can speak it to them all day long, and they still answer in English and talk amongst themselves in English! lol. (typical bilingual issue, I believe!) So we have lots of German movies, music, and games that they love. But I think they still have this view that German is this weird thing that mom and Frau Nora do (one other German speaking family near us) but it's not really relevant outside of that. That's where I wondered how to get them somehow more engaged and motivated when it comes to every day usage. I thought perhaps having someone who is from Germany (if I could find such a willing victim... or few...) actually spend a week with them might help my cause some. That I am aware of (and I've looked... a lot... ) there are no German play groups, German immersion groups, etc. anywhere near us. 1 hr away there is a German Saturday School, but we visited a few times and it was mostly teaching kids their colors and letting them watch Disney movies in German. My kids can (mostly) do that by age 2, and it just wasn't a good fit for us. BUT, I do believe there would be some other interest in an immersion week/camp/program, if I could come up with a simple idea of one. I know of at least two other families that have a German parent, but somewhere along the way they got too busy to speak German to their kids and they'd love to kindle that German spark in their lives again (but aren't really motivated to put in the work of speaking to their kids in German all day, again). So I'm just wondering what I might be able to come up with to create more of the German language environment and opportunities that I would like to see.

I live in a place with a definite dearth of language immersion camps/programs/schools/anything... I'm toying with the idea (sound crazy! but also maybe interesting?) of trying to create my own immersion week this summer, just as a fun thing for my kids to do. I speak German with them already, but not OPOL since dh doesn't speak or understand German and just tunes us out (instead of learning it! lol) when we speak it. So what would this look like? Just help me dream big here! Could I find international students who are here for the summer and possibly pay them to spend their days with us for a week? Perhaps even very advanced students of German (but not native Germans)? Spend the whole day reading in German, writing, watching movies, listening to audiobooks (we already do this a lot, but certainly not all day)? FWIW - my kids are all 7 and under.