We started with the Wordsmith series in about 5th, and that was really great for my oldest child who is a natural at organizing his thoughts and didn't need much handholding to get them down on paper. It's not worked well for my 2nd oldest. He is a great creative writer, but needs lots of scaffolding to organize his thoughts and write academically. And I realized that while I am able to write pretty decently myself, it turns out I'm not so great at teaching someone else how to write. :( So we're switching to IEW for him because of it's structure, and I've been so impressed by it that I decided to switch the younger ones over to that as well.

In 6th grade after my DS and DD each finished MM (leaving out the Geometry chapters) we used LOF Fractions and Decimals & Percents to reinforce that knowledge from MM in a fun way. They felt like it was their reward for slogging through MM! Lol We also substituted MM on Fridays with Hands-on Geometry (free pdf I found somewhere on these forums) in 6th and Understanding Geometry from CTC in 7th because I'm not a big fan of MM geometry.

My kids have done Season 2 in AG when they're 12 and 13 and it's still difficult for them sometimes. I'd take a break from grammar - possibly use the 1st section of the Reinforcement and Review book that reviews Season 1 to keep their skills sharp - and come back to Season 2 in a few months and see if it's ready to stick then.

DD was in 5th grade. It was fun and she remembers a lot of it. Sent from my SM-T230NU using Tapatalk

We have tried and discarded several things for elementary: Apologia's elementary was an awful flop here. I know others like it, but we didn't even make it through 1 lesson before we were bored out of our minds. We wanted to read something short and to the point and then try it out ourselves, not read and then narrate. Science in the Beginning was great, but I didn't like the chronological study of science in the later books. Mr. Q was good for life science and earth & space science, but I wasn't as crazy about the physical science and chemistry books. What has worked and what I will likely do again for elementary: Magic School Bus kits and videos for K-2nd God's Design for Science for 3rd-6th Middle school and high school science has gone much more smoothly for us. We love the Apologia series for these grades ... with the caveat that they are the ones written by Dr. Wile, not the more recent revisions without his name on the cover.

Yes, I would definitely think so.

I bought it and fully intended to use it because we've loved MOH so far, but the reading level was too high for my youngers (quite a bit of a jump from Vol I-III) and it made more sense for my olders to focus more on American History than MOH provides. So if we use it at all, it will be more of a supplemental context reading on their own for my olders. Hope you get some more responses.

I started my DD on AAS when she was in the middle of 4th grade. She was a good speller because she's read so many books and could recognize when the word "looks right", but she did not know her phonics well at all (this was our 1st year homeschooling coming right out of public school at the time). She went through levels 1-3 like lightning, level 4 & 5 pretty quickly, and then level 6 & 7 more slowly but at about a step or so a week. Even so, she's about halfway through level 7 now at the end of her 6th grade year. She dislikes the phonics approach immensely and argued with me about the babyishness of the first few levels, but when I see her struggling with a word now I can tell she's trying and discarding different phonemes instead of guessing, so for us it seems to be working. :)

Maria Miller says after MM7 they're ready for Algebra. We went from MM to VideoText and were very happy and well prepared.

This was our experience too. I probably won't bother to go again. There were gems here and there, but you had to sift through all the twaddle Twilight type stuff to get to it. Ours was in a warehouse and had carts available.

The devil sent you, didn't he? Lol Sent from my SM-T230NU using Tapatalk

Will not google this ... Will not google this ... Will not google this ...

Our library is small and dinky and doesn't have anything good. There is a better one about 35 miles away, but I rarely get there. So if I want them, I have to buy them.

I just received a new catalog and am drooling over it. I don't need anything in it, but I am creating new courses in my head to make my kids take just so I can buy some of them. Specifically the new Greek 101 and the 2 National Geographic Photography ones. Thanks a lot everybody ... my budget hates you! :lol:

This is what I was going to say too :) We have lots of that fun stuff in our "morning meeting basket" and while we read 1 poem every day, the rest we just get to when we get to it. I don't schedule it at all, just have a bunch of resources that I know I want to get to eventually but don't really fit anywhere else in our day. We start the day with morning meeting for about 20 minutes and then move on to history and the other subjects that we do all together before we break out into our individual subjects. You might be surprised how much fun and togetherness that few minutes of "whatever" injects into your day!

Fractions and Decimals & Percents and Biology were fine. Economics I sold. And I'm a conservative. So yeah, I'd say that one has an agenda.

Love this! I don't have a baby, but I do have a 10th grader, an 8th grader, a 6th grader, a 2nd grader, and a 4 year old. It spreads me kind of thin some days, but it's so worth it and is such a blessing. Our family identity and unity has been strengthened like you wouldn't believe.

I only have a 4 year gap between each of my 3 youngest, so not quite as big of a gap as you. But I only sell stuff that *I* didn't like, because I know I won't want to pull that out again. I just really like having stuff on the shelves to choose from. ;)

After they're done with spelling, we start Vocab from Classical Roots (that's about 7th-ish around here). For logic we do Building Thinking Skills and Mind Benders and Crypto Mind Benders in 3rd-8th, but no formal logic til 9th when they do Art of Argument and Argument Builder. It's not TWTM way, but it works for us.

Thank you, this is helpful! Sent from my SM-T230NU using Tapatalk

For some reason my internet is being slow to download these, but hopefully they will load soon and I can look at them. Thank you! What would you call a course like this? He's already done AOPS Intro to C&P and NT and I was planning to call that Intro to Discrete Math. But maybe that's not the right title and that's what this new elective should be called?

This year for 10th grade for his math credit he did AOPS Intro to C&P and is almost done with Intro to NT now. I had been planning to call that course Intro to Discrete Math. If he would go on to do the Intermediate C&P book, what would I call that? Would you suggest that I also add a book specifically about boolean algebra to it, such as the one I linked earlier or the links Arcadia mentioned? Or ??? I really appreciate all the help I find on this board, even if you all don't always appreciate my ignorance. :)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0780334264/artofproblems-20 I found this one recommended on the AOPS site, but the description on amazon says this: "Designed expressly for the nonspecialist engineer, scientist, or technician, as well as the technologically curious, each volume stresses practical information over mathematical theorems and complicated derivations." So do you think that means it would be a good introduction for a high school level course ... or does that mean I should steer clear? :huh:

Thank you! Did you have to know calculus first, or can he do it concurrently with precalc and/or calc?

I don't know much math beyond trig and have no idea what DS is talking about most of the time when he gets going about math. He loves math (doing it and thinking about it abstractly and also trying to explain it to me lol). He's also very into computers and electronics and programming. He's got an elective to fill next year for 11th grade and he wanted to possibly learn more about Boolean algebra, but he wasn't sure there would be enough for him at his current math level to fulfill a full credit. And I don't know what to tell him because I don't even know what Boolean algebra is. So I told him I'd ask the Hive. :) He is good at math and it comes easily to him, but we haven't progressed his math sequence much beyond the typical high school sequence because 1. He wants to keep "school" at a reasonable level and have time to pursue other life stuff, which we support. 2. I read the article on the AOPS website about not rushing to calculus at the suggestion of many on this board and it resonated with me. I didn't hear about AOPS until after he'd already taken Algebra I & II and Geometry, so he hasn't had much AOPS, even though he's enjoyed the discovery method in the course he did take. So here's the math he's had: Alg I & II Geometry AOPS Intro to C&P and Intro to NT AP Computer Science (not a math course, I know, but I thought it might be relevant for you math gurus to know) He will do Precalculus next year. All of these have come very easily to him so far and he's enjoyed them all. So what says the Hive? Is this doable as an elective for DS in addition to his standard 4 years of math? If so, do you have any resources and/or curriculum to point me to? Or do you have any other ideas for a math & computer loving kid? TIA!