I graduated in 2001 and I took Algebra 1 in 7th grade. I didn't realize that it was that advanced. I had no problems in the course and continued on up through Calculus in high school (after skipping half of my 8th grade year and winding up in 9th grade). My son is 8 right now, but takes after us in his mathy-ness. He will probably start in pre-algebra by next school year. I know he is abnormal, though. My husband took Algebra 1 in 8th grade. So the current pace doesn't seem too different from what it was back then. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

I just broke down and bought a new printer because the Canon Pixma printer we had was killing us in ink costs. Ink for the Pixma was $59 for one black cartridge and one color cartridge and they would only print out about 300 pages before they were empty and needed replacing again. I tried the cheap cartridges but they would not work in my printer. I wound up getting a HP 8600 Office Jet Pro, after a lot of research. I originally was going to go with a B&W Brother Laser printer, but I really hated giving up the ability to print in color if I wanted to. The HP has individual color and black/white cartridges, so it has 4 total cartridges, but they last a while. The XL cartridges print 1500 color pages and 2300 b/w pages before they need replaced. That rivals some laser printers, but it is a lot cheaper than any color laser I could find. From all the reviews, the cartridges cost around $40 for generic cartridges that actually work in the printer, or right around $90 for HP brand cartridges, which is also around the price of a toner replacement for a laser printer. It also has a scanner and copier and does automatic duplexing so you can print 2 sided items without having to manually turn the pages over. I can also print directly from my phone or any computer anywhere by emailing it directly to my printer. We have had it about a month and I love it! I have been printing out a lot of the Scholastic ebooks that I bought during their dollar sales and still have over half of the sample cartridges left.

Can you give me more info on this talking map? I think my son would love that and his birthday is coming up soon!

We have both as well. I have a 4 year old who we just started homeschooling (will be 5 in August) and he is OBSESSED with geography and maps/globes, flags, etc. He got a globe for his birthday last year from his grandfather and he loves playing with it. It lights up and he will just sit and study it for hours. When we redid our game room into a homeschool room, I went ahead and bought a laminated map of the world from Hobby Lobby for around $6. It's HUGE...4 ft x 3 ft and has all the flags of the world around the border. He loves it too. I want to get a U.S. map too, Hobby Lobby sells the same type of map for the U.S., I just haven't yet because I have to find a spot for it. Maybe in his room, but I'm afraid he would never want to sleep.

We started this past week as well. I am having a baby at the end of August so I wanted to have a head start so I don't feel overwhelmed if we decide to take a break when she comes. Our week went great as well. I'm only schooling my almost 5 year old (he will be 5 in August so would be starting K this year, just starting a few months early), while I try to keep my 1.5 year old occupied. He loved everything and I can see the schedule I originally made for him is not going to apply at all. He loves learning and has already gotten ahead in our curriculum compared to what I scheduled for him. I'm hoping he will continue to love it as much as he did this week. We took the weekend off and he got mad because he didn't know why we couldn't do school on the weekends too.

I have a 4 year old who turns 5 in August and should technically be in K in the fall. We have been working through some K material (mainly math) this year so in a lot of subjects (as well as in our co-op), he will be considered a 1st grader. I haven't pushed him at all, it's actually quite the opposite. He got a leap pad for his birthday a few years ago and he loved the game on it that taught him how to write his letters. He played that game until he learned how to form all his letters, and at that point whenever I gave him a coloring book or construction paper to draw on, he would just write and write letters and words all over the page. He had a major interest in letters and learning to read and write. He taught himself to read right around the time he turned 3. He is now reading on a 3-4 grade level and we haven't done any formal phonics (though I did try, he just got bored because he already had figured it out). He is just hungry to learn. He loves math and geography and would literally be happy to do worksheets all day if I'd let him. Some days it's a struggle to not do worksheets because he begs for them. He has flown through his K math book, he will literally sit down and do 7 or 8 lessons at a time. I've decided instead of fighting him, to just try to balance it all out so he has normal childhood experiences mixed in with his structured learning time that he loves. I know most 4 year olds are not like this and unless his brother is the same way, he won't start K until he's 5. It has really been just as much a learning experience for me as it has been for him just because it's new to all of us since he is the oldest. I always have people asking me when I started working with him on things and the truth is, until this year, we had never had formal learning times. We just played and learned. I know most children aren't like him and that's the beauty of homeschool...I can customize his education to him and not have to worry about him being bored or pushed too hard.

I'd be interested in seeing the answers as well. My son is only 4 right now, but he is obsessed with geography and anything I can throw at him in regards to it. By the time he turned 4 he had already memorized every state, what it looks like, where it's located, which states border each other, and their capitals. We have since moved on to world geography (at least as far as maps go) and he knows a lot of capitals and can pretty much tell you which continent any country is on. I know at least for South America, he can look at the map and label every country. He also loves world flags. I am to the point where I need something more geography wise to keep his interest, but don't know which program to go with or just make up our own.

We actually thought my oldest DS was behind. As a baby, he didn't roll over until he was almost 5 months old. He went both ways the same day. He didn't walk until he was 15 months old. He could have walked at 12 months, he took a few steps but he fell down and shut down. When he finally let go at 15 months, he fell down once and never fell again. He always had a long attention span and could occupy himself pretty well from the time he was a baby. But he wouldn't talk. At 18 months, he had only said mama. Our pediatrician recommended getting him evaluated by speech therapy just to make sure there wasn't an underlying issue, even though he didn't really think there was. During their evaluation, they told me he was behind cognitively and speech wise. We began speech therapy with him, once a week. After a month or so, the speech therapist came out and told me there wasn't anything actually wrong with him, he was just stubborn. Right after he turned 2, my husband and I went on a trip for our anniversary and we left him with our parents, who he doesn't see much because they live 12 hours away. While we were gone, we would call and skype with him. My parents would start telling me all the things he was doing, I really thought they were exaggerating, because they have a tendency to do that. They would tell me, "Oh we taught him how to sing happy birthday." When we left, the boy still wasn't talking much so I was sure he wasn't singing while we were gone. My in-laws would then get him for the day and they told me he was singing in the car and it kind of sounded like Happy Birthday. The next day, I get a text from my dad saying he can read his alphabet. Again, I just assumed it was exaggeration. A couple of days later, we skyped with him while he was at my in-laws and he was playing with some magnetic letters. He was saying letter names but they weren't really paying attention to what he was saying. When they finally started watching him, they realized he was right. He got every letter correct. We had never really sat down to work on identifying letters. At that point I started thinking something was up. Not long after that trip, I decided to see if he could learn his letter sounds. He picked it up ridiculously quick. Before he turned 3, he had taught himself how to blend sounds and was reading. He is now 4 and is reading at a 3rd-4th grade level. We will drive down the road and he will just read the road signs. He has to be the most cautious child I've ever seen, though. He thinks everything through before he does it and wants to know all risks involved in everything. His favorite phrase for about a year from 2-3 was What happened? He had to know everything that was going on. He also picked up on math very easily. He's working through kindergarten math, though I think it may be too easy for him. We taught him the concept of multiplication driving down the road and division at the dinner table. He is also obsessed with geography and history. Before he turned 4, he had memorized all the state capitals, flags, and nicknames. He also knew where every state is located and what is north/south/east/west of it. We could sit down and pick a random state and ask him what was any direction and he would tell us. Part of me wonders if he has a photographic memory. He has now moved on to countries of the world and their maps and capitals. We went to the rodeo last week. Up on the second floor of the convention center, they had all the flags of the world hanging from the ceiling. He had to take us up there and identify the countries. He got 80% of them right, the rest he just didn't know yet. Needless to say, he impressed some people with that. He has impressed his pediatrician and their staff. Last time we went, he was working on memorizing all the presidents. I really thought he was just normal for a while because he was our first and we didn't have a lot of friends with kids yet. The more we've made friends with families with kids his age, the more I realize he is not normal at all. Of course, he has skewed what I think of as normal, so his younger brother is going to get some unfair comparisons. I know my youngest DS is smart, just don't know that he is on the same level of his brother. He is only 17 months now, so we will see. He is more stubborn than his brother is and following the same speech patterns, though he says a lot more than his brother did. For those of you who have had formal IQ testing done, where did you do this? I've been trying to find a place to test our son just for our informational purposes but I don't even know where to start. I've asked his pedi but he didn't know what to tell us. Normally the test in the public schools but since we don't plan to send him to school, I need a different option.

I posted this over on the K-8 curriculum board, but thought maybe it fits better here so I'm posting it here too. Hopefully that's ok! I have a very advanced 4.5 year old who will be starting K/1st this summer (I'm pregnant and due in August so I'd like to get a good routine going a few months before my due date to ensure I don't feel too overwhelmed and "behind" if we get off our routine while having a new little one). We've been doing some pre-k sporadically this year. We have been working our way through Horizons Math K and Explode the Code. My son taught himself to read right before he was 3 (I honestly have no idea how this happened but it did). He has progressed naturally with his reading and is able to read around a 2nd-3rd grade level now (from all of the assessments I've made him take, this is my best estimate). Needless to say, ETC has been a struggle with him because he is bored reading words like cat, hat, etc. when he is capable of going around our neighborhood and reading street signs and billboards. I am just confused as to what I should be doing next. Part of me wants to make sure he has a good knowledge of phonics and doesn't have any gaps in his understanding, but the other part of me knows he will be bored with some of it. Do you have any suggestions for either a good phonics program that I should consider or should I scrap the phonics program and just let him read books and keep increasing his skills that way? I do plan to add in AAS 1 this year because he is very interested in spelling. I am thinking that might cover any "gaps" in his phonics that would come up since he would be learning phonics skills to spell.

I have a very advanced 4.5 year old who will be starting K/1st this summer (I'm pregnant and due in August so I'd like to get a good routine going a few months before my due date to ensure I don't feel too overwhelmed and "behind" if we get off our routine while having a new little one). We've been doing some pre-k sporadically this year. We have been working our way through Horizons Math K and Explode the Code. My son taught himself to read right before he was 3 (I honestly have no idea how this happened but it did). He has progressed naturally with his reading and is able to read around a 2nd-3rd grade level now (from all of the assessments I've made him take, this is my best estimate). Needless to say, ETC has been a struggle with him because he is bored reading words like cat, hat, etc. when he is capable of going around our neighborhood and reading street signs and billboards. I am just confused as to what I should be doing next. Part of me wants to make sure he has a good knowledge of phonics and doesn't have any gaps in his understanding, but the other part of me knows he will be bored with some of it. Do you have any suggestions for either a good phonics program that I should consider or should I scrap the phonics program and just let him read books and keep increasing his skills that way? I do plan to add in AAS 1 this year because he is very interested in spelling. I am thinking that might cover any "gaps" in his phonics that would come up since he would be learning phonics skills to spell.