listening for the future.

DS will say that he biggest accomplishment was making a birdie at one of the most challenging golf courses in CA. This was my 3rd year coaching his Jr. Lego League team. They were invited to display their project at a local conservancy to educate students about the Southern CA steelhead trout. They've been invited by the state park to display their project as well. DS took first place in his spelling bee. He grew a lot in contest math this year. He was earned the top scorer award on his MOEMS team and ranked in the top 10% competing as a 3rd grader in the 4th-6th division. We were really fortunate that our local elementary school allowed him to join their team as a homeschooler. He also ranked 7th in Math Kangaroo. We succesfully made the transition to AOPS Pre-Algebra via a brief stint with Jousting Armadillos. It's been a really smooth process for him to work independently. He also earned TnT student of the year at our local Awana group.

I finally had time to go pick up DS's certificate. He improved a lot and was ranked 7th. I don't think the center did anything though like an awards ceremony. He got some sort of virtual reality glasses.

I would suggest discontinuing anything grade level. I found that to be incredibly restrictive because when my son really wanted to learn about chemistry at 5, doing a single unit in a grade level science program wasn't going to cut it. Homeschooling curricula that is designed for a range of grades made it much easier to access higher level material and depth. We do a lot of STEM, foreign language and history around here. So, I am often running multiple programs in each subject area as you can see in my siggy. Math is something that we did grade level but with a lot of extra resources. Athena's Academy was really great offering middle school and high school level material with less require output. We will be adding in Online G3 courses as well. I teach classes that I offer at my homeschool co-op and lead a math circle to help meet my son's needs. +1 on the advice above to teach the child you have.

If I was using the full volume set (11 or 12 depending on what you have), I would do it during middle school grades. If I was using the 4 volume Concise History of US published by K12, I would use it with upper elementry with kids working at 4th-5th. It's the spine for K12's 4th and 5th grade history courses, American History A & B. FWIW, I have both sets. You don't have to supplement, but I like using fiction, biographies, and videos to flesh things out more. It's not hard to find books tied to those periods just sitting on the shelf at the library or by looking at book lists for various currciula that is lterature based like Bookshark, Beautiful Feet, Sonlight, etc or even in the activity guides for Story of the World.

I would not do Algebra. I would do another pre-Algebra course. It is so important to have these skills rock solid before moving on to Algebra.

For us, Developing Fraction Sense by Borenson (same people who do Hands On Equations) worked really well. You want to look under Parent Materials to find this. I believe you can order from Rainbow Resources as well. http://www.borenson.com/Products/DevelopingFractionsSenseStudentWorkbookA/tabid/1636/Default.aspx

I have Beginning for my boy. It's good review for him. I would agree go with Level 1. Beginning would be far too easy for a 6th grader.

hmmm..I wonder what their pricing is for the rest of their offerings. Anyone know? I hope there is a lot of feedback that this is pretty unaffordable now for lots of families in the homeschool market.

I never thought about it except I just assumed they wanted to sound similar to the word: apologetics.

Are you committed to Papermate? I use these 0.7 mm Pentol Twist Erase ones. They have really long erasers and the refills for the erasers are readily available. This is the package that was in Costco. https://www.costco.com/Pentel-Twist-Erase-Click-Mechanical-Pencil%2C-15-count.product.100302064.html

What has helped my son to work through competitions as that he looks at it as a benchmark. He sets his goal to improve from that score the next time around. Hope that she keeps with it. We need more girls in math competitions and just to stay in math!

Assuming you are allowing one year for the following traditional sequence: algebra, geometry, algebra 2, pre-calc, calculus. Then 7th grade. My son is working through PA right now, but we are allowing for as much time as he needs to go through the material. I am not wedded to using AOPS either beyond Algebra.

I agree as well that math competitions are generally designed to to have questions well beyond grade level mastery. It is meant to separate levels of skill of the 3rd SD from the 2nd SD of students. These students are often worked 2 to 4+ grade levels above their chronological grade level. The competition is stiff that that level. Honestly, the students going for these math competitions are generally students on the upper end of the bell curve as it is. She's in good company. I would only do them if your student enjoys doing it and leave it at that.

Honestly, my bias is physical books. Studies have shown that students retain what they read in physical books more than online textbooks. I also don't like using screens more than necessary as it's hard on the eyes in the long run and people generally don't practice good eye hygiene (not blinking and not changing perspective) which affects their vision in the long run. We already have an issue with myopia in our family, so I need to do what I can to not make things worse. The text is so dense and meaty that it helps to be able to flip back and forth easily while works. We also will use post-it to flag pages that reference back if he needs to reference back. You are supposed to set up a separate Alcumus account for each student. AOPS will send you as the parent a form to scan or fax back to them authorizing an account to be opened for your minor child. Alcumus and videos are free. Videos can be found here: https://artofproblemsolving.com/videos/prealgebra

Well, it depends on whether or not you feel you need to have a class. AOPS is perfectly fine to do on your own. If you haven't done AOPS before, I would not suggest you start in the middle of a level. I would start your younger one in Pre-A at the beginning, and your older one at Algebra at the beginning. Even if similiar topics are covered, how they are covered and the level of depth they are covered at is vastly different than Saxon or other math curricula. 'm thinking in particular Ch. 2 in PA on exponents takes exponents to a level at which the vast majority of PA students never go. I think it will also makes things smoother in making the jump from Saxon to AOPS which are vastly different in approach. It can be a big shocker to kids to encounter a math currciulum that is intentionally meant to frustrate and stump you and for it not to be completely obvious how to solve something. I'm thinking that being able to go at your own pace and finding a workable rythym without external pressure of other students would make it more palatable in the long run. So what I do is that my son works through the assigned section and works the text problems in the section. I use larger post it pad paper (the kind with lines) to cover up the worked solutions which appear right after the problems. Then he goes over the solutions compared to what he came up with and self-corrects his work. The text is pretty dense reading. Then he works the end of the section problems. Generally speaking that is one day's work for him. If the section was really long with lots of text problems, he will do the end of the section problems the next day. Other families always split reading & text problems and section problems into two days. When my son gets to the end of the chapter, we usually plan for him to work about 45 minutes per day until he finishes the review and challenge problems. He generally watches the AOPS videos after he completes his work. Alcumus is practice to support the curriculum. It's not a substitute for the curriculum. You would use that get more problems. Green bar means pass and blue bar means mastery. Hope this helps.

Could you back up and given your students' math background and ages first? That would be really key to what advice you will be given. I have access to both the B&M and online courses but I have opted not to do either. I don't like the format of AOPS online courses. I won't pay the $$$ for in-person courses when he is well able to use the textbooks. He is working through the PA book at his own pace. The book is written to the student. If your student has not been exposed to a discovery approach, this may be frustrating. Also my son had some frustration with not getting every problem correct the first time through. AOPS is designed for students to have to struggle with math. Since we have no timeline as to when he needs to finish, it's been pretty relaxed for him.

I just got our scores today as well (also SoCal - same area as Jackie and SeaConquest). No ranking info though.

purpleowl, it's been radio silence from the testing center here. Is the awards ceremony for everyone that ranked? Or is it a certificate only?

They do contact the winners by email. However the results were posted much earlier and looked like what the archived results with the detail that I mentioned that was missing.

Do both. A lot of kids learn Python first and then Java. I believe the Intro class on Edhesive uses python towards the end. There are good courses that others have recommended that are on Udemy. There's even a pretty fun way to learn python through CodeCombat for 9+. These were the ones I remember were mentioned on Udemy by other WTMers. These courses when on sale are as little as $10 for the full course. Complete Python Bootcamp (Padilla) Web Dev Bootcamp (Colt Steele) Complete Python 3 Course, Beginner to Advanced (Gervais/Delgadillo) Complete Python Masterclass (Buchalka) Complete JAVA class (Tim Buchalka)

Something weird is going on this year with Math Kangaroo with posting of results. I saw they uploaded this google sheet with the winners list. It only lists the top 20 national scores and the top 3 state. However, there is no way to figure what your student won because they don't list any info about scores or rankings or which award was earned. I haven't gotten any email contact, but apparently DS is on the list. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oo2o6A7NrnmAext52BRQT0SGMqWKtFleH5eztr62RB8/edit#gid=1502065169

If this is a grade level standardized test (like ITBS, Terra Nova, Stanford, etc.) trying to use grade equivalent to make an assessment isn't going to be enough information. That being said, Saxon is not usually a curriculum that would be used for an accelerated learner. It's incremental and moves far slower with too much repetition for kids gifted at math. This attached article explain why it's not useful for making any conclusions, but it does indicate maybe you might want to use a different test that doesn't have ceilings like the Woodcock Johnson to get a best assessment of his abilities. http://everyday-learning.org/grade-equivalent-score-fallacy/

K12 if they are operating a charter in your state.

+1 on what Targhee said. You miss a lot. This isn't going to answer your question directly, but this is how I used Singapore. https://lifeatwarpspeed.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/singapore-math/