You might want to delve in some of Michael Serra's books or even Jacob's Mathematics: A Human Endeavor to go in different directions. There's an Upper Elementary Challenge book that was recently published by Zaccaro which is right in between his two original books. Jousting Armadillos is also an option for pre-algebra as well that wasn't available until a few years ago. I just also got the Hard Math for Elementary which has some pretty interesting topics in there.

I use it as a fun supplement a year behind Singapore. We just wrapped SM 5, so we are wrapping up BA 5 this fall.

Deferral of start date is up to 11/1/17.

Rainbow Resources has my business forever even though I have to wait a little longer for shipping sometimes. For any families affected by the Hurricane Harvey, they are offering to replace any materials ordered in the last 12 months for free. How awesome is that!

Unless their scope and sequence changed since I looked a couple of years ago, TT's Algebra 1 doesn't cover quadratic equations. That speaks volumes to me I have a friend who used TT with her older two who are in college now and switched to Jacob's with her following two. She said it's like night and day in the depth of coverage.

We do both...but my son loves history! He does like the online self-paced VP courses more because it is more interactive. He really likes the VP self-paced Bible courses as well.

I got into one but opted against it for a better school which meant I was opting to be a little fish in a big pond. The program had special advisors/mentors, housing, perks, etc. It wasn't the program I had my heart on either.

Well, you can always try it and if he melts down then it's not the right season yet. Beast is one of those things either you are ready to tolerate it or you aren't. I personally think it is a maturity thing. I run into the same thing running math circle. Some kids can tolerate the struggle and making mistakes because that's what we expect/want to happen. I only had a couple at 6 who could do that...some can't even at 8.

This is why I used SM as my core and Beast as my supplement to go deeper a level behind. We finished SM and are completing Beast this fall and will be moving on to pre-algebra.

It looks like they suggest adding Argument builder if you divide the year into trimesters. Art of Argument for the first two and Builder for the last.

I use it for my science class that I teach at my co-op. It's not worth my time to do that for just my family. However it is a good platform for organizing a class and scheduling. There's nothing wrong with you doing that if you enjoy setting things up that way. For our own studies, we are more open and go. It's quick enough for me to just let him work through quizlet or go through a youtube playlist.

This is so true. I took biology to get a science credit at CC because I didn't want to take it at Berkeley where I would be in class with pre-med and science majors and would have to put in a fair amount of effort. It was incredibly easy. Easier than my high school courses and I went to a small town high school where only 10% of the kids go on to 4 year college. I only needed to check a box and didn't need it for my major.

I think that the new edition is only for 7 to 9..but the next levels up from 7 to 9 have not been updated which is why I quit using them.

Not sure the age of your child, but JAM has this offering. We are too busy to do this right now. https://jam.com/courses/8/invent-your-own-machines?utm_source=Facebook-Ads&utm_medium=cpc&campaignID=Inventions-video&custom=FB My son did two sessions of Edison Project which he really enjoyed working through. We are pausing this right now as we are ramping up the school year and dealing with the learning curve/adjustment period on that. http://www.quickstudylabs.com/

There are engineering curriculum units for free here for primary to middle school. https://eie.org/

Car Science by Richard Hammond https://www.amazon.com/Car-Science-Richard-Hammond/dp/0756640261

It's rough in the beginning when you first start working on this skill. I actually have found it immensely helpful in how this slowly builds up the skill. When my son wouldn't recall things, I would re-read the relevant section after reminding them of the question. Then he was actively listening. It's super incremental and well worth the progress in getting there. When I look back at where we started to where we are now...the progress is amazing. The fact that he can hold a dictation was a huge breakthrough. (I break it in chunks adding another phrase until he has the whole thing). His written narrations and summaries are wonderful now. I thought that day would never come when we first started out.

It helps if your science and math teachers are willing to advocate for you as well. Schools will take their opinion of your abilities into consideration.

well there are the 10 beads on a row x 10 row types which is what people are referring to above. I found those useful for regrouping and using when my son was working through addition and subtraction. Then there are things like the Soroban abacus which is a completely different deal that I just got involved with because my son fell in love with abacus math after doing a summer camp focuses on it. I'm new at this but it is a type of mental math computation using the abacus.

I thought it was pretty helpful to do it concurrently when I studied both. I was also sitting for the AP for both at the time.

You might want to take a look at the Michael Serra books for later. http://www.michaelserra.net/

Loads of living math books on Julie's website here: http://livingmath.net/ Also be sure to check out her Living Math History Lesson Plans!

My kiddo enjoys Athena's as well...though we are more on the science side of things. He has also enjoyed the literature classes there as well.

At first I liked the Borac books, but my goodness the solutions have too many errors! I got super annoyed at the end of the series for 7 to 9 year olds. Then I saw people complaining there were even more solution errors the next level up which would just drive me batty. The Upper Elementary Challenge Math, then Challenge Math for the Zaccaro books. The Upper Elementary is much denser with problem sets for each chapter than the Primary book. Maybe 3 to 4 times as many problems. You might want to just order the old Math Kangaroo tests. You can find them here. http://www.mathkangaroo.org/2010page/Booklets/MATH_KANGAROO_Books2009.html While Pakistan and Canada Math Kangaroo questions are available, I swear those seemed easier than the actual US exams as the most difficult problems seem to not be in their exams. For Math Kangaroo, I kept mine at his age/grade. I'm using the Hard Math for Elementary books rights now for my 3rd grader which is pretty good so far. You can also get the MOEMS books as well. (old Math Olympiad questions).

Story of the World and Veritas Press online self-paced History courses.