DS6 is ahead in basically all academic areas. He is also a great pianist. However, the emotional control of a 2 year old a lot of days it seems. DD4 is very intelligent and will amaze me answering questions meant for her brother. She gets in trouble when I find her way past lights out time up reading chapter books, however when reading aloud to me she often (although not as much lately) gets stuck on words such as "the" in picture books. I am fairly certain this is because she is too distracted by all the pretty pictures :) She is for sure my child that is mroe into the beauty in the world. She could also sit for hours at time from less than a year looking at books, but refused to let me read to her. She is independent through and through.

Somehow missed this thread until now. DS participated at the same location as dmmetler's DD. It was the first time I have been able to meet dmmetler so was happy to be able to chat with her while we waited on our kiddos. DS is kindergarten age and took the 1-2 test. We used it as a practice year. I think he did okay, but not stellar. He didn't mark a lot of his answers on his test paper, but he told me the answers he remembered marking. I was honestly just thrilled that he left the test room with a big smile on his face. I was worried he would get upset about not knowing a problem and come out crying. That is definitely something we worked on leading up to the test. I wanted him to know he wasn's expected to get 100% accuracy. It didn't help that his dad and grandmother both separately told him they hoped he got them all right... or something to the same effect.

YAY!

Starcraft and Pokemon

I have always heard that young children are more likely to correctly predict the gender of embryos.

DS who just turned 6 asked me this week where I thought he was going to go to college. I told him I thought we had plenty of time to figure that out. Of course, inwardly I was crying and thinking how in a blink of an eye he will be there.

I haven't read all the previous posts, but did read some and agree with many. I have a 4 and 6 year old and would NEVER suggest it is too early. Each child is different. My DS6 NEEDED me to teach him early. He asked for school work regularly at a very early age. His sister waited until later to start asking for school, but once she did she started she started with gusto. My DS also loved ASL and we used many of the Signing time dvd's. At 6 and with a very advanced vocabulary he still will add in signs for emphasis. My DD cared little for ASL. We used a lot of Kumon workbooks. I think I actually used them longer than I should have with DS as he had gotten bored with them, but the mazes and tracing ones are great in my opinion. Something that might not have been mentioned that I have recently found is gonoodle dot com. You can sign up for it as a parent or teacher. We don't have a smart TV but do have the ability to hook my laptop up to our TV. It has great silly videos to sing and dance to that are not specically academic. They also have videos that are educational. They have recently added games that use knowledge. The answer to the game questions are from what I have seen multiple choice so he could say the answer is A instead of having to say the whole answer and that will show he is reading the word, without him having to be able to actually speak the word.

I looked at the abbreviation thread and didn't see it. What does DP mean?

For Christmas DD4 got "Big Kindergarten workbook" and immediately told me this is way too easy. Fastforward to today when she was working on it. She noticed it said for 5-6 year olds. I said, "It is fine, don't you remember when you said it was too easy? So it is fine for you to do it." Her response, "Don't I remember when I said it is WAY too easy." I didn't catch what she meant and so she tells me I forgot the WAY.

This thread is making me wonder at what age/grade/whatever do people start transcripts? Is this something from kindergarten on?

Thanks!

I would love to know what online things you are using that allow the level and year group to be separate.

We haven't really started any magazine except for Highlights which my kids are not really into except for the hidden picture part. When would you recommend children start these magazines? I am not sure if I am looking for an age range or maybe when they are able to understand_____________. Or when they start showing interest in _______________.

The app I used was Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read Classroom Edition. It is normally right at $50! Last year for teacher appreciation week (sometime in May) they had it for free to download that week. With my DS I used the book Teach Your Child to Read in 10 Minutes a day. I had no intention of teaching a 2 year old to read, but since he asked I did. I tried this same book/method with DD and she was NOT into it.

That is funny because DD is same age as your son was when he took his and also she had the same problem. I thought she was never going to get done with the test and when we got to spelling I was like, "wow those are some hard words!" I even mentioned that to DH tonight at dinner. One of the words it asked before it gave up and gave her easier words was cautiously - she had no idea. Also I think since the comprehension was the last thing I really wish I would have stopped and given her a break and come back tomorrow or something to do that part. She might still not have done any better on it, but at that point her brain was pretty fried.

Thanks! No matter what they do in life, they will always shine in my eyes :)

First off, has anyone used the site letsgolearn.com to help assess where your child(ren) are in reading/comprehension/spelling? I have often been asked at what level my children read and while I know what level the books are that they read I didn't really know how to answer the question. So I purchased an assessment for each of my children. They are not too expensive and I really was curious. Secondly, wow can 2 kids from the same house be different (and yet so alike)! We had co-op today and then headed to the park to enjoy the nice weather so we did not have time to get both kiddos assessed, but I did get my daughter (4 years old) to do hers. When it comes to her personality concerning school her and my son are very different. My DS has always pushed me to work with him. From before he could walk he would drag books to me to read to him over and over. Then at 2 he told me he wanted to learn to read all by himself. He is now almost 6 and still loves to know stuff and mostly loves to let others know he knows stuff. When DD came along I knew they would not be exactly the same, but I was surprised when she didn't want me to read to her. In fact, when I tried to read to her she would purposefully move away from me with the book and just go look at it by herself. She would sit for an hour at a time well before a year old and "read" books, but would NOT let me read to her. As she got older and I mentioned to her learning to read and she would look at me and just say, "I will learn when I am 4." She wasn't upset by the idea of learning or of DS being able to and her not. She just didn't care to do it and didn't seem at all worried that it wouldn't happen when it should. When she was about 3.5 I happened on a free app for my phone that teaches reading that normally costs almost $50 so I bought it and figured she would use it after she turned 4 (since that is when she was telling me she would learn to read). I showed it to her and she was all of a sudden a reader. Since that time she has started reading more and more, but still is not to chapter books that much. She also spent the first semester of this year coloring and playing instead of formal schooling because that is simply what she wanted to do and I didn't want to push a preschooler. So now I am about to brag big time so if you don't want to read that part just stop now :) My sweet, loving little girl kicked the assessment's tail! She scored the maximum score (goes K-3rd) for High Frequency Words Word Recognition she got High 6th!!! Phonics she got Low 4th! Phonemic Awareness she got Good (possible was Good/ Poor/ Not Tested) Spelling she got mid 1st Oral Vocabulary she got mid 2nd Reading Comprehension she got high 1st I am SOOOO proud! I think it makes it more so because people always comment about my DS and it hurts me that she gets overlooked. My MIL (sadly in front of her) even said once, "she just isn't as smart as G." As their mother I think they are both the most amazing little people. I am proud of both of my kiddos and want them both to be there best them they can be, but sometimes I hope that DD beats DS in things so that she can shine more than him for at least a minute. Okay I will end rant now, sorry for the book.

I was just meaning for YOU to write it down so he can see what math looks like on paper. My DS loves to do his math in his head even when he shouldn't. I think just seeing it written down will help solidify that he is actually doing math and also when he gets to math that you need for him to write down later that won't feel so foreign to him.

I love that he does all that in his head! Maybe when he does the work in his head you could start having him tell you how he worked it and then write that down so he could see that what he is doing can also be done on paper. Then at some point after doing that a while work into more. Does that make sense?

That sounds amazing! Not sure it is in the budget this year, but maybe for future years!

Also I am looking at AoPS and I see they have 9 different books available ranging from Pre-algebra to Calculus. Since they are suggested to be used for 6th-12th grades that leads me to believe that people cover more than one per year. Is this a good assumption or do people just pick and choose which ones to do?

Thanks lewelma! That sounds like it is great when I read the example you gave. I was just looking at the elementary examples online and they just didn't seem to be what I was looking for. I will have to keep MEP in mind for later!

Thanks everyone! It is great to see people's different thoughts on what is best. I see a lot of the same ideas, but also some differences. Before I knew what I was doing someone introduced me to Math U See and DS has gone through Primer-Beta and has Gamma. In the mean time I learned about Singapore math and he has also gone through K1and B and also 1A and B. I have seen a lot of people also use MM and BA. Can anyone give me an idea about how these programs compare/contrast? Also MEP seems to be very popular here. I looked at it online and for some reason didn't really like the look of it.

I have been playing with this idea for a while now. I know that different kiddos like different curriculum, but I thought it would be very interesting to see what people would say to this. If knowing what you now know you could go back and make a list of all the math curriculum your child would go through from the time he/she started formal math curriculum until x time (this could be however old they are now, graduation, whatever) how would that list look? I see people talking about SM, Beast, AoPS, etc... I would love to see a break down of how each of you think the best list would look for your child(ren). Not sure my tired brain is making sense of this, so if I need to clarifry please let me know Leslie

I have started volunteering at our local library. I often take the kiddos with me and the people that work there seem to all love them. They were playing nicely on the computer set up with kiddo educational games so I went to the back to grab some more books to shelve. I come out and the security guard comes to me to tell me telling me this story. DD4 goes up to the counter to ask one of the people that works there to fix her back pack strap. DD then proceeds to tell her how she had take the strap apart and ends with, "I just don't know what I was thinking!" The security guard was cracking up telling me all this. All I could say, was yes my children can really come up with some stuff sometimes. We just started back our semester and Tuesday we started Song School Latin. I had not gotten it for the beginning of the year due to just having too much going. Both DS5 and DD4 are doing it. At the end of the lesson both my children were begging for more. I said we would do more on Friday and my DS immediately started crying, "but that is just too far away!" As I am typing this I hear DD singing "Salve, Salve!"