When I was full time at the cc, I didn't know which students were on probation or who had social workers. I did have a student arrested from my classroom once, but that's only happened once in over 15 years of teaching. I think at the cc, if a student is only taking one or two classes in a semester, they aren't likely to be fully involved in the community. They are a lot less likely to be with the same group of students long term, so I don't worry what my son would be exposed to at the cc with dual enrollment. Of course, different schools have different problems and cultures!

Not educational in the least...but Plants vs Zombies, HD is free until the 28th of this month.

While that's generally true at the university level, at the cc level (at least in our state), the departments have standardized courses where everyone uses the same text and has the same departmental syllabus. I know English classes have more freedom as far as which selections to read from the reader, but in the math department, we all cover the same topics from the same text and have common finals in the lower level courses. My concern is that it's getting to be more cookie cutter where they are mandating even more specifics and just handing off a course with assignments already set up and canned lectures on the software. When that becomes the norm, I'll stop teaching for them. I imagine there's a market for homeschool math classes ;)

I sure thought it was! Whack a zombie is much more fun with the iPad!

I find sometimes doing math on completely unlined paper helps students. Maybe see if one problem per page helps.

My husband noticed that PvZ HD is currently free & will be until the 28th of Feb. I've played it more than my son did :) Passing along!

This is where I'm just in awe at how the Singapore bar method leads so beautifully into variables and algebraic thinking. I require my son to show work with bar models on some of the problems that he's able to just "see" the answer to... not all... but at least one or two of the "easy" ones in a set. When he's stuck on a problem, I suggest he do a bar model. I don't think you see where they're going with the bar models in the early books. I didn't. But by book 4 and 5... wow!! Major payoff! For introducing variables, if you're talking about just evaluating an expression, come up with a relationship... "You can have 3 Skittles for every year you've lived. How many do you get? How many do I get? Is there any way we can write this with math?" You can start with boxes (I say students have been working with variables when they'd fill in the box in elementary school: 5 + ____ = 12 ) So here, we'd have 3 * (Skittles). Mathematicians are lazy, so we don't want to write so much... we'll just say 3s. Build from there :) Algebra tiles are also really cool. Tiles Book on using them (I've seen this one, don't know how good it is, but look for others & see what helps). The tiles are great for seeing the difference between x and x^2 which was a concept that messed with me when I first saw it.

(hugs) One plus about my son's food allergies is that they've been clear. It's been obvious what to avoid and that helps. I'm still furious at how his allergies limit him and will limit him through life. So yeah. I get it. You've got to change everything, including habits. It's not easy. It's not fair. Hope you're able to figure out what's going on and get to a new normal. It's still not fair. (hugs again)

We switched to Singapore Standards after 1. I like Standards much better and by 5 think it has a bit too much review, so we skip some stuff. Use manipulatives. Lots of them. We did a lot with Miquon along with Singapore and I wish we had done some more. I like how Miquon does long division better than Singapore. Division is a binary operation...you get one number as an answer, not two (quotient and remainder). We also used the Spectrum math workbooks to supplement with additional drill. This was in addition to text, WB, CWP, and IP. I've also bought the tests to use for additional worksheet practice on some topics. I like tests betters than Extra Practice, which really didn't have near enough extra practice. I really like Singapore. I'd add to it...as much as you need...rather than switch programs if you think it's going to work. If you want a bit more spiral with review, take one day a week and call it math review day and go over topics you want to revisit.

I'll agree with Hotdrink. Think about why you want him to learn to touch type and whether he agrees with it as well. If you want to continue, when my son was learning to type, I took an old keyboard and used model paint over the keys so my son couldn't look at the keyboard and hunt & peck :) It helped! (And you know we're a gaming family when "wasd" were the first keys to wear off!)

I'd say it depends on why you're homeschooling. I was ready to send my son to public school a couple of times, but his severe allergies made it a bit too much to actually do. He now attends speech at a public school & just walking through the school once a week has been enough where he really thanks me for keeping him out :) If you are willing to consider it, you could check with the school and see if he could shadow a student for a day. He might find that it's very different than what he has in his mind... or he might like it a lot, so I wouldn't do this unless you're okay with his decision. Again... all comes down to why you're homeschooling, IMO.

Interesting. Thanks for the link. Personally, I'm okay with the idea of common core. I moved states in high school and it was a mess for me. I'd have really liked some national standards. I still wish College Board would have standardized registrations for AP and PSAT. Fingers crossed that it may change by the time I need it. The earlier post about TT was about transferring to a public high school if I'm remembering correctly. I keep checking out a couple of different college requirements for admission and keep that in mind for where we're headed.

Our state has a physical science requirement as a high school credit. State universities have it listed as an expectation on their list of requirements for admission. It was 9th grade science when I took it. Looks like it can't count as a lab credit though here. The course I took was a good one and was really solid. My current plan is to have my son take a physical science course for high school credit in 8th grade. Then I've got 4 years still for him to do more lab science.

There is the Iowa Acceleration Scale that gives information about whether a child is a good candidate for a grade skip. You can read more about it on Hoagies. Davidson Young Scholars site has some discussions on their forums too - and they've got a lot of articles that might give you some more information and resources. You could even look and see if it might be a fit & apply if it is for some additional support. From what I've read, skipping grades can be done well & can be just fine for kids. I imagine if my son were in public school, a skip might be needed. However... I skipped first grade & was a grade ahead from 2nd - 7th. Starting in 4th, I was in a magnet school for gifted kids (or at least we were in gifted classes all day). We were all in there for test scores & I'd say everyone was pretty bright. Even a grade ahead, I never really had to work & was at the top of the reading class in 4th grade immediately & stayed there. I was also seriously suicidal and had I not repeated 7th grade at a different school to get into a different math program, I believe I would have made an attempt. The only thing that prevented me was fear of not succeeding, so I'd spent a lot of time thinking about ways I'd be sure to succeed. My parents did a lot that added to my social isolation (where we lived, outside support...or lack of it). Academics were never the issue. However by being the grade ahead and being socially ostracized, it took a long time for me to believe I had worth outside of my academic ability. Being skipped a grade was extremely detrimental to me...and I still wasn't being seriously challenged (that didn't happen until upper-level undergrad & grad school). You definitely don't want your child sitting around bored all day. Again, there really may have been other things that could have been done so I'd have been better off. From what I've read, research says my experience is more of an aberration. However, given my experience, I would really need to see a good reason to do a skip. Boredom wouldn't be enough. I'm happy to answer more specifics via pm or via email about my experiences. From my reading, I'd definitely use Iowa Acceleration Scale before considering it for my son (and I imagine he'd only be in school after a tragic accident where I couldn't homeschool him anymore). I'd look at gifted and magnet schools before doing a skip. Then I'd be looking at any way to homeschool. Then I'd be looking at IAS to consider a skip, but at that point, I'd also probably be looking at radical acceleration & getting graduated as early as possible.

The Davidson forums tend to have some talk when scores start appearing. I don't have the date of our results from January last year, but it was towards the end of March. If you tested with Northwestern, NUMATS, your results appear in the toolbox. I was able to look at scores before the printed report arrived. Duke seemed to be a couple of days or even a week after Northwestern testers got their results - from the same testing. We tested with Duke this year, so I'm going to start looking for results on the 3rd or 4th week of March and not even think it possible to get them earlier.

Don't know if this would help at all, but my son really gets a kick out of when I show him some of my books from undergrad math. At this stage, it's not about understanding, but just talking with him about Xeno's Paradox (calculus) he found really nifty. I let him look in the calculus text for area under a curve and volumes of solids. He found that cool. Also different geometry texts (non Euclidean geometry is a favorite). It seems to help him some to know where he's going and he's a bit better then with why he'd better be able to do arithmetic and understand basic word problems :)

I understand eating their chips alone :) They also have chocolate bars: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and ones with rice krispies. Don't know if there's anything in Namaste brownie mix that's a no go for you, but their brownies are really good (and the mix is really expensive.... sigh).

I honestly believe that my son at age 10 would be able to pass my graduate level education courses. All of them. I'd be very very surprised if he couldn't. I'm very much in favor of ending education degrees. I say this mainly due to my degree (MAT... half of my credits are math graduate courses and half are education graduate courses).

I went on strike for much of the fall. It was a good break!

Earth balance also comes in cubes for baking!

Ds has a cold, so that explains some of yesterday. I don't want to catch it, but I think we're going to try and do some school today anyway. He's been reading in bed after having tea so far today. Good luck to all!

I haven't seen them anywhere since the switch to the new site.

I'm credentialed to teach math & have enough graduate hours in math to teach at the cc. I've taught basic algebra mostly, but I've also taught up through calculus there for the past 15 years. I have had to go online and look up solutions to some of the CWP problems. Don't worry that you struggle! Bar models are so awesome. As we've moved into CWP 5, I've started showing my son how the models translate so nicely into algebraic equations. Their concept of a "unit" is way cool. I am glad that I made ds show work for problems and required him to draw bar models early on.

:grouphug: Allergies do stink. We're nut, sesame, dairy free. Enjoy Life products were mentioned - they're free of the top 8 allergens. I'll even eat their chocolate happily. Ds enjoys Daiya "cheese". I don't like it at all, but it's a good topping for him. If you're not aware of FAAN, it'll have some useful resources (food allergy and anaphylaxis network).

Interesting. Thanks for linking.