We're there as well today. I haven't killed him yet. He's putting away laundry, then we're going to do some read aloud and cuddling, then try to do more academics. If it doesn't work then, I'll reconsider chaining him to his desk.... Or tossing him out the window.... I like to keep my options open.

CSMP becomes the Elements of Mathematics towards middle school... and is now coming available online :) It's really really good. (It does include set theory though! ;) ) Our district uses EveryDay Mathmatics (blech). I teach remedial math at the community college. I see students so much weaker without the calculator & without number sense. I see a worsening of math ability. A friend taught for a couple of years at the university in town. She saw stronger students, so it is possible that Everyday Math is helping good students (or they're getting more tutoring to help) and really harming poor students. From what I've seen of Everyday Math, I think it would be fine in the hands of an excellent teacher. Unfortunately, I see very few excellent math teachers in elementary school (and have seen people who don't teach the distributive property because the students could just use order of operations :blink: ) I'm very happy using Miquon in early years, Singapore Standards, then moving on to EM or AoPS.

My middle school used this program starting in 7th grade. It's also done in St Louis still as an afterschool program: Project MEGSSS. Ever since we started homeschooling, I was on the lookout for the EM books. I was able to make contact and buy them from the Imacs people, but it's just the books, no solutions. I have some of the books I used (way too much dooding!) but I'm reworking them to get solutions. I remember the tests as being very good extensions, but I don't have them & can't get them :( So I'm doing comparisons with the online EM course and the books. I can see which examples they've left out and which ones they've changed (a couple). I remember when we did factoring polynomials and solving linear equations our teacher gave us extra worksheets since there wasn't enough practice for mastery in the book. Looking over it now, I absolutely see the need for additional reinforcement on those topics (both of which are in Book 0, so will be in the online EM series). My son is 10 and a very strong reader. I think he'd do fine with AoPS instruction. When we do the EM work, I'm sitting with him, primarily to see what stayed in the course & what changed. I have been letting him use his book and notes from working with me when he's entering his answers online, so he's got a great average. I'll make him do the quiz and test with no book, no notes, and no comments from me (unless I see an error in the course).

You also don't have to be in the area if there are courses available... for instance, we're served by Duke's TIP, but we've also participated in Johns Hopkins CTY and Northwestern NUMATS so my son can take online courses through CTY and NUMATS. I wouldn't take the tests unless you think your child will enjoy the experience - it can be challenging not knowing a good bit of material. If you weren't going to take any courses, there'd be no need to test with multiple talent searches as well. They do have a lot of information on their sites too. Kathy gave those links above.

For Singapore math, I just get it from singaporemath.com When I compared prices, it was about the same overall as Rainbow.

Link here. Qualification is 700 on Math or Reading portion of SAT before age 13.

My son took the SCAT in 2nd grade and qualified for math and English options (by one point in both!). The SCAT results didn't give us any useful information. CTY family activities look pretty cool - especially if you're in an area where you can access them easily. We've talked about going up for some of the New England activities at some point. And the one with the Monterey Aquarium really looks enticing. Over the summer, ds did one of their young readers courses. It was okay. Unfortunately, there were some changes with their website at the time, so he didn't end up using the forums at all - just stayed with his course. I think the feedback he got was okay. I'd be willing to have him take another course through CTY, but I need it to be more his desire rather than ours... we did have to really sit on him to get him to do the work. Do be aware that the SCAT only qualifies your child through 6th grade. To qualify for 7th and onward, you need the SAT or ACT scores.

We're finishing up this week. Also about to do review quiz. I'm frustrated with some of the issues we've had and have contacted support a couple of times. They at least have been good about working with me and correcting things. I have the books...used them in the MEGSSS program when I was in middle school. I'll keep using the books with my son. The material is great. I don't know if I'll continue with the course. What we've been doing is book work, then online work.The online work is a bit easier than the bookwork. For instance, using only the book, you have to write out tables that are simply provided online. All the text explanation has been in the online version...with the exception of timezones (although since the books were written in 70s, we did have to discuss what the USSR was and where it was on maps). The next book on integers is cool with how they show multiplication as a scalar quantity and how it leads to a very very solid understanding of slope later. I'm interested in seeing how the quiz and test go. The material is excellent overall...if I didn't have the books, I'd definitely be continuing with the online courses.

Not sure it's actually gone...just the image is off the amazon site. My son is reading Anne right now... I told him there was a really poor book cover right now & I'd show him in a while. He said, "What, she's blonde?" :)

I really see the benefit to the bar models as an easy stepping stone to algebra, especially starting in 4 and 5. It's really cool to see how the idea of a "unit" applies in their work in 5 with fractions, percents, and decimals. I've also found the process skills books very helpful for practice with setting up the bar diagrams. I don't make my son do bar models for every CWP, but I do make him do some for each section.

Bar models work. Show 24 as the difference between Laura and holly. Then draw the 5 clips Laura gives to holly... So now their difference is 14. Laura has twice as many as holly, so one unit is 14. Holly has 14 and Laura has 28.

Depends on the kid. We went through WWE 3 and then the text for WWE 4 and we're using WWS in 5th grade at a slow pace.

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

I know fees have gone up quite a bit, but when I went to UCSB, it was housing that cost even more than fees & books. Our monthly mortgage when we bought our house cost less than we paid in rent there.

Dh just left his molar empty. I went with permanent bridges at the front of my mouth. They're okay. I might go with implants if I were doing it now, but they hadn't been around enough for insurance to cover any at that point...both are pricey!

Let's say you're trying to find the inverse of f(x) = 3x-7. I'd "see" the answer as f inv (x) = (x+7) / 3 and I'd be correct. The procedure for finding an inverse (and what I'd expect to see on a test if I gave this as a problem) is: (1) switch x & y So x = 3y - 7 (2) Solve for y giving (x+7) / 3 = y The idea is to "undo" our relation, so that when we compose f and f inverse, we get the identity: y = x. We can see on a graph that the inverse is the reflection of our graph about the line y = x. Domain & range also switch. You don't see ANY of this with lines.... but let's look at a parabola... f(x) = (x+3)^2 -4. The domain is all real numbers, so we'll need to restrict the domain so the function is 1-1 and has an inverse... we'll go from the vertex, so x >= -3. The range is y >= 4. (Our graph is a parabola shifted left 3 and down 4). To find the inverse: (1) switch x & y x = (y + 3)^2 - 4 (2) Solve for y (still can be done mentally, but getting trickier) x + 4 = (y + 3)^2 sqrt(x+4) = y + 3 -3 + sqrt(x+4) = y You can check by composing f and f inverse. The domain for our inverse is x >= -4 and the range is y >= -3... the domain & range have flipped from the original function! And rationals are worse... find the inverse of y = 1 / (3x + 8). Not likely to do that mentally! (At least I couldn't when learning them.) Understanding the basics and whys now can help later. You use inverse trig functions later as well. ----- It's tough when you don't know where a subject is going. I know I'm going to goof with science a lot. I've been seeing students screw up math for over a decade now, so I'm going to be very sure my son doesn't make the same mistakes! And he was doing his math while I'm grading & he saw one student's work & apologized to me :) Not going to get complaints about showing work for a while from him!

It is spiral bound.

I teach remedial math at the cc, so I'm coming from a completely different population. However, the number of errors I see where students think they know what they're doing and don't need to show work never fails to depress me. As boscopup mentions, the need to share work with other people is also a reason to show work. We lost one Mars rover due to a unit conversion error (US/metric units). Was someone sloppy and left out an "obvious" step? While my son is learning a new topic, I make him show steps. He can do some problems mentally, but I insist he show me the work for some as well. I've caught some conceptual errors this way that we've been able to correct quickly rather than letting the misunderstanding set. I also use the analogy of writing a paper or essay. You wouldn't use text speak or just do an outline and say that's good enough for your work. I want to see complete sentences with math. I'm grading yet another depressing stack of tests, so I'm frustrated again...In some cases if they'd just show the steps, they'd have gotten the problem correct. I can see some of their thought process but they're insistent on doing things their way & they get the problems wrong or say untrue things (2 + 3 = 5 -4 = 1 for an example when they meant (2+3) - 4. ) So just because my son's gifted and can "see" the answer in some cases, doesn't mean he really understands. I don't believe he does until he can prove it by showing the steps at least on some occasions. Then he can skip steps. I also saw this myself when learning inverses. I could "see" the answer for the inverse of a linear equation and just write down the answer. So why did I need to show work? I didn't in high school. However.... I didn't understand what was really going on until much later when taking the inverse of restricted polynomial functions and of rational functions. There was no way I'd have been able to find the inverse of them with my "I just see it" procedure.

I used iExcel... I assume it's been replaced by the process skills books. Love them for extra practice with setting up bar models and using bar models for word problems.

And as an FYI for those who aren't familiar with grad school, a C in grad school is effectively an F. In my program, if you got 3 Cs, you were kicked out of the program.

I think they aren't around in the mobile version (other than standard ones - like you have... also (semicolon, close parentheses) gives ;) In standard view, it's a button next to text size.

I think you'll see it more in the next level. The memorization was also helpful for our work with Latin, so it'll be useful with foreign language. I don't like how MCT says just memorize this list... instead, we made notecards like this (formatting won't work well here, so align things correctly mentally!) Subject singular plural 1st person: I we 2nd person: you you (y'all) 3rd person: he/she/it they Object: singular plural 1st me us 2nd you you (y'all) 3rd him/her/it them It also was useful when talking about literature & point of view :)

Hitchhiker and Restaurant are taken from the radio series (which is fun to listen to). Adams turned the radio series into the books, then kept on writing. Neil Gaiman wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide Companion in the 80s. It's neat too.