Our federal return did get deposited in our bank the day they said it would...a Monday. Stupid state still doesn't say return in progress yet.

I like the Whaley planner. I use the 7 subject one.

My son is a self-taught reader. His spelling was atrocious. He also had some serious pronunciation issues. We started using All About Spelling (AAS) and it taught the phonics that he hadn't gotten & his spelling improved. I've been very pleased with it.

WWS 2 should be out this fall.

I think because it's not in the button it's easy to overlook .... and when you were used the exclamation point, it's different! :) Maybe they should change it to "I'm telling!!!!!"

Ohhh ouch!

I believe there was some discussion a couple of years back where the author had a post on a discussion board that she later took down where she talked about trying to convert people to God and stated that she was young earth. It's fuzzy to me now & I don't have time to look it up, but there was a lot of discussion here about it (I know Spy Car participated a lot in that thread), but that's where the RS4K not working secularly comes from.... the feeling of disengenuity with her other written comments.

You can tag your thread "grade level" and see a LOT of other discussion about this topic. Our state's cutoff is Sept 1 and my son's birthday is end of August. We're planning on repeating 5th grade so he has the extra year of maturity before college. You'll get opinions both pro and con about retaining an extra year, but look at the grade level tag & there's a ton!

I own it. I haven't looked too closely at it yet, but I felt comfortable buying it :) (Edit - yup... thread moves really fast. Didn't look like anyone had responded to this post.)

Although with housing, the UCs become very expensive! Our mortgage is still a good bit less than we paid for a rental in a slum at UCSB back in the 90s! (But I so miss the bike paths.... and the ocean. We've got a much better library system out here though.)

I've used MPH with Singapore. It's not open and go at all. They've just made some changes and have a new edition. I really like the Higher Order Thinking Skills books & their tests are really challenging. BFSU has a yahoo group for each book. From the discussions there (often with Dr Nebel, text author), I think I would have really done well to use BFSU early on.

Fractions, unit circle, trig identities, exponential rules (especially when using fractional and negative exponents), anything with logarithms. When I've taught calc, students flunk because of these main issues (and not doing homework, but that's kind of separate).

Not unless you just want testing results. CTY does have some family activities you can do at different locations in the country if you're a participant. Some of those look really cool. If your kids don't panic about testing, it's also a good idea to get a feel for the SAT or ACT before scores would be recorded, so that'd be a reason to test in 7th.

I suppose you could find the height and write the formula for area in terms of the base (one side), but I don't know why you'd bother learning it separately.

Area of any triangle is 1/2 base x height. Equilateral is no different.

You also don't need to be in the area to use a 3 rd option group unless it's one of their requirements. I've used two different accountability groups and neither was in my city. What SCAIHS gives you is more support...they have a curriculum room (or did when I was checking them out) and they keep your transcripts. You pay quite a bit for them though.

If he's in third and you want to see if you can test this year, use NUMATS. Duke only does the explore in 5th but you register in 4th. cTY can be done any time...you just need to get to one of the Prometric testing centers. I do believe that the duke programs are available just from participation. CTY and NUMATS both have minimum test score to access online classes.

You can test even if you're not in the region with CTY and NUMATS. We waited until there was a reason for the IQ test, but it doesn't hurt to be aware of what's available.

Depending on the test, sometimes those grade levels are just how a 12th grader would have scored on that test - not that the child is working at the 12th grade level in that subject. I think the MAP may be different and actually let the student get to a level where you could say this child is working at 10th grade level in this subject etc. Individualized tests are, of course, different, but that's my understanding of the grade levels on most standardized tests.

We're planning on doing something like this next year. My son is a late August birthday with school cutoff of Sept. 1. He's able to keep up academically with grade level with no trouble. But I don't like the idea of him going off to college at 17 and turning 18 at college - especially when he's also going to be dealing with severe food allergies. Our plan is to declare him as 5th grade again next year but basically have it be an unschooling year. He'll have to follow state law for number of days and topics covered, but he can pick what he studies. Right now he's saying he wants to learn about knights and medieval times, so sounds neat to me :) I'm curious if he'll find interests and run with them or if he'll want more structure. If it works well, we may be able to go more unschool-y / interest-led for a couple more years. I'm very much a box-checker, so I think doing the repeat year will enable me to lighten up more. I don't like the gap year between high school and college for us, because I don't see travel as an easy option for him. Different classes & programs I've been looking at have age/grade restrictions that really make 5th grade a good one to repeat. I'm not sure it's the right decision, but we'll give it a shot. If he really wants out of the house early, we can always let him skip a grade later & accelerate through high school, but I think this is the best decision for us. Hope your gap year goes well :)

We got rid of the digital clock in our living room and in our school room. We bought an analog wall clock and put it up in the school room. Having the analog clock has been a good thing for us & made a difference.

Ds is 10, only by choice. Most people who knew us were amazed we had him. My parents were literally speechless. They've been absolutely thrilled to be grandparents though. We started homeschooling by necessity due to severe food allergies. It was really rough at first and we go through phases where it goes well & where it's pretty rotten. I actually went on strike for much of the fall and stopped teaching him. My husband chose to take over the teaching rather than using a public charter like K12. The break was good for both of us & I'm back to teaching again.

Welcome! And :iagree: . I've got a MAT in math and have taught at the cc for 15 years now - generally developmental math. We're finishing up 5B. I buy the HiG and use it regularly. I don't follow the lessons exactly, but sometimes the extra examples from the HiG are just really cool for additional explanation. There also was one problem with triangles in the HiG for 4B that was just way cool. We use textbook, workbook, IP, CWP, and iExcel Heueristic Problems. I love the bar model as a great way to move into algebraic thinking.

We did 2 years of SWO and it was a dreadful fit. We switched to AAS towards the end of 2nd grade. My son is a self-taught reader, so he never got phonics. This made spelling really really difficult. We've moved through AAS very slowly as a result. He's absolutely not a natural speller :) AAS has been a great fit for us. The rules have helped a ton & it's filled in missing gaps that he didn't get with phonics. I'm very pleased with AAS.

I agree with regentrude. Purplemath is also a good site with some examples and explanations. She's started adding more ads in, so I like that less, but her explanations are generally good.