I just got tired of seeing nothing new on the high school forum, so I started this new topic. We only have 7 weeks of school left--one of which the high schoolers have off for testing. Only the juniors do NCLB testing, so freshmen, sophomores and seniors have the week off. Crazy!

DS will be only starting HS next fall. I am curious as to when we will receive more info, if his selction of courses has been approved etc.
DS will take Calc 1 at the local collegec starting beginning of May. We know the prof. and he did allow him to audit the class, take all the test etc. but not for grade.
No summer camps chosen yet, should get on it right away.
We have spring break this week, so sweet laziness...

another high school pet peeve:

the high school only has one teacher who is certified (or whatever) to teach pre-AP/honors pre-calc/trig and then calc. Evidently he's no good and even the smartest & hardest working students score 1 on AP calc exam. I asked in DS can take JHU honors precalc online. District says yes (though not jhu--one of their other approved providers), but he won't get honors credit and it'll put him out of the running for valedictorian. So he has to decide whether he wants a good math class or try to be valedictorian.

DS12 in 8th grade filled out his request forms. I'm way out of the loop for knowing if the honors teachers are 'good' or not, and I'm enjoying my months of blissful ignorance.

Summer is CTY, for the first time. I sure hope DS enjoys himself, after all the work he did on SATs.

Cym - that stinks, but you know what? Go for the good class! Or - if you think your kid can stand it...do both LOL! I know mine couldn't - so it's easy for me to joke.

Smiles,
Grinity

Grinity--I bet he'll love CTY. I had 2 do that last summer and they both loved their programs. Hope it goes well!

I only have DS10 doing it this summer and he's in the 5th/6th grade program so he wouldn't intersect with yours.

Talent search awards last weekend .
DS had the highest SAT score of all the participants in all of the states that out talent search serves. He got a standing ovation

Wow Ania, That's really impressive. Congratulations!

Yippee! Here's another one! ((standing and clapping))

I'll bet that made him happy. Was sister there to see?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Fantastic!

Wow Ania!! That's fantastic! Give him an ovation from me too!

Hooray!

Hi Ania,

That is Excellent! How wonderful! I'm anxious to see Math Counts next Friday -- aren't you all going there? I told the Math Club teacher about it and hopefully the kids will get to watch the finals.

Have you considered MathPath (July in Colorado Springs)? Look on Cogito.org--there were several math programs that sounded cool, and some were free for high scores.

Congrats again to Ghost!

Sister was there She got her own award!

Allright!! Even better. Congrats to DS

I am really very proud of him. This is probably the only forum I can write about it without feeling like I am bragging
He has had a great 8th grade. Started a little scary with that emergency surgery, but all worked out to be well at the end
If you have mathy kids, have them watch the countdown (www.mathcounts.org). Live broadcast will be Friday at 2 P.M. eastern time, but the podcast will be available all year long.
We had our math club kids watch it and they were mesmerized.
You know, I never thought we will be watching it live! Ghost only started in Mathcounts at the beginning of March, so he is not going to do wonders at the Nationals, but I do hope Utah gets the most improved team award. This is by far the strongest Utah team so far!
Off to Orlando!

Great news Ania, congrats to DS!

Have a nice trip!

Neato

How exciting!! Have a great time at MathCounts!

Ania - that is sooooo cool. Yay for DS! And have a fun trip.

One thing to suggest for other 8th grader moms--be on the look-out for scholarship opportunities as your kids enter high school. There are some out there for freshmen, sophomores, etc. I always thought we'd just look into that when my son was a jr or sr, but sophomore son applied & got his 1st one.

Other opportunities for this are competitions. 8th grade son won $2K scholarship from eCybermission competition (1st place winners get even more and trip to DC to get even more).

Reporting from Florida
Very humid! It is hot (95) but humidity is what gets me after living in a very dry state. Feels like there is not enough air

We got our press passes for the Countdown - made me feel very important!
Ghost and the rest of the team are busy with meetings, exchanging pins with other kids and...having tons of fun!!!
You know how kids LOVE to stay in hotels. Now imagine them staying WITHOUT THE PARENTS! He will grow a lot because of this.
I just hope he goes to sleep tonight The written competition starts early tomorrow, and time difference does not work in our team advantage...
I think I will have a glass of Chardonnay now...

Ok--I am so frustrated. I missed the live MathCounts broadcast and thought there must be some way to see it (youtube? archive?) I really wanted to see it! Ania, hope all went well & it was exciting, wonderful experience.

OK, watching the countdown live was somehow surreal. I still can't believe that my child, who first did a Mathcount problem two months ago made it here!
I believe that the podcast will be online soon, maybe in a day or two. If you are able to see team Utah coming in, mine is the one carrying the banner
For the Mathcounts junkies - Ghost said that Sprint was very difficult and he did maybe 15-20 questions, whatever that means :)He did very well on Target, he thinks that he got 7 out of 8 and all four did very badly on a team round. BUT - we all know that the impressions kids have are usually far from reality My hope/dream is, that this was the best Utah team ever(so far) and that Ghost was in the first 100.
I will keep you posted.
On an interesting note, the boy from California that took second place in Countdown, first written was Ghost's roommate at AwesomeMath last summer

New Mexico got the best improved team !

Ghost did OK. He was in the top 1/3 of all finalists. He was hoping for the top 1/4. He had the highest score from our state though, so it has sweetened it a bit.
We had a GREAT time. It was surreal.
The webcast is available now.

I wish all of you could go through this.
Sign up your kids for Mathcounts

Oh, and I told him that he was representing the Davidson discussion board as well! He grinned, looked down at me (he must be close to 6 ft. now) and said "you ladies are simply crazy".
I loved the idea Dottie!

Congrats to your talented son!

Ania-

Nearly six feet tall!! My son is 12.5 years, 4' 11" and 80 pounds. I think your guy could eat him for lunch! How old is your son again?

Yep, he was the team captain (I think) so he was carrying the sign. He ended up scoring the highest on his team so the sign is now in his permanent posession (will most likely end up under his bed soon, like everything else

Like I have said, countdown is just surreal. I am actually happy that Ghost is done with Mathcounts, otherwise I might have forced him to study mathcounts flash cards! Insane !

Lorel, he had just turned 14. Yep, he is getting close to 6 feet and weighs about 135 lb - skinny. He has grown a lot since last summer. My DH was one of those 5 feet, 70 lb boys when he was graduating high school. He is now 6 feet

My daughter would like to view some of the mathcounts questions to see if she likes the format and all. How did you access the video?

Dottie - I think (I really do not know for sure) that there are a few thousands of questions. The numbers in the questions are being changed, but if you understand/remember/know the question than you understand/remember/know the formula and you use it. There is no other explanation for those kids to have the answer before I am done with reading the question. And I am a very, very fast reader
Ghost has been involved with Mathcounts for the last two months ONLY. From what I have seen, sprint and countdown are very trainable (sp), target and team require more problem solving. My guy, having no speed prep needed for Mathcounts, has been always better in target and team rounds than in sprint and countdown. Statistically speaking.

Bassetlover - the video is here
https://mathcounts.org/Page.aspx?pid=1446

Yeah NM! (No offense, Ania, but we need as much improvement as we can get). I haven't watched beyond the entrances yet--will do so later today, & I can't wait!

What a wonderful experience for Ghost & your whole family! What team-math is there for high schoolers now that he's done with MC--isn't MO individual? I love the dynamics of team competition.

Cym - the answer is ARML
http://www.arml.com/index.php

The team Ghost is on will be competing in Vegas at the end of the month.

Ghost is busy taking a college course right now - we did manage to get him off school for the rest of the month so he could do this.
He is also VERY busy getting to know his new computer:) He has been saving money for a while and he finally bought himself a very powerful, very expensive beast. He wants to spend every waking moment on it!

Ania--you always have lots of good information to share! Finals start tomorrow for my high schooler. Only 4 more days of school!

^^see, I can be useful in many different ways