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DD goes to an academy which is different then most places around here. Most places have a little studio and are 99.9% all young girls. At the academy they not only have classes running through high school but also their own production house so they put on a lot of in house shows as well as traveling ones. Just my opinion, but I think the way the academy is set up attracts more talent and especially boys. The night of DD's recital I got to see the older kids perform and I was really impressed with the boys. One boy who is around 12 or 13 was of real interest. I suspect he didn't come to class that much so he didn't have his routine down perfectly, but what he did perform you could tell he had naturally raw talent.

Good luck to your children ... I bet your son will do wonderfully since he has been practicing so much. And as for your daughter ... I suspect the excitement will be through the roof after she comes off that stage. (Not that she won't be excited before and during.)

During our bedtime routine tonight, DS2 ended up in a time out and was very unhappy. I noticed that DSnearly5 went out of bed to write something. He came back to the room and presented DS2 with a card that said "I love you", gave him a hug and told him he did that to make him feel better. DS2 fell asleep with the card in his hand. :*)
Earlier today DSnearly5 got into trouble himself and after a while he came back presenting me with a present. He had writing in his second mother tongue 8 sentences about me starting with " I love you" to "You are a heart". His spelling was the cutest inventive spelling. :*)

DD7 is finishing 2nd grade and we just had her end of year conferences to discuss her standardized test results from the test the school took a couple of months ago. The test is called CTP4 (from a company called ERB). There are about 200 questions on the test and 5 areas they are tested in: auditory comprehension, reading comprehension,word analysis, writing mechanics and mathematics.
She only got 10 questions wrong! Her percentiles were the 5th highest in the school (from 1st grade to 9th grade). Most of the subtest scores were 100%s. It was really amazing to see such high scores across the board. Usually when I look at test results for my students there is at least one section that is lower than the rest. I was sharing the results with a colleague who is a college counselor and he said he has never seen such amazing results.

I had a consultation this week to discuss DD4 testing for entering Pre K the woman doing the consultation first words were "do you know how bright your child is" I replied we know she's bright but sometimes we wonder if she is really as bright as we think she is or are we just proud parents, to this she replies she's probably brighter than you think she is and that she tested higher than any child they had tested. She went on to say other wonderful things about DD4. Makes a parent proud and reinforces that you're not making up in your mind how smart your child is.
Now the fun begins entering the public school system.

DS scored overall above the 99% in achievement testing for Homeschooling this week. We did the Peabody achievement oral test so that's the highest percentile you can get. He ranged 3 to 7 grade levels ahead in every area. Just feels good to know we are doing the right thing by homeschooling, and he's not languishing! Sometimes I feel like we're barely doing school, but we must be doing ok.

He made a *BIG* math leap this year. It's especially good to have that number. I am having a really hard time wrapping my mind around what we're going to do for math next year.

Yay, Kim! I dislike the time that testing takes, but I do love getting that confirmation that the kids are doing well. It's such a relief.

What are you considering for math next year? I'm at the same place. I think we'll get the AoPS book and work through it ourselves, but I'm still mulling it over.

My 12 year old son is responsible for saving the life of his dog after seeing that the "responsible" adults in the family, his dad and I, were not acting responsibly enough to take his beloved pet Lexi to the vet.

We had come home from eating out to discover that Lexi had somehow reached a container of poison mole pellets and chewed off the lid. There were still a lot of poison pellets remaining in the container so my husband and I thought she hadn't eaten any of them at first. When she vomited, my husband did see some undigested pellets, but we thought the problem was solved because there wasn't anything left in her stomach and there wasn't anything we could do anyway because the vet's office was closed for the weekend.

My son looked up information on zinc phosphide poisoning in dogs and made a very convincing argument that we absolutely had to take her to a vet. He pointed out that she had ingested a very slow acting poison so just because she wasn't showing any signs of neurological problems yet, she could still have serious damage being done to her body. He read to us all the things that could be done, like using activated charcoal, that could help reduce the toxicity of the poison. He did not give up. He was going to do whatever he had to do to get her help. He convinced me to call poison control and they said to take her to an animal emergency hospital IMMEDIATELY.

My son didn't volunteer this time to help her when she needed to vomit--twice in the 45 minute drive to the animal hospital, because he had to deal with sitting in dog vomit all the way home when we picked her up from being spayed several months ago and he got sick from the smell. So I did that, but he talked to her and made sure she was being taken care of.

Lexi is still in the animal hospital but she is doing well and we are supposed to pick her up today. The last we heard, the bill was over $700, but my son said it is a price we have to pay for not being precautious. He was willing to do without things on his upcoming vacation with his big sister if he had to, even though it was not his fault.

He asked why we would ever take this kind of risk by having this poison anywhere near our house? He thought my not knowing we had it was a weak defense. He thought it was my responsibility to know because I was the one who let her out in the backyard. Why didn't we look for safer alternatives? This kid has always asked hard questions.

By the way, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the neuropsychologist said he might have a few executive function issues after we said time management was sometimes a problem and he often couldn't remember to keep his computer/desk area clean. Who really had better executive functioning in this case?

Testing with the Peabody is a piece of cake. It's oral, not timed and it's open ended to 12th grade level. It took about an hour in our dining room. Love it! We didn't prep at all. The tester warned us we're approaching the ceiling of this test though.

Ugh Kriston - great question on math for next year. I may start a thread on this! Right now I have Lial's College Math (which is like applied pre-algebra) and Life of Fred Algebra sitting around the house. I also have Zaccaro's Middle School Math, which looks fun. Before I had test scores, I was thinking of doing Lial's and playing around more at the pre-alg/early algebra level. But now I feel much more like we're real and rigorous algebra ready.

I know LOF gets great reviews, but the curriculum basically says
1 - hand book to child
2 - walk away and don't answer questions
And that's how it's designed to work. Which is just not going to work at this house! DS is already balking at the format. He just really likes me to sit down and talk through an example or 2 with him. It doesn't take much, but I think saying "figure it out" isn't going to cut it yet.

I am VERY interested in AoPS. But I don't feel like DS is at ready to do their online course in terms of deadlines and workload. And I'm not ready for that either! I'd love to hear from someone who has used them on their own. I feel really comfortable teaching math (unlike everything else!), but I wonder how that would go.

We also have a young talented math program at a local University that starts accelerated algebra with 6th to 8th graders that is very popular with the local gifted community. I think we could do it in a year, but the work load is really heavy and kids drop extra curricular activities to do it. So that doesn't sound great either.

As a veterinarian, I say hooray for your son!!! People come in all the time saying, "I didn't know such and such was bad for my dog/cat." Kudos to your son Nan

This is kind of a brag, but kind of just a cute story about DD who turns 3 next week.

We were at a picnic this weekend and DD had 1 cookie. Then a few hours later she asked for another cookie. As I gave her the 2nd cookie I said to her "that is your last cookie...don't ask me for more cookies." Of course before she had even finished swallowing her 2nd cookie she says "can I have another cookie?" I looked at her and said "what did I say?" She replies "ummmm" and I can see the wheels turning in her head. She then responds confidently "you can only have 3 cookies." LOL. She is a bright little girl but she has a PG brother so I don't always notice some of the things she does. Lately I have been noticing more and more things though.