Not sure why the Outdoor Girls Series is no longer available on Amazon, but I found the series here on Gutenberg free -  http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Children's_Book_Series_(Bookshelf)#The_Outdoor_Girls_.28Laura_Lee_Hope.29.

And there are 94 Children's Book Series on Gutenberg here - http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Children%27s_Book_Series_(Bookshelf) .That is a very large collection of Series Books. Gutenberg has different formats- epub with images, epub without images, kindle with images, kindle without images, and so on.

This homeschool mom has very graciously listed a lot of classics and  historical fiction books free on kindle, plus links to the books. And you don't have to have a kindle to read kindle books, you can download the kindle app that allows you to read kindle books on your computer. The app is on her webpage. Here is her link: http://contentedathome.com/free-kindle-books/

Most of the Robinson curriculum series books are here free, and in far greater quantity than that listed in the Robinson booklist. And links to 83 historical novels of G.A. Henty free on kindle are all listed here too. I've always wanted to read aloud Henty, and I think it's now time 

Her list is below. All links on her website - http://contentedathome.com/free-kindle-books/.

■Classics by Charles Dickens
■Classics by Jane Austen
■Classics by Louisa May Alcott
■Classics for Christmas
■Classics by O. Henry
■The Bobbsey Twins Series
■Five Little Peppers Series
■Classics by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
■Classics by Beatrix Potter
■Classics by G. A. Henty
■Elsie Dinsmore Series
■Tom Swift Series
■Campfire Girls Series
■Rover Boys Series
■Six Little Bunkers Series
■Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Series
■Boy Scouts Series
■Make Believe Stories by Laura Lee Hope
■Boy Allies Series
■Rollo Series
■Outdoor Girls Series
■Frontier Boys Series
■Rick Brant Science-Adventure Series
■Grace Harlowe Series
■Ruth Fielding Series
■Dotty Dimple Series
■Tom Slade Series
■Submarine Boys Series
■Children’s Stories by Arthur Scott Bailey
■Classics by Mrs. O. F. Walton
■Annapolis Series
■Dave Darrin Series
■Little Colonel Series
■The Twins Series
■Uncle Wiggily Books
■Polly Series
■Outdoor Chums Series
■Patty Fairfield Series
■Classics by Hesba Stretton
■Classics by Emma Leslie
■Classics by Amy Le Feuvre

Article on Lee Binz's website  with interesting insights from a University professor on the importance of Math. (I also noticed the mention of Saxon Math in the professor's bio.).  Link - http://www.thehomescholar.com/blog/homeschooling-curriculum-why-is-math-important/

What about homeschool socialization? Excellent audio by Dianne Flynn (as one of freebie audios offered by homechool.com). She cites some of research that have been done on homeschool socialization. She also gives other great insights.

Link to the audio -  http://www.homeschool.com/test/podcasts/homeschooling101.asp. Scroll to the audio ``What About Socialization?'' by Diane Flynn Keith

I wanted to add that I believe as Tamsyn said, that he was influenced by:

1) Work with brain-injured children. (See ``What to do about your brain-injured child'' book for that)

2) Books by  parents of child prodigies like Winifred Stoner, etc. He cites Mrs Stoner's work with Winifred on pages 52- 54 and pages 57-58 of ``How to Teach your Baby to Read''. And if you read Mrs Stoner's Natural Education, you'll see that Doman's ideologies model that of Mrs Stoner, though the nitty-gritty techniques may not have been exactly the same. Both Doman and Mrs Stoner believed the children have potential, and the earlier that potential was nurtured, the better.

He says in ``How to Teach your baby to Read'':
``When a person or group is led by research to what appears to be a new and important idea, several things are required before duty compels that group to the publication and dissemination of this idea. First the idea must be tested in real life.....Secondly, no matter how new such concepts may appear to be, it is possible that someone somewhere has had such ideas before and has used them. It is possible that they have somewhere reported their findings.....In the years between 1959 and 1962 our team was aware that other people were working with young  children in the area of reading, both in and outside the United States....When we began to study the literature on the subject intensively, we were impressed by the four facts....The history of teaching little children to read was not new.....Other people generations apart do the same things although for different reasons....Most of the cases were carefully observed and recorded in detail. Few were clearer than the aforementioned case of little Winifred [Stoner]. Mrs Stoner had come to almost the same conclusions about early reading as those of us at The Institutes, although she did so without the neurological knowledge available to us.'' QUOTE ENDS

Also, on pages 57-58 of ``How to Teach your baby to Read'', Doman also cites other historical work where very young children had been taught to read.  E.g., he cites the work by Lewis Terman who reported of a girl who at 26 and a half months, had a reading vocabulary of over 700 words, and as early as 21 months, she could read and comprehend simple sentences as connected thoughts rather than isolated words. She could also distinguish and name all primary colors, etc.

So, I'm pretty sure he was  influenced by scientific literature on child prodigies (e.g., the Terman study)  plus  books written by  parents of child prodigies who had taught their very young children to read. And he must have also thought: ``if early learning could create prodigies (as Winifred Stoner), could these techniques not be applied to improve the well-being of brain-injured children and make them normal?

Hi Ayesha,

You might find Doman's book ``What to do about your brained injured child'' particularly useful for an idea of where his theories came from. He outlines the entire history of the Institutes in the book, the mistakes they made at the start, the discoveries they made, how they came about those insights, and so on. I found it very interesting, and it provided a context for some of the exercises he asks parents to do in his other books. For example, after reading the book, I could understand the reason for most of the physical exercises he espouses in ``How smart is your baby'' and ``How to teach your baby to be physically superb''.  He also explained how they came to develop the Institutes’ Developmental Profile, etc. I came to understand the reason for his requirement that a child that is not walking yet should be placed on his tummy all the time, the reason for his requirement that a child that is not running yet should be on his feet all the time and not cooped in a playpen, etc., etc.
 On Amazon.com, you can preview the table of contents and the first few pages of the book- http://www.amazon.com/dp/0757001866#reader_0757001866   

On Amazon, the book description goes as follow:
``Glenn Doman pioneer in the treatment of the brain-injured children and founder of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential brings hope to thousands of children who have been sentenced to a life of institutional confinement.
In What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child, Doman recounts the story of The Institutes tireless effort to refine treatment of the brain injured. He shares the staff’s lifesaving techniques and the tools used to measure and ultimately improve visual, auditory, tactile, mobile, and manual development. Doman explains the unique methods of treatment, and then describes the program with which parents can work with their own children at home in a familiar and loving environment. Included throughout are case histories, drawings, and helpful charts and diagrams.’’ QUOTE ENDS

[Within two and a half months I had completed the first grade. It was now early April, and I could have settled into an extended summer vacation. However, Mother believed that the time away from my studies would ultimately be harmful to me, since I would have a tendency to forget much of what I had already learned. Therefore, she promptly enrolled me in the second grade.]

Robert,

I'm finding that most of the things you say are being confirmed elsewhere. You gave great insights on vacations, and you also said that it was important for an accelerated child to remain level-headed and humble. I was re-reading Alexandra Swann's book titled ``No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen.'' She made comments about vacations, and about level-headedness and humility.

This is what she said about vacations:

While we were not obsessed with our studies we were, and are, conscientious about them. Mother taught us to set high standards for ourselves. The result was that we became our own toughest critics, working diligently on a project until we felt satisfied with it. This attitude not only improved the quality of our work, it also helped us emotionally. Good grades earned through hard work gave us a tremendous sense of achievement and inspired us to work still harder.....

Within two and a half months I had completed the first grade.   It was now early April, and I could have settled into an extended summer vacation. However, Mother believed that the time away from my studies would ultimately be harmful to me, since I would have a tendency to forget much of what I had already learned. Therefore, she promptly enrolled me in the second grade.  I, thus, embarked upon a twelve-month school year, another tradition which continues in our home. I was not required to study on Saturdays or Sundays, and I was given the day off on Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and most federal holidays. In addition, any time I was ill, which was seldom, I had the day off.  The rule concerning sick leave was that if I were too ill to go to school I could stay in bed. When I became well enough to get up and play, I was well enough to return to my studies. These were my only vacations. I did not receive two weeks off for Christmas, or spring break, or summer vacation. In fact, I was quite old before I learned that these holidays are observed by most school children.

Though this routine may seem strict, in reality it provided me with an enormous sense of comfort and security. If my routine had been disorganized and haphazard, I might have felt that my life had no direction. Children need constants in their lives, and for many, school is a constant. Whether the school is public or private, they know that they must arrive at a certain time, remain for a certain number of hours, and leave at a certain time. The presence of the studies per se, along with the familiar faces of friends and teachers, can be depended upon.

And this is what she said about her mom (Joyce Swann) teaching her level-headedness and humility towards peers:

Because my emotional development was as important to my parents as my intellectual development, they worked hard to teach me respect for other people for their accomplishments, talents and abilities. They were aware that if I continued to progress at the accelerated rate at which I was working, I would find myself far ahead academically of other children my age, and that this might produce feelings of estrangement. Therefore, they always assured me that while it is true that most five year olds are not in the second grade, basically all people are very much alike, and I was really no different from anyone else. “With proper training, any child with average intelligence could accomplish exactly the same thing,” Mother has often said. The older I grow, the more I find this to be true, but even then I realized that while my experiences might be different, I, personally, was very much like all other five year olds.

(emphasis mine)


By the way, Alexandra Swann is the oldest  of the 10 Swann children. All 10 Swann children got their Masters degrees by age 16. PokerDad started a review thread on the Swann children here - http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-older-child/swann-family-10-children-with-ma-at-age-16!-book-review-and-discussion-thread/.
Joyce Swann (their mom and educator) authored a series of education-related articles here - http://www.home-school.com/Articles/columnists/joyce-swann.php

Robert,

1)  Please could you give a timeline of how David was able to complete the 4 Saxon books in a year? He started 54 in second grade (that's at about 7 years of age). In  one year,  he had completed the 4 Saxon books - 54, 65, 78, and 87. Could you give some more details how you did it? Saxon comprises 120 lessons in each book. Did you skip the first 40 lessons (since it was mostly aimed at public school review after summer vacation)? Did you have him do every single problem in the lessons he did? Saxon has ``practice'' questions and about 30 ''problem set’’ questions. The practice questions are based on the particular lesson that had just been taught. The problem set questions are based on lessons that had just been taught plus a review of previous lessons. Did you have him do the practice questions only? Or did he do a combination of both practice lesson and problem set questions? If he did the  problem set  questions,  did you have him do even-numbered problems only? Or odd-numbered problems only? Could you give more details on this?

2) How many hours do you estimate he spent on math each day? The Ahmed brothers (Zoihaib and Wajih) spent approximately 3 hours on math each day after school hours on weekdays and approximately 5 hours on weekends. Did you aim at 3 hours a day too? Or was your aim the completion of 2 lessons per day?

By the way, here are some articles on the Ahmed kids –
1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/7941327.stm
2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4979604/Nine-year-old-becomes-youngest-ever-to-pass-A-level-maths-with-Grade-A.html
3)  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1164614/Britains-cleverest-family-They-got-maths-A-levels-primary-school--thanks-hours-study-night-75p-Dad.html.
4) http://www.channel4.com/programmes/child-genius/articles/video-interview-with-wajih-and-zohaibs-parents.   

3) When did you notice a slow down with David? Was it at algebra 1, algebra 2, or Advanced Math?

4) When did he start algebra 1/2? How long did that take? And how about Algebra 1, 2 and Advanced Math? When did he take the SATs? Was it after he completed Algebra 2? Did he work through the Saxon Advanced Math book too? Or was he in community college by this time?

I'm basically asking for a timeline, and more details and explanations on how one could model your acceleration method. I've got the Saxon books (from 54 to Advanced Math), and I've studied them in depth, so I know how they work. Further, I went through GCSE math papers and realised that a child that has mastered Saxon Algebra 2 would pass GCSE math with very good grades without breaking much sweat. It sort of puts what David and the Ahmed kids did into context. I now see that most children could achieve what the Ahmed kids and David accomplished.  Thank you, Robert.

PokerDad, the day I read those summer loss articles I was very shocked. Completely shocked. The article said that: ``At best, students showed little or no academic growth over summer. At worst, students lost one to three months of learning.''

This means that in the BEST CASE scenario, they showed little or no academic growth. In the worst case scenario, they actually LOST 3 months worth of what they had learnt before. This simply means the first few months of school would be spent trying to get them to remember what they had learnt in the last 3 months before the vacation.

I now understood why Joyce Swann (mom of the accelerated Swann kids) was able to move as quickly through school as she did. With her doing 3 hours of focussed homeschooling each day, and doing school all year round (with no summers vacations), her kids could finish the entire k-12 system in very little time. And remember, she did no formal early learning.

And she gives very good advice here - http://www.home-school.com/Articles/to-maintain-control-maintain-a-schedule.php. Under subtitle ``School First, Field Trips Second'' she said:
``Remember, no schedule will work if it is not followed. Therefore, if you want to have a successful school year, you must be willing to put your school first. Save field trips, visits to museums, etc., for Saturdays. These activities may be educational, but they are no substitute for a day spent working at the books. Only when you are able to separate all other activities from class time and adhere to a schedule that concentrates on structured study, will your students make genuine progress. Then you will be able to maintain control, and you will meet your goals. ''

And more good advice from her here - http://www.home-school.com/Articles/joyce-swanns-homeschool-tips.php
On there, she says: ``We have specific school hours (8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.) and everyone is in the school room seated with his materials in front of him at 8:30. We also have a highly disciplined school room: No talking about anything that does not pertain to school. No going to the bathroom without permission. No food or drinks in the school room. No wasting time.  These rules actually give my children a good deal of freedom that they might not enjoy in a less structured setting. After all, they know that they will be finished with both their routine housework and schoolwork by 11:30 a.m. The rest of the day is theirs to spend as creatively as they like.''

And more VERY good advice from her here - http://www.home-school.com/Articles/dont-go-back-to-school.php. This article is titled: ``Don't Go Back To School - Five Reasons To Consider a 12-month School Year''. What she said in this article echoes almost word-for-word what PokerDad said and what I read in those summer loss articles.
   

So I'll list a few things, some I've likely mentioned before:
1) Summer Vacations (2 to 3 months to forget things)

I agree about the summer vacation loss. Homeschool.com is currently hosting a massive freebie deal (http://www.homeschool.com/freebie/deals/) and on there, I found downloadable articles on summer learning loss (http://www.thinkstretch.com/research/articles-to-share/). The 4 articles showed that there is a lot of research that shows children regress seriously in their learning during summer vacation. I read all 4 articles on that page, and the article titled ``Doesn't Every Child Deserve a Memorable Summer'' was particularly interesting. It cited the research, and I quote an excerpt below:

Do you know?
- All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer (White, 1906; Entwisle & Alexander 1992; Cooper, 1996; Downey et al. 2004).

- Most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains (Cooper, 1996).

- About two-thirds of the ninth-grade achievement gap between lower and higher income youth can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities during the elementary school years. As a result, low-income youth are less likely to graduate from high school or enter college (Alexander et al. 2007).

- Children lose more than academic knowledge over the summer. Most children—particularly children at high risk of obesity—gain weight more rapidly when they are out of school during summer break (von Hippel et al. 2007).

-  Parents consistently cite summer as the most difficult time to ensure that their children have productive things to do (Duffett et al. 2004).

The fact that student lose about two months of grade level equivalency in math was especially scary. So Robert, you are right. And so were Joyce Swann and Arthur Robinson. And still on that page, the article titled ``More Than a Hunch: Kids Lose Learning Skills Over the Summer Months'', was also very interesting. Here is an excerpt:

WHAT HAPPENS TO STUDENTS OVER THE SUMMER:
 -  At best, students showed little or no academic growth over summer. At worst, students lost one to three months of learning.
- Summer loss was somewhat greater in math than reading.
-  Summer loss was greatest in math computation and spelling.
-  For disadvantaged students, reading scores were disproportionately affected and the achievement gap between rich and poor widened.

Very scary statistics, if you ask me. So Robert, you are completely right. Kids lose a lot of learning during the summer vacation months, and math is one of the things that suffers most.

Homeschool.com is having a massive freebie deal throughout June and July. New items get added each day, so check daily as there are some that are listed for just one day only. Here is the link - http://www.homeschool.com/freebie/deals/

Under Free Homeschooling Podcasts, there are loads of free audios from well-known homeschooling parents. I found Joanne Calderwood's cds there free. They are different from the ones she offered in February, so check them out. You can download them onto your pc from the site. You will also find free audio files by Mona Lisa Harding (college by 12 lady), Stephen Covey, Susan Wise Bauer, Oliver Demille, Pat Farenga, Howard Berg, etc. Some audio titles include ``7 habits of highly effective families’’ by Stephen Covey; “Homeschoolers & Money’’ by Robert & Kim Kiyosaki, ``How to complete High School in Half the time’’ by Howard Berg, etc.

Here is another interesting video titled ``John Gatto on Compulsory Education and Permanent Childhood''.

Here, Gatto talks about the epidemic of childishness. He mentions that one only needs to read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin or Andrew Carnegie to see that the concept of adolescence is a myth. Adolescence was a fantastic lie invented only at the beginning of the 20th century by a fellow named G. Stanley Hall as a pseudo-scientific excuse for extending tutelage. Very worth listening to.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/11gRDAu46v4&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/11gRDAu46v4&rel=1</a>

Here is one of Gatto's videos titled ``Compiled Thoughts on Schooling''. (Thank you, PokerDad)

He talks about attributes taught at elite boarding schools. He also shared how he implemented the entrepreneurship/ job shadowing/apprenticship/mentorship strategies, etc. He said the shadowing/entrepreneurial opportunities did not have to be mutually exclusive to academic curriculum (his almost exact words). He mentioned that lack of responsibility was the reason for the pathologies he saw among his students. In his words, not to be useful is to be useless.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/nK_6aWRqRSw&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/nK_6aWRqRSw&rel=1</a>

I agree with a lot of what Gatto writes about the extension of childhood. I also think that childhood has been chopped up too much.  I read the terms age or grade appropriate bandied around a lot. And I feel that they box in a child's development and education.  There is also a pet peeve that disturbs me. It is the extension of babyhood. Many, years ago babyhood ended at 1. Or when I child started to walk. But now I know many 3-5 year old "babies".

Korrale, I posted a link  for downloading a pdf of  Gatto's ``Underground History'' here - http://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation_758.  In the book, Gatto says on page 19:

During the post-Civil War period, childhood was extended about four years. Later, a special label was created to describe very old children. It was called adolescence, a phenomenon hitherto unknown to the human race. The infantilization of young people didn’t stop at the beginning of the twentieth century; child labor laws were extended to cover more and more kinds of work, the age of school leaving set higher and higher. The greatest victory for this utopian project was making school the only avenue to certain occupations. The intention was ultimately to draw all work into the school net. By the 1950s it wasn’t unusual to find graduate students well into their thirties, running errands, waiting to start their lives.

[Parents are ultimately raising adults, independent human beings that are capable of living and being a light in this world]

Anyone care to chime in on the idea that school, on its own, extends childhood artificially? I definintely think the idea of extended childhood could use some discussion here. 150 years ago, teens were out working. Now you can't rely on them for much at all, because they're too busy posting to twitter, emulating the latest meme on youtube, or sexting some cute kid in class.

PokerDad, have you read Gatto's ``Underground History of American Education''? Powerful stuff. Here's the link to a free copy on his website: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm. You can download a pdf version here - http://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation_758. On page 414 (on the pdf version) , he says:

Don’t let a world of funny animals, dancing alphabet letters, pastel colors, and treacly music suffocate your little boy or girl’s consciousness at exactly the moment when big questions about the world beckon. Funny animals were invented by North German social engineers; they knew something important about fantasy and social engineering that you should teach yourself.

Your four-year-old wants to play? Let him help you cook dinner for real, fix the toilet, clean the house, build a wall, sing "Eine Feste Burg." Give her a map, a mirror, and a wristwatch, let her chart the world in which she really lives. You will be able to tell from the joy she displays that becoming strong and useful is the best play of all. Pure games are okay, too, but not day in, day out. Not a prison of games.

PokerDad, you once said you were raising an adult. You are not far behind the Harding (College by 12) family.  In their book, the children gave their testimonials. Here is part of what one of the daughters, Rossanah, said:

Mom and dad did not regarded age as an excuse for immaturity. They gave us responsibilities to help us grow and taught us to reason like adults. By treating us like adults – and by this I mean with expectation that were capable of a higher level of accountability – we often rose to the occasion and surpassed what would be considered the “norm” for our age. I think in many ways, this prepared us for real world decision making and gave us the confidence to participate with students several years our senior. People always say to my sisters and I that we are so mature for our age. I think this all goes back to building those invaluable skills of communication and measuring consequences. Parents are ultimately raising adults, independent human beings that are capable of living and being a light in this world

.

After rereading Gatto's works (Dumbing Us Down and Weapons of Mass Instruction), I humbly submit that I believe school extends childhood. And that was one of the Gatto's pet peeves. He spoke against the extension of childhood and believed children should be integrated into the real world as soon as possible. Real world in the sense of giving children/young people work opportunities (and allowing them lauch their own) to enable them contribute to themselves and to society. According to Weapons of Mass Instruction, the concept of adolescence was phony, a concept introduced in the 1950s by Stanley Hall after the introduction of compulsory schooling. Prior to this time, there was no such thing as adolescence;  you were either a child or a young man/young woman.

Gatto integrated his students into the real world by providing lots of opportunities for volunteering, work opportunities, apprenticeships, and job shadowing. He requested that real-life learning experiences be integrated into academic learning. For example, in Dumbing Us Down, he said:

Right now we are taking from our children all the time that they need to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent school experiences that give a lot of that time back. We need to trust children from a very early age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school, but which takes place away from the institutional setting. We need to invent curricula where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and selfreliance.
 
A short time ago I took $70 and sent a twelve-yearold girl from my class, with her non-English-speaking mother, on a bus down the New Jersey coast to take the police chief of Seabright to lunch and apologize for polluting his beach with a discarded Gatorade bottle. In exchange for this public apology I had arranged with the  police chief for the girl to have a one-day apprenticeship in small-town police procedures. A few days later two more of my twelve-year-old kids traveled alone from Harlem to West Thirty-first street where they began an apprenticeship with a newspaper editor; later three of my kids found themselves in the middle of the Jersey swamps at six in the morning, studying the mind of a trucking company president as he dispatched eighteenwheelers to Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

I posted thoughts and excerpts from Gatto and Harding books on the artificial extension of childhood and its relationship to teenage rebellion here -  http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-older-child/overall-education-acceleration-vs-depth/msg91736/#msg91736. 

Thoughts?