Well, you all seem to have nailed that. I emailed Apologia about this claim on their site the same day I last posted here, and have gotten no response. :huh: DD has enough on her plate without stretching this course into something it is not. The instructor is experienced enough and serious enough to not rely totally on the text, and I think that this answers dd's curiosity nicely enough for now. Thanks for helping to answer that puzzle.

Thank you Matryoshka. Actually, I got that notion from the teacher who quoted the Apologia website and then slightly different wording from the current descriptions on that site. However, as I said, I couldn't find any AP courses online or elsewhere that actually use Apologia, which is why I thought I'd ask here. OTOH, shouldn't the claim that the text will prepare a student for the exam indicate "blessing" from the College Board? I thought they were fairly jealous of that description and Apologia has a high profile... My primary aim was not an AP Bio course. My aim is to get the most mileage out of this course, which is a good fit for my daughter's schedule and preferences. A good score on the AP exam would be great on her transcript. But if that's not likely, we can look at the SAT Bio test.

Apparently, the combination of Apologia Biology and Advanced Biology add up to adequate preparation for the AP exam. My dd is taking a co-op A+P course using the Apologia Advanced Bio text. She's considering going through the other material at home, with tutoring from family so though she wouldn't have an "AP Bio" course to transcript, she might have an AP exam score. However, she doesn't like the Apologia materials, and would prefer something like the Campbell, at least for working through at home. I have downloaded several syllabi for AP Bio courses, including using Campbell's. But I'd like to coordinate it with what is already covered in the Apologia she's getting in the classroom. She's more likely to accomplish this if she doesn't have to digest the entire second text, especially since Campbell's has soooooo much material. She had an honors level Chem course last year that included some organic and bio-chemistry. Although she hasn't had a high school biology course, she seems to have enough background for the current A+P course. Has anyone used the Apologia route to prepare for the exam? Can you help me sort this out what she needs to study at home? Thanks!

Aimee, Your daughter's story is painfully familiar. My daughter has a very similar profile and while we understand her difficulties better than we did, we still don't have any turnkey answers for her. It's all one step at a time and then pausing for adjustment. Recently, the most helpful advice came from http://www.livesinthebalance.org, and the accompanying book, Your Explosive Child. His stories tend to be about younger children with significant behavioral problems, not specifically adolescents with academic struggles. But his premise, that the child is doing as well as she can with the skills she has has been a really helpful framework. He outlines drilling down into the skills she needs to manage her anxiety and her patterns of life so that she can attempt the academics she is capable of, if she were capable of starting. I have found no experts to deal specifically with academic anxiety. Even the inattentive ADD diagnosis is poorly understood and addressed. You are her best, and possibly only advocate.

I have an intense, challenging to raise child, now 16, and some of the traits you describe in your daughter are and always have been present in mine. Some challenges just come with the package. Looking back, I see the constant threads, but honestly, from the outset, I couldn't have predicted which traits would continue to make life difficult, which would simply disappear, and which were latent and unrecognized patterns of behavior. Identify a few core values that you can hold her accountable to and do that. For example, we always tried to enroll her or expose her to many opportunities. If she flinched and didn't like it after trying, the "rule" was, you finish what you agree to start. (Unless it's a glaring poor fit.) You don't have to go back a second time. We insisted on kindness toward others, and tried to model some good habits, good patterns of life. When the child is fearful, or sad, or disappointed, you just walk alongside. Plant some good seed. Encourage and tend. Keep track of the noble traits and accomplishments to remind her of them when she dwells on the less good. Lots of things change with maturity. Look for that and be calm when she falls. She'll get back up; it's the way with children.

Look at Jump Math. Canadian company. Inexpensive and a lot of it is available for download so you can decide which levels to buy. It is VERY incremental. It's so incremental it could drive you crazy! We found that we could skip big sections and then! Eureka! We'd run into something that hadn't caught. We'd work it and move on.

We sent my daughter to a private high school this year after 8 years at home and I've been questioning that decision nearly daily. I've found that she was better prepared than I feared and that she is more capable than she knew. The challenges have been utterly draining and completely unexpected. One of those has been social. Freshman aged kids aren't all just a little wacky. Some of them are seriously maladjusted and provide serious impediment to the merely wacky ones' learning. The other is that we discovered a vision problem that we had been able to accommodate all these years, but became an issue in need of intervention when faced with the schedule and grades. We will be weighing whether to base the remaining high school years from home or continue this canned program over the coming months and I appreciate this thread very much.

My daughter has been a very reluctant writer, but can perform when necessary. She's in 8th grade and where ever she does high school, she must become a more fluent writer. Now. She gets writer's block if its not an assignment that speaks to her. What do you think about using voice recognition software, like Dragon Naturally, to get that first draft out of her head and onto the paper? I have typed her dictation from time to time when she's really blocked (read: resisting.) I think it would give her a more direct sense of connecting the words in her head to the words on the screen, without me coaxing them out of her. But I don't want to create some new bad habit. Thanks for your thoughts!

There are probably a couple of things going on here. For one, this is also where parenting and homeschooling intersect. He may be testing you. This isn't a classroom. Then, adolescents aren't very good at self management yet. When they do show signs of getting it, they will relapse because, that's what adolescents do. And then of course, every time they get into a new level of work, there may be some regression because it takes a while to figure out how to attack it. And every time, you will need to work him through it. Writing is hard for anyone. But if you are a kinesthetic learner (ie, a boy) then sitting and thinking and writing is torture. Writing is torture until it becomes a natural mode of communication. That doesn't help you with any kind of magic bullet. But it may give you some sympathy for him and help you break it down into palatable chunks for him until he becomes proficient enough to respond to logic like "get it done so that I can put it away."

Kristin! I just found this thread because intentionally searched it. I am also ADD. Diagnosed this year. I am nearly 50 years old and have been home schooling 7 years. Last year I tackled our schedule, sort of MOH style. My calendar looked like a mosaic after my hyperfocused attempt to account for EVERYTHING. I never looked at it and ended up worse off because I didn't have a functioning calendar. Managing myself is bad enough but I'm facing some very hard times because I haven't been able to give my kids the external structure that they need. Not having a linear concept of time or how long things take or how steps flow together makes scheduling to a goal really hard. I understand the problem; like you I don't have the framework to address it. There is no way I can do it by myself. I'm going to have to list it out and draw it out graphically to the best of my ability and then have someone else put it in a working format for my family. It's going to have to include some accountability checklists that my husband can easily prompt us with. I have used a professional organizer but I have NOT found an ADD coach. The ones I've located are more focused on entrepreneurs and working people. So they are expensive and I'm not sure they'd really appreciate the scope of my life. I am hoping a very organized friend who isn't ADD will help me in exchange for a pie!

I can tell you what happened when I did this very thing 35 years ago. We got busted walking back in the door. My friend's parents walked out of the darkness and my heart jumped into my throat. They sat us down and we got the lecture. Worry, danger, broken trust, dangled punishments. All of it. Then they hugged and kissed their daughter and told her they loved her. But here's what worked on me: Her DAD gave me a hug & kiss. And told me they wouldn't tell my parents unless I ever did it again. I was mortified! Other moms showing affection was one thing. But a DAD? euw! I never did it again. ;)

Thanks! It looks good to go! Now I can finish my curriculum planning.

My dd has done Intro to Latin, using Phenomenon of Language and Latin I, using Ecce Romani I in co-op the last 2 years. This year, she proposes a break, to pick up again next year. There are a couple of very good reasons to do so, but we both want her to have some sort of review material to stay fresh enough to dive back in next year, as this sequence ends in an AP Latin study of Virgil, by 10th or 11th grade. She's great at memorizing vocabulary and translating, but had difficulty with declension tables on the NLE. Suggestions for a review program this year?

I have Art of Argument also. Although my 13 yo dd didn't dive in like Faithr's, it's been good for us. It's appropriately challenging without being frustrating. I've been reading it with her and then have her write the answers just to check comprehension. She isn't interested enough to do a thorough reading on her own, though she certainly would be capable if the interest were there. This way, it's enough that I'm interested, so she'll participate.

CC--thanks for pointing me to Laurel Tree. That is looking good. I wrote for the syllabus. Have you received one? Specifically, does it have any guidelines as to how much time to expect to put in? This is top priority this year, but I need to be careful not to overload with other classes. Thanks!