[Voracious reader and night time reading]

We had to remove light sources in my son's room for a while.  He'll get so distracted reading at lunch that he forgets to eat.  We've also found that making sure that he's really tired at bedtime helps (we rarely have this problem when when his sports are practicing!).  I've also noticed that if the thing that he's reading at bedtime is nonfiction, a short story collection, or something that he is re-reading, it's a lot easier for him to put it down. 

[I guess it is a good thing we homeschool....]

People homeschool for a variety of reasons.  Some kids are ahead, some are average, and some struggle.  In our state, some folks homeschool because there is no official support for kids with dyslexia.  Some homeschool for religious reasons, to escape a bullying situation, or for medical or developmental reasons.  I love that our co-op offers classes with varying degrees of rigor (and, as somebody who covers a lot of ground at home, I sometimes sign my kids up for more fun classes because I don't want to do messy crafty things).  In my high school class, I have students wanting to earn their C and graduate and students wanting to earn the honors credit and keep a 100%, and everything in between.  It takes some work, but I structure my class so that I can say 'All you are required to know is X, but for those of you who want a more detailed explanation...'.  They are also willing to bump kids up and down so that students can take classes that are appropriate to their ability level, not just their grade, which is a win for everybody. 

[How many hours do you do school with your 4th grader?]

Will your daughter work independently?  Does she prefer taking a lot of breaks?  My children really struggle with switching gears between school and breaks - they can go and jump on the trampoline for 20 jumps or something to 'get the wiggles out' but if they truly get away from 'doing school' for more than 10 minutes it's hard to get them to get back to it.  But, they also like to work independently, so I've chosen handwriting, grammar, spelling/vocab, and writing that they can do mostly on their own.  I help with math and our history or science units most days.  Bible varies by age - sometimes I read stories, sometimes they read, and sometimes it's a workbook.  Instead of keeping up with hours, I set goals for the number of lessons I want to complete each week - we're flexible, but we have a plan for 3 grammar lessons and 1 spelling unit per week and 1 math unit per day, for instance.  When I had a 4th grader, it was around 3 hours of reading, writing, or workbook time most days, and of course there were other things that could count as part of 'school time' - free reading time, watching something on the history channel, sports or music practice, field trips, etc.  They like to be done around lunchtime, so our main work is from 9ish-12ish.  Sometimes we eat and then finish up and other times they say that they'd rather get done and then have nothing else to do after a late lunch.  Some days they're motivated to be super diligent and they just get done in 3 hours.  :-)  Sometimes they run grab a snack, but its not a long snack break, it's a quick handful of cheese cubes or an apple.  I'd actually expected to have more breaks, but it just didn't work for them.  My general rule is that if we start by 9ish, they should be done around 2ish. 

[Book Hater]

The Great Brain series by JD Fitzgerald was really popular at my house.  I remembered it from when I was a kid and my son loves it.  He also liked The Mysterious Benedict Society series.  A friend as recommended The Boys on the Boat for my son - we haven't read it yet, but they raved about it.  The Rush Revere books were also fun for my history-loving son (and friends of different political stripes have liked them, so don't let the author deter you if you're not inclined to read them based on that).  James Herriot books are also good - they're really long, but each chapter is like it's own story - they might be good for an animal lover. 

[Need Advice and Help for History]

One thing that you might want to do is make or buy a timeline so that they can fit in all of the things they do know and see how they relate to each other.  I know that lots of people make them, or use timeline books.  We bought a poster that shows what's happening on each continent over time, so when we learn something new we can go to the poster and see where it fits in with what we alread know.  It might also help you to find your gaps so that you can decide whether you need to fill in or pick certain eras and work through them systematically. 

[Aversions to reading and issues with books/reading]

My older child really struggles with books that involve cruelty.  We had picked up several sonlight books at used book sales and I had planned to incorporate them into different history units, but I found that many of them were really upsetting to him.  I know that their goal is to have kids be emotionally involved in the subjects, but my child just quit wanting to read at all because he couldn't understand how people could act like they did in the books.  We switched to non-fiction books, and while he still learns that people throughout history have behaved horribly, it's much easier to learn about it now that he's not constantly reading first-person stories.  I still buy some of their reading recommendations, but now I skim through them before bringing them home.

[How do you do science without a curriculum?]

We use the core knowledge sequence to guide our science and history.  If you go to their website you can see the 'sequence at a glance' that lists everything that they recommend each eyar for K-8, and you can see what topics you haven't covered yet. We've liked it because it is a guide to subjects, but we choose how much detail to include and what methods to use based on the interests and abilities of the student.  Since we've used it all the way through (my older child has used it K-5 so far) we just see what it recommends each year, but you could also use it to see what gaps you might want to fill in the next few years.  For us, it's structure without being too confining, and it leaves time for us to pursue areas that we're interested in.  

 

 

[Triple beam balance scale?]

Triple beam balance use is a required skill in my state, so I teach it as part of biology at the co-op. It was also required at the community college where I taught. I'd have my student watch a youtube video about it so that the know how it works, and then buy a cheaper digital scale. They work the same was as a doctor's scale, except for the maximum that they can measure, so your doctor might let you do it the next time somebody has an appointment. The important idea is to start with the heaviest increment it can measure (usually 100lbs in a dr office, 100g on a lab scale) and seat it into a groove on the balance bar. Then do the next lowest, etc, untiil you get an accurate measurement.

[Article: 2 in 5 High Schools Don't Offer Physics]

I can't speak to why a paritcular private school is not accepting a particular credit.  It could be about the money.  It could be that they learned from experience that transfers from certain places don't learn what they're supposed to learn (this was a major concern at my former CC - they checked in regularly with StateU to make sure that our former students weren't underprepared), it could be that they include extra information in a particular class compared to other schools and students in the next class are expected to know it.  I always encourage students place out of electives but take most of their major classes where they intend to graduate if they can because every program has its quirks and its best to have learned what subsequent profs will expect you to know.  Biology is a huge area, and while all courses might cover the same things such that students could all pass a basic knowledge test, different teachers will include different 'extra' information...maybe that school considers the particular 'extra' stuff to be essential? 

[Article: 2 in 5 High Schools Don't Offer Physics]

Part of the issue with colleges accepting classes taken at other places is that there are often several different levels of a subject.  I have taught/taken at least 3 different levels of college biology.  There was one for pre-med and science research students, one for pre-health science (nursing, audiology, etc) and one for non-majors (a science elective).  In the first, a student learning about glycolysis would learn about specifically which chemical bonds were broken, which enzymes were used, and where each electron went.  In the second, students might learn the names of the intermediates and know that a different enzyme does each.  In the third, students learn that breaking down food is a multistep process, where it occurs, and maybe the beginning and end products.  There are different goals for each class that fit what the students need to know for future classes. 

 

When I was a student 20 years ago, the AP exam was thought to match the first class, but over time most schools decided that AP really didn't cover everything that a year of a very intense college class with a weekly lab could address, so it was changed to let students place out of either of the less-detailed courses - this might have changed with the revamped AP test.  When I taught at a community college, they told us about how now each course had a class number on campus (Bio 101) and also a multi-digit code that was unseen by students - a background course number. This is what colleges use to decide if credits transfer.  Our CC worked hard to keep our course aligned with the local college that most students transferred to.  And, when I taught the lab for pre-nursing students, we often lost 1/3 of the students in the first 3 weeks because they struggled with the algebra involved in doing metric conversions and dosage calculations. 

 

On another note, I think that the reason students don't take physics is that it seems hard and math-y.  Even though the high school class that I teach is mostly molecular biology and not particularly easy, students are comfortable with the idea of taking biology because they did bits of it when they were younger.  And, depending on where you are, many students take a physical science class in 8th or 9th grade that includes an introduction to basic physics.  In my area, many students choose Physical Science in 9th, and the Bio and Chem in 10th and 11th, with maybe an elective science (Bio II, anatomy, astronomy, etc) if they choose to take a 4th credit.

[Independent workbook curriculums that are good?]

Growing with Grammar, Soaring with Spelling, and Winning with Writing are all meant to be done independently (except for spelling tests). Wordly Wise is good for vocabulary and also has a read-and-answer-the-questions exercise each week, We've used Evan-More and Scholastic workbooks to fill in gaps, and Evan More has workboosk that address some history/science topics. For history, if your child likes to read they could use SOTW and add to a timeline (writing on hole-punched index cards would let you make your own 'world history').

[Help Me with My Schedule]

You've got several different history/geography things going on - could you combine them?  You'd still learn them both, but doing the geography of the same area that you're learning the history of might mean that you don't have to switch gears as often.  I'm also wondering if it might feel calmer if you did alternating units - a week or month of science and then a history unit.  My kids seem to do better when we can spend longer blocks of time on fewer subjects each day, and it helps on days that we do 'car school' because they can look at a book on a topic for a while in the car. 

[How to help my friend who wants to bring her kids home right away.....]

We use Hirsch's What Your First/Second, etc, Grader Needs to Know' to guide our history, science, and literature/arts.  If she picks a math curriculum, these books might help her to feel like she's got some structure while she figures out what approach to use for the rest of it.  We do alternating history and science units supplemented with library books, map work, experiments, crafts, etc but have occasionally gotten workbooks that fit the topics.  It will take some time to see if her family works best with projects, workbooks, read-alouds, or a mix, but since the Core Knowledge books are more of a topic guide she can try different approaches and then explore curriculum that fit her preferred methods.   

[No Read-Alouds At All?]

Once I could read, I didn't like being read to because it was so much slower than reading myself, and my older child seems to be the same way.  I read all the time when they were younger, but once they were in first grade and were solid readers, I rarely read fiction to them.  If I want them to do the same Bible story, I read that out loud, and when either of them does poetry I read that because I don't think that they'll get as much out of it if they don't hear the rhythm - they seem to enjoy that, but mostly because it's short.  My younger child still likes for me to read some of her history or science to her, which I do, but when we get to literature or stories she likes to read it herself. 

[Need a spelling program that will work]

One of my children uses Soaring with Spelling - even in 2nd grade it can be used independently other than the pre/post tests and grading.  My other child spells pretty well, but we pull out Jim Halverson's Spelling Works! as a refresher every year or 2.  It has some standard exercises, some editing-type work where they learn to recognize the correct spelling, and some mazes where they try to find the correct words.  It teaches a lot of common rules and also the 'rules' about exceptions to the rules (some of which I hadn't realized existed - much better than thinking that rules just applied 'most of the time'!). 

[Anxiety about school]

My children aren't yet this age, but I teach high schoolers at our co-op and used to teach at a community college.  One thing that I emphasize to my students (or their parents) after the occasional freak-out is that their grades don't represent their worth as a person, their intelligence, or their ability to learn the imformation.  They reflect how much they knew about the material being tested at the particular time that they took the test.  Some students learn every bit of the material because they are interested, or because it's easy for them, or because they're perfectionists, but it doesn't make them 'better'.  I once had to tell a parent that their child's B on a test didn't represent their value as a human, just their knowledge of metabolic processes...

 

Another thing for her to keep in mind when taking classes by somebody else is that many teachers don't have the expectation that students will earn 100% (I know that there are many philosophies about how to grade and what grades represent).  Depending on the subject, sometimes a teacher looks at a paper and know that it is clearly A work but there are things that the student could improve upon - potentially details that wouldn't be important for a C student, but things that an A student could get right - so they take off a point here and there.  In other words, for some teachers, once the student has earned an A, there isn't really a difference to the teacher between a 95% and a 98% or 100% - they are all excellent work, and comments (and the associated missing points) are there to help the student.  I don't know if this helps, but it might give her a different perspective (said as somebody who took a few college science classes where the tests were designed so that you couldn't finish them - I got an A in a class where I had the top score, never above an 85 on any test - it was weird and stressful, but looking back it was a valid way to run that particular class).

[Critical thinking math workbook?]

Singapore Math has Challenging Word Problems books.  Within each book they're divided into groups by topic (decimals, ratios, fractions, etc) so you can also choose the types that fit with what you're already doing. 

[JA to Jacobs?]

My 10yo went from Singapore 6 to AoPS pre-algebra and then Algebra.  If your kid isn't a math lover, be prepared to take it slow in the beginning while he gets used to the different format.  It's set up so that there's an introduction (with problems) that you need to think about and then actual problems for each lesson, and once we got past the first bit we took a while and did the introduction one day and then the problems the next.  There was definitely a 'maturity curve' with this series, and although some days my son finds it frustrating, other days he loves that he's learned so many tricks and shortcuts for thinking about numbers and seeing the patterns.  The end-of-chapter reviews often take a few days.  I sometimes have to remind myself that you don't get a sticker for staying on schedule with one lesson per day - if they truly master this curriculum, they will be ahead even if they take a little longer go get through a course.  And, I have an old saxon math that I keep as a source for extra problems - when we got stuck with some exponent confusion, I pulled it out and we worked through a handful of simpler problems until he was comfortable with the concepts. 

 

[What's missing in my 2nd grader's writing?]

I sometimes try to kill several birds with one stone and have my children write very short 'reports' or summaries of history or science.  Depending on the topic and age of the child, I might instead have them divide a page into 3-6 parts and write a few words or a sentence (such as with the 4 seasons or stages of a life cycle).  It reinforces and gives us a record of what we were learning and also gives a little bit of practice in writing and organization that I'm optimistically hoping will help them to outline reports when they get older. 

[Feeling overwhelmed...already! Seeking guidance...]

Although we don't use the same curriculum, I know that I have gotten stuck feeling like we had to finish lessons 'on schedule' or one lesson per day.  I'm finding that there are times when I need to slow down to focus on a particular subject, times when we can skip lessons over topics that we already know, and times when I can read about the topic that we're supposed to learn about and then present it to my kids in a different way (shorter, longer, or just different). 

 

For example, instead of always reading the geography, maybe one day pull out a map or globe and use some guided questioning about the region that you're supposed to be learning about to save you from reading out loud (Do you think it's hot or cold here?  Why?  What kinds of food/houses/clothes might they use?  Where do they get water?, etc).  If both you and the children are feeling burned out, it may be that there is too much reading out loud for right now - you're tired of reading and, if they're feeling burned out, they may not be absorbing as much as you would hope.  Until they are both good readers, picking certain science, history, or geography units and doing them with coloring maps, or picture-based books that you can talk about might free up your time to read the books that you want to read out loud. 

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