It probably depends on the kids. We use the Mensa lists, and because DS really loves books I supplement based on his interests and/or books I want to share with him. There are a few series that are included in their entirety, but the Mensa lists also include a number of individual books that are part of a series. My advice would be to pick a list, or let your kids pick it, and then supplement as needed/desired. The idea that you have to read them all is silly. By the time you got there they'd be ready for adult literature, and list making in that arena is even worse.

The only thing I have to add is to not be surprised if it takes a week or two to get a response. Grading has a way of taking over every waking moment when you teach multiple classes. Plus, most colleges have their Spring Break in March and many professors use that time to take a break of their own. If you don't hear from him by then, send a follow-up email (if you have an email address). Sometimes things get set aside to do later and then get lost on the desk.

As an actual science educator, the kindest thing I can say about this is it's very pretentious, and most likely the students themselves won't have any idea what that means even AFTER completing the class in question. I wouldn't let it change anything you're doing. As far as what topics you should be teaching, and when, it's not really important as long as they have some familiarity with all the major topics before starting high school science. For the record, the first bit of pretentiousness means the students will make up a product that does something useful. The second piece of pretentiousness could mean two slightly different things - either they will learn to design an experiment to test a hypothesis created after observing the effect of something, or they will learn to support their conclusions with facts and examples. Both are basic to science and are far less mysterious than they sound. A good children's book on the scientific method should explain most of that in far less lofty language.

My ILs purchased a video class on Mediterranean cooking for my husband and I when they learned that we were transitioning to eating more in that style. You might want to take a look there and see what they have. I'd check your local library as well, since the libraries near me carry quite a few items from their catalog (although none of the cooking classes as far as I'm aware). You never know what you can find.

Aside from my personal collection and our homeschool library, DS has two bookshelves of his own stuffed with books. He's an avid reader who takes after his mom, so this is no surprise (except maybe that he only has two LOL). About once every 1-2 years we go through his shelves to get rid of things he doesn't read anymore, much like we do with his toys. Some things I set aside elsewhere for future grandchildren, but most of the stuff he's grown out of I either send to my SIL for our nephew or we yard sale/donate. I occasionally do this with my own books as well, but this only happens about once every 5-6 years because my collection is far more substantial and also tends to be more stable.

I'm definitely the wrong person to ask - I have my own library, and yes, it's overflowing

There's very little prep work involved. In fact, the only prep I've ever needed to do is make sure we have pencil and paper handy to do spelling word lists (they go faster on paper than on the board with the tiles, and then I can save them in his portfolio in case anyone ever asks to see what he's doing).

The reading specialist who evaluated my son at about the same age said that it's completely normal at this point. If it continues after a couple years you might want to have him evaluated for dyslexia, but even then it doesn't necessarily mean anything. If it continues, and dyslexia or related issues have been eliminated, try teaching him cursive - that often eliminates letter reversals. Edited to add: DS is also left-handed.

You can skip the CD - it's just songs that help them remember some of the concepts, but it's not a critical component at all. I'll list the items I recommend, and why... 1. STUDENT WORKBOOK - self-explanatory (one per student) 2. TEACHER'S GUIDE - particularly important at the early levels when you're learning the HWT way yourself, but it also contains tips and ideas to make the lessons more interesting as well as a suggested schedule 3. SLATE - this is important for learning how to form the letters the HWT way, and if your DD needs to work on hand strength, this will be one of the most important pieces (but skip the chalk bits and sponge bits as you can make them cheaper). If you want to try to purchase a different slate for this task, make sure it's about the same size and proportion, has a frame (which helps in proper letter formation), and uses chalk rather than dry-erase or wet-erase markers. Chalk is key to the Wet-Dry-Try method used in HWT and will be particularly important for the repetition needed to develop her hand strength. 4. DOUBLE-LINE CHALKBOARD - the slate is for capital letters and numbers, but the double-line chalkboard is for everything else and is every bit as important for developing hand strength as the work with the slate. Outside purchases need to have a permanent double-line and be wide enough to write entire words rather than just one letter, but there is no real need for a frame on this one. 5. HWT DOUBLE-LINE PAPER - this reinforces the lettering habits learned in this method and is pretty important to have around for practice in the beginning, but once she's mastered the forms and is consistent, you can show her how to make the same letter forms on regular notebook paper or the three-lined paper that is popular in the lower grades (buy the smaller pack if you're not sure, unless you're working with more than once child). As I mentioned above, the chalk bits and sponge bits are cheaper to make yourself from standard-sized chalk and normal kitchen sponges. Just stick to white or yellow chalk if you can, because the darker colors don't work as well for the Wet-Dry-Try method. I also didn't buy the short pencils because it was cheaper to purchase a small box of golf pencils. We weren't even done with those when DS was ready for regular-sized pencils. The wood pieces were useful to us, mostly because they reinforced the strokes used for most letters, but they aren't critical. I was going to make them out of cardboard, but my husband made a set for me from the same material the company uses (woodworking is his hobby). You won't need them past the first grade curriculum anyway. Same goes for the capital letter cards. They're useful, but not critical, when working with one or two students - there is a picture on each capital letter page that shows how the pieces would be laid out if you really need to reinforce that, and cardboard or craft foam is plenty sturdy enough for a homeschool situation. We skipped the sentence strips, the notebooks, and the CD. The CD is great for working with a larger group of kids in a classroom, but really isn't much value added. The other two are redundant components if you have the paper, and are more useful for classroom situations. If your daughter likes to write and illustrate her own stories or journals, it might be worth picking up a package of the notebooks to encourage that. Let me know if you have any questions. HWT was recommended to us by an OT for similar reasons (DS needed to work on and strength and fine motor skills).

We're combining WWS and Creative Writer - at the request of DS. Not sure yet how far we'll in both since we're still working it out, but I like the idea of mixing expository and creative writing for him.

This is true of Gordon College as well, but last time I checked they didn't have a nursing program anyway, unless it's a partner program with another school.

All three have their good points and DS10 loved both of the stories he's read so far (Peter Pan and Black Beauty, with Treasure Island on his current reading list), but none of them are make-or-break. DS10 didn't find Black Beauty preachy, although I certainly understand why many do. He also didn't feel that way about Little House on the Prairie, which drove me nuts for the same reason. I suspect kids ignore that better than adults do. If you skip Treasure Island, be sure to include a different Stevenson at some point - his books are wonderful and I highly recommend reading at least one. Which one isn't all that critical, so pick whatever appeals the most.

Same here - as a BSEE he did very little writing outside the required English classes.

The recommendation on pg 52 of the last edition says to start when the child has almost gone through OPG or another phonics primer. I'm not aware of any more specific recommendation, but there might be something in FLL or WWE that I've since forgotten We didn't follow that recommendation either, although we had at least finished the sections on short vowels and long vowels (I think we were still working on the lessons covering alternate spellings for various vowel sounds).

This is awesome news!

The lessons are not meant to be a daily schedule. The reason for this is every kid is different, particularly with math, and some topics may take a lot longer than others with one kid while another kid might spend roughly the same time on each, or even flip the relative amount of time needed for mastery. Math is something you should pencil in as approximate dates you expect to hit certain topics, but don't schedule the details more than a couple days (a week at most) ahead. DS flew through addition and number bonds very quickly, but got bogged down for a while in subtraction. In our case we stayed on schedule pretty well because I had supplementary materials for him and when he was bogged down on a topic we did less of those because we didn't have time. We also spent more time on math than WTM recommended because DS likes math (even when he struggled to get something) so we had time to include a couple extras (Challenging Word Problems, Intensive Practice, and some math puzzles/games I picked up on Amazon or created myself).

Nice list Hunter

In the beginning I didn't have him write his own narrations for history most of the time. We did WWE four days a week, then I picked one from other subjects for the 5th day - sometimes it was history, sometimes it was grammar, and sometimes it was from bible study. We rarely did more than that until about halfway through the year when it was easier for him to do more writing.

Yes, some kids and parents are a pain in the butt - good luck fixing that in a country where everyone is entitled to an education. However, your assumption that engineers are paid well is very funny to me. I've got numerous engineers in my family, including DH, and count loads of them among my friends. Engineers without advanced degrees get paid about as well as teachers, if they're lucky. Once upon a time they may have been able to pull down better pay from the start, but those days have been over for a very long time. It's a rare individual who gets a decent paycheck with only a BS in some area of engineering - obviously the mileage varies with the type of engineering degree. And I agree with earlier posters who have pointed out that preschool is both not universal in the US (we had to pay for it) and not the answer. Early childhood education is helpful for those kids who need a boost that they won't get at home for whatever reason (and there are a lot of reasons why that can happen, many of which are not the fault of the parents). Even all-day kindergarten is not the answer, and that's far from universal either. The answer is as multi-faceted as the problem, and it's not about more money, better teacher pay, bringing back "specials", parent involvement, more teacher autonomy, better teacher training, more selective teacher training programs, or better research. It's about all of those things. And more. It's also about changing the way we look at education. If the population doesn't value education for its own sake, neither will our kids.

The schedule the state we live in requires for homeschoolers is ridiculous as well. The number of required hours is insane and clearly meant to mimic a classroom situation where the teacher spends a great deal of time managing the group. We never need the amount of time they require to cover the material, but I "schedule" it anyway. I just do the same thing I remember my teachers doing when some kids were finished early - depending on the class, we were allowed to read, draw, work on homework for other classes, or talk quietly. My son lives for Legos, so he usually opts for extra Lego time, but he likes book time too.

Two seconds with 100% accuracy two days in a row gets rewarded with dropping to weekly instead of daily. Continued accuracy for a month drops it to monthly, and if the accuracy is still there we just drop it and count it as mastered. If he starts stumbling once we reduce the frequency we go back to the frequency that met with success but extend the number of times in a row he needs to meet that standard before moving forward again. I've never sped it up past 2 seconds per flashcard because by the time we get to monthly he's whipping through them so fast I figure it's not relevant. We went to 20 with addition/subtraction (first grade), and to 12 with multiplication/division (second grade, even though some of them weren't covered until 3rd grade in our curriculum - once he got going he wanted to be done with it).

Thank you!

That sounds like something I would have done at that age. I did, actually, just never thought to do it with math books since I never got those until school started.

Depending on the rules in the state where you lived when she started school, normal progress would mean she either turned 14 in the calendar year that she finished 8th grade, or she would turn 14 somewhere between the start of 8th grade and the start of 9th grade. This only matters for kids with birthdays between the cut-off date and December 31st. I was one of the oldest in my class because my state went by calendar year and my birthday is early in the year - my son is either near the youngest (because the state we started in cares about school year with a Sept 1 cut-off for most kids), or somewhere around the middle of the pack for the state we live in now - he'd be in the same grade in either state regardless. If she will be turning 18 at about the time she graduates HS she is already in the "correct" grade for her age. Doing advanced work just means she'll be that better prepared when she officially graduates, and will have more time to explore her interests. Adding yet another year to that would be overkill.

With multiple kids you can do book-club-like things were they each pick a book they particularly liked and attempt to "sell" it to their siblings (and you). Particularly good books that are too old for the younger kids could even be listened to as a family in audiobook form. Kids can generally appreciate literature above their actual reading level in this form (or, if an audiobook isn't available, as a read-aloud).