Is that the one from the Coursera instructor? We did a lot of that course last year!

We have been mostly successful. Red means we dropped it or haven't started; blue indicates success. MCT CE 1 vocabulary : DD hated it so we are doing our own word roots study Blackbird's poetry program : DD really likes it; we are just going more slowly than recommendation because we are heavy on writing this year. Philosophy for Kids + Philosophy Rocks (thanks to Farrar for 2nd book idea) : Biggest hit ever was Philosophy for Kids. We have finished them both as of this week, and DD is so sad about it! I am working on plan for next semester. Megawords 3 : We finished but DD is so sick of it. We just moved on to our own spelling based on misspellings in her work. It's more successful so far. Analytical Grammar + MCT Voyage : She hated AG and I never ordered MCT Voyage. I think I won't. We are doing our own thing with diagramming instead which she is much happier about. Blackbird Intro to Composition + Cover Story : Doing both but slowly, but they are going well Pre-algebra : AoPS/Lial other mashup, maybe even TabletClass : She's not a huge fan of TabletClass but I like that it gives us a starting point so I know what to add. We are pulling in lots of stuff from every other pre-algebra program. We are making very good, solid progress. Medieval/Middle Ages using OUP, History Odyssey, and K12 Human Odyssey, and Plague unit from RFWP : Going really well. We added a bunch of historical fiction too, and we are nearly done with the Plague unit which ends our European portion; we move on to Asia in the MA after the holidays. Science overview using Dr. Arts Guide, Magic of Reality, History of Nearly Everything, Omnivore's Dilemma and more McHenry. We got DH involved too, and this has been awesome. So glad I took this approach this year. I've had to track down some other resources because it's going more quickly than I expected. Foreign language. Still TBD : I'm a loser and haven't resolved this yet. On my list for after the holidays. Circus arts group and private lessons: She auditioned and was accepted into her first aerial dance troupe and this will take up a lot more time starting in January. Group chorus, pottery classes: All good WTMA Study Skills : Dropped before started. Also added: 1x weekly outdoor program that she loves Several hours/week volunteering with toddlers at preschool; she loves this too Semi regular social gatherings with other middle schoolers Monthly science field trips

We used a ton of Great Courses audio books last year. I didn't use the video for any of these; I got them all inexpensively through Audible. Of those that you listed, we used a lot of lectures from these last year: History of Ancient World: Global Perspectives (she likes this) Food: A Cultural Culinary History The Other Side of History; Daily Life in the Ancient World ( a lot of money, but she may really like the subject) We also used several lectures from: Cultural Literacy for Religion History of Science

Yes, we will be facing this issue next year too. I might just have to stick to K12 Human Odyssey and supplement with the Pages from History as appropriate.

Yes--those have been much easier to find and I have a great list. We have just had some great luck with these young people editions, and I haven't found them as easily!

I'm looking for young people versions of contemporary science and history books that were originally written for adults. DH, DD, and I have a family book club, and we've found that these books work really well for our discussions. DD's reading level could handle the adult versions (and in the case of Bryson she probably would have preferred it), but I think that it just made it more approachable to use the young people versions. For example, we have read: - Magic of Reality (Dawkins) - Omnivore's Dilemma Young Reader's Edition (Pollan) - The Third Chimpanzee for Young People: On the Evolution and Future of the Human Animal - A Young People's History of the United States (Zinn) - A Really Short History of Nearly Everything (Bryson) We are about to start: - We Are the Weather Makers (Flannery) I'm sure my list makes it obvious that we are liberal, secular folks, and I am not interested in wandering from that line of thinking right now. Thanks for any suggestions! ETA: I should clarify that most of these editions are targeting grades 7-9 and up. I am not interested in versions that are any lower than that age range.

Crazy! The game I ordered arrived today!

I would try pre-algebra, or at least Hands on Equations. We aren't using AoPS right now but we are using a mix of other things, and the first several chapters (or half of the book or more) of any of them are just review of elementary math. DD flew through them; nothing was new. We're finally working in equations and inequalities, and it's the first time we've had to slow down for a while, and I realized that it's because we finally reached something new! And, it's algebra. There isn't anything "pre" about this part of it. Pre-algebra is just a bizarre gap year, and now I realize why so many people just skip it and go to algebra. For DD, it was right to do pre-algebra first because she gained confidence flying through those early chapters. (And now I am probably going to go back through the material with AoPS.) I used to randomly give her practice on different skills to keep them fresh while she worked on something new, but I don't have to do that now. She has to remember all operations, negative numbers, fractions, exponents, etc. to do the equations. It's built-in review! And, now, she finally gets something out of it. A solution.

Oops.. didn't check out fast enough for Concept, but I got Tokaido, which I have been meaning to do for a while. Exploding Kittens is one of our favorite games; DH has always read his comics and we funded it on Kickstarter. It's a lot of fun. Might require slightly irreverent sense of humor!

Not really. I still have to plan some new things for next semester, and we are tackling a lot this year that we might not finish so will just continue them into next year. So, I probably won't really start planning for next year until February or so.

I have a hang up with STEM meaning Legos, Minecraft, robotics, competitions, etc. My DD is fairly evenly mixed with her humanities and science interests (much like her mom!), but her science interests focus more on biology and earth science, like evolutionary theory, paleoanthropology, marine biology, space, meteorology, etc. My solution is to schedule a monthly field trip focusing on the science she likes. So far this year we've done a puffin marine biology tour, Neil de Grasse Tyson talk, lemur lab, Homo naledi lab visit, and we have a NOAA trip scheduled on Wednesday. She loves math, but visibly (and loudly) shutters and expresses her disdain of math competitions. So, in January I'm starting a math club. DH ran one for them when they were younger, and we miss it. I'm having less success with the humanities, and not for lack of trying. We live in an area with several large universities, but it's harder to track down the right folks in the humanities to host field trips. My best attempt so far this year was to go to the Ren Faire for our medieval studies. Sigh.

My DD is very similar. She has an incredible writing voice, when she actually writes. We used Writing Skills with good success too, but she was done with it before we finished it. I'd say we completed about 85% of it last year. This year I am using a combination of Cover Story and materials from Blackbird and Company. Cover Story has a fair bit of work that she considers busy work. I tell her if she produces quality final results, then I won't make her do the work she doesn't want to do. We are absolutely not going at the speed they recommend, which is 3x week. With our schedule, she generally does 1, sometimes 2 per week. She does this largely independently. She watches the videos, completes the work, and then I give feedback and work with her on editing. She's on lesson 20 now so I doubt we'll finish by next September. But, she's mostly enjoying it. I think the biggest risk for us is whether she burns out before the end. It's 72 lessons, which seems a bit excessive to me. She loves the idea of producing something tangible, like a blog or magazine. I promised her that we would do something with it. It's a great introduction to all sorts of writing techniques and styles and provides scaffolding that she needs. We are using the poetry and essay materials from Blackbird and Company too. DD is really enjoying the poetry one, and we are going much slower with that one than they recommend too. I think it's supposedly a 7 week program, but we are drawing it out much more than that. She does this mostly independently too. I do often work with her on more info about literary or poetry terms, and we discuss her work and the poems weekly. We started the essay program too, but I don't do it nearly as often. It's somewhat misleading because a lot of that one involves working in other books (like Thinking in Threes) so there is actually a lot of required work. So, we just do it when we have time. My girl has gone from being a super reluctant writer to producing some kind of written output on a daily basis now this year. This has been a tremendous growth area for her this year, and I think it has a lot to do with the materials I've chosen.

The link she posted for Duke TIP had a lot more than she posted in her thread. I just wanted to mention that because I found some real gems that I hadn't heard about before.

Thank you for posting that list! I think I have finally found a contest that DD will love!

When I was researching, I found quite a few posts from people talking about them, but not many from people who actually completed them. DD is interested in the ferret one so we are considering it for the spring.

Just following up in case anyone else is interested. We started this, and DD really likes it. I think the parent guide could be better organized and structured. It's still very much structured like a school program rather than a homeschool curriculum. I am making it work because she really likes it, but it is making me a little nuts. We're not going nearly as quickly as the recommended schedule because we are still doing a lot of other things. But, we should still finish by the end of next month. I'll post again when we finish with more specific info.

DD liked the Story of Snow book when she was younger; it's the science of snow: http://www.amazon.com/Story-Snow-Science-Winters-Wonder/dp/0811868664/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448337375&sr=8-1&keywords=story+of+snow

This older thread covers many of the options. I can't recall if it includes Jousting Armadillos or Math Mammoth 7. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/342798-pre-algebra-fence-straddlers-master-thread/ We did chapter 1 of AoPS last spring. Then we took a break from structured math until August. Since then, we've been using TabletClass as our starting point combined with Jousting Armadillos (which she hated last spring but likes a lot now). It works okay. I don't think TabletClass goes into enough conceptual explanation nor provides enough practice. However, it takes the initial burden off teaching for me. I can then just focus on providing additional conceptual understanding (with JA) or practice or nothing if she gets it. I use Dolciani, Lial, Key to Algebra and some other random materials for additional practice. I have Math Mammoth too, but we've never liked that curriculum's style and still don't. So, I don't really use it. I'm still contemplating going back through some topics with AoPS pre-algebra. She does not have the patience or inherent interest in math to do it on her own with the discovery method, but she does well with it if we partner with it. I think it will work better for us to use it to go back to it after using these other programs. This is not how most people use it. But, I'm working with a perfectionist who is intolerant of failure. We have made significant progress with this by using Beast Academy over the years, but the emotional leap to AoPS was a big one for her. Our general approach to math has been consistent with this approach. We have never stuck with a single curriculum because of DD's learning style. If she gets a concept, we don't need to spend much time on it. If she gets stuck, doing more of the same doesn't help. I have to pull in a variety of perspectives, and then she leaps ahead several concepts. My point? Each of these programs provide similar material in different ways. So, don't get swayed to use a particular program just because other people do.

We raised DD electronic toy/media free until about the age of 4, but she didn't start reading until age 5. (Yes, that means she never had an electronic toy, saw a movie or TV show, used a computer, or anything for the first 4 years of her life. DH and I both work in high tech but made a conscious lifestyle choice.) At 11, she is pretty much completely disinterested in most forms of electronic media. Except for educational documentaries, she has seen maybe a dozen movies in her life (her choice at this point; we have practically forced her to watch the ones she has). We are a no TV family. She has completely open access to an iPhone, iPad, and Macbook but she primarily uses them for school and limited email/text with friends and DIY YouTube videos, craft project ideas. She has only a passing interest in some games, like Sims or a couple on our Wii (like Just Dance). Technology is absolutely not her focus or high interest area. She even got a Kindle last Christmas and still prefers real books. She's an avid reader, and it might very well be that it's because she has no interest in electronics, but that's correlational at best. I have no way of proving causation. DH and I are also very avid readers. I am constantly reading for pleasure, for work, for homeschool. DH is always reading. We have an ongoing family bookclub. Reading is part of our family lifestyle.

That's what I was getting at too. We have this approach to schooling because this just simply who DD is and always has been.

We are big discussers here. It's probably the best way to describe my approach to schooling, and I have an only child. She's 2e, gifted with working memory/processing speed issues so it originally was just the best way for her to learn. Her brain was bursting with all these Big Ideas that she wanted to discuss, but she just couldn't make her body produce content in any way except for talking about it. As she's gotten older, her ability to produce output has increased dramatically, but our approach remains very similar even though she has more independent work. I still read aloud daily, and the topic varies considerably. I do historical fiction, history, science, contemporary fiction, philosophy, anything... We stop and discuss while we read. I ask her what she thinks about what is happening, why it's happening, etc. I don't use lit guides or study guides. I've tried, and it's made learning too artificial for us. I also give her assigned reading in all subjects, and we discuss them. We don't always agree, and I love that. (For example, we have an ongoing debate about mind/brain connections that keeps popping up everywhere.) She has absolutely loved Philosophy for Kids (not sure if it's the same book as previous poster). I started with her just doing one question a week and then we discuss on Fridays. But, she loved it so much she decided to do at least 5 a week! We have these amazing discussions every Friday. One of her assigned readings this year was "How to Read Literature like a Professor" (kids' version), and we talked about it. I didn't make her start analyzing every book she was reading. But, I asked her for examples in some of her favorite books, and we discussed. She's very interested in finding hidden meaning in books now. It has her questioning intention and meaning in her readings. She absolutely loves poetry discussions, and she has really enjoyed Blackbird's Poetry curriculum this year. They give a nice scaffolding to evaluating specific aspects about a poem which leads to great discussions. DH, DD, and I have a non-fiction family book club. Right now we're all reading "Omnivore's Dilemma" (young person edition) and discussing on Sundays. We ask a lot of open questions, have great discussions, and talk about how it impacts our real life choices. We watch documentaries, read current science research, attend lectures, and talk and talk and question and discuss. We talk about Big Issues and small ones. Our entire homeschool existence is based upon critical thinking by way of asking questions and discussing.

We are fortunate to live near the base university of one of the primary researchers on the Homo naledi find. We actually visited his lab about 15 months ago well before the recent announcement because we had been following the research on their blog. Yesterday I arranged a small field trip for about 10 homeschooled middle schoolers and some parents. I vetted for interest in evolution so we'd have an engaged audience. DD's loves paleoanthropology so that this is an amazing opportunity. The kids were amazing--they had great (and some hilarious ones too) questions, and he addressed them all respectfully. It was just a laid back chat in his lab with casts of early hominids around them. DD was so excited that she had him sign her National Geographic article about the research, and he wrote a very supportive note, which DD loved. It was awesome! DH and I took the day off work, and a few hours later we surprised her with a trip to see the Peanuts movie. She has read just about every Peanuts comic and was eager to see it. It was done pretty well, and I cried. :-) I just love how, in one day, we go from this amazing science chat with a leading scientist to the Peanuts movie.

They posted on their FB page about 45 minutes ago or so. Yes, we are still buying it even though we're in pre-algebra now. It's like a favorite friend we just can't just give up yet even though we don't live in the same state anymore. https://www.beastacademy.com/store/product/5a

We definitely preferred the physical set. I used it with DD when she was in 2nd and 3rd, and here we are in pre-algebra learning about equations, and she is just sitting here saying, "this is so obvious. You just do the same thing on each side of the equation like we did in that program years ago." So, uh, yea, I think it worked!

Those are kinda... odd. But, we felt that way about LoF in general. We didn't get far before concluding it just wasn't for us. I agree about BA, though. We'd love those monsters!