I'd love to hear opinions about this text by John Mays Thanks!

Did they ever get back to you?

@AmandaVT @ScoutTN Thank you so much for your input!

@cintinative I'm glad you answered! This will be our first full class and my daughter is excited about it! My 10th and 12th grade high school daughters have loved the mini classes-Fairy Tales and Beowulf.

I'm a little out of the loop and haven't outsourced English for awhile. I'm advising someone. What online English courses do you recommend? A Christian company is fine (and likely prefered). Literature doesn't have to be included, but it could include literature. This will be for a 9th grader. A friend gave me the following input- WTM academy was her favorite between HSLDA, The potter's school, and WTM academy. She felt like the WTM assignments were not busywork and were a manageble amount of work. The price is higher than many, so I'd like some other ideas as well. What else is out there? Do you have any specific instructor recommendations/company recommendations? Or comments about the 3 that I mention above? Thanks!

Math – Precalculus at home taught by me. I’ve used Foerster for the previous 7 kids and for the last 5 I have debated about finding something else Lol! I’ll probably stick with Foerster since I know it, but I’m going to work through AoPS Precalc this summer and see if I think that will work better. Science – Physics taught by me (if you can call teaching what is really rather my stumbling through it with her!) I’ve used Knight College Physics in the past and am debating trying ISLE method with the Exploring and Applying Physics text. If summer planning allows me enough time… Literature – Angelina Stanford (House of Humane Letters) Early Modern Literature. My daughters(10th/12th this year) have loved the self-paced mini class on Fairy Tales and also the one on Beowulf and my rising 11th grader is looking forward to this! This child reads a lot, so she will also be reading some other books (though that wouldn’t begin to be needed for a credit) This is my first ever outsourced true high school class that wasn't writing (this doesn't count a few community college classes for some of my older kids). Writing/Composition – with me, I need to plan this History – US/World up to the Civil War. A History of the American People and other books American Sign Language – Using materials from Bill Vicars https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/ Choir – local homeschool group Excel and Javascript/html/css. – Not sure how to go about this yet and she will probably get a big head start on it this summer because her 11th grade schedule will be full. I have a Son-in-law who is a programmer so we have help when we have questions. We will probably use Code for Teens by Jeremy Moritz and maybe some free resources for html/css and excel through our library’s website. Thanks for starting this thread. It has pushed me to think through it. 2024-2025 will be my penultimate homeschool year which is a little sad. Kendall

Good to know. Have you seen this on real ACT practice(beyond this years online practice test) or on other company's practice materials?

There was also a two column geometry proof!

I was helping a teen who had used the online ACT practice test that is on the ACT website. I was very surprised to see a problem that involved csc (cosecant). I've gone through a lot of real ACT tests or real ACT practice tests and I have never encountered trig functions beyond sin, cos, tan. Have any of you seen this before on the ACT? There was also a more difficult matrices problem than I had seen before. Thoughts?

So, now you might want to try her books Blackout and All Clear. It is really just one long book in two. All Clear is not a sequel, just the rest of the book. To Say Nothing of the Dog is definitely lighter emotionally and very different and we found it very humorous. I'd say Blackout and All Clear are closer to Doomsday in that regard.

Lori, I've always done 1 full English credit that was writing (and all that encompases) and then a half literature credit. Sometimes if I have them write something about literature, once they are writing it that will become the writing project for English and then we start another book in literature. I am going to incorporate into the English credit some speaking based on your suggestion. Thanks! Also, for the Ancient year and the Y2 (400-1600) I've often split the 90 minutes for History and Lit more like 45/45 because the line between lit and history is not as clear in those areas especially Ancient and I wanted to be able to read more books. (I still give the full credit for history and half for Literature) Thank you so much for all of these thoughts. Fuzzy in the back of my mind was this thought of yours "We preferred doing Literature, Worldview, Logic, and Philosophy as more of the main focus of our Social Studies credits, with History as support." And also competing in the fuzzy region (Lol!) was the thought that we have to do a complete chromonlogical Year 400-1600 study as the focus. You have helped give clarity to all of these thoughts. We did a chronological study of 400-1600 both 4 and 8 years ago. Now I can have history as support to focus on the philosophy, worldview, influence, etc of the time period. I WISH I had saved the Lord of the Rings this year. My oldest (12th)slogged through it over the last 3 years and the younger one(10th) read it in junior high on her own. Thank you for all of your input! Kendall

Thanks for sharing this title! Have you read the Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis? I was going to try to read that this summer, but didn't get to it.

Thank you so much for discussing this with me! Yesterday I went to the local college library and checked out Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts by Sam Wineburg and have read the first chapter. He talks about realizing that we do not think like the people of the past and realizing that is a key step. It is going to be a helpful book. I think he was involved with the Stanford think like a historian materials.

I am also going to second Connie Willis. I want my children to enjoy To Say Nothing of the Dog on their own and I assign it (after some exposure to Jeeves, Three Men in a Boat, and reading the Moonstone). This spring I read To Say Nothing of the Dog aloud and even though my daughters had read it on their own the previous year, we all thoroughly enjoyed it as a read aloud - even the child who complained before we started that she had just read it. I agree about Doomsday Book being grim. Connie Willis is an amazing author.

Yes, they will have a 30 minute medieval literature time (1/2 credit spread through the year) in addition to the history(and also a full credit of English). We have done US History for 2 years, AP Us government, and Ancient History (which I wasn't happy with thus wanting to think through what they really should be getting out of this). I'm not sure if I should use history to really focus on learning medieval content or rather just learn the big facts content wise and use the history as a vehicle for writing/thinking/researching/ speaking/summarizing/improving reading skills/other?