My dd went on a week-long mission to Haiti this summer, and was offered a month-long internship for next summer, which I think she plans to do. She is also considering long term mission work, and will follow up a month in Haiti with a DTS with YWAM the following year. She'd like to go to India. Praying for your son's calling, and opportunities God will open in his life.

My in-laws never did understand our decision to home school, and never considered what we did at home "school" at all. They did not acknowledge our daughters' high school graduations, or validate the work they did in any way through the years. However, once they began attending college, they rewarded them heavily for good grades (at about $100 per A!), and praised them mightily for being scholars. My daughters, who are sweet and gracious, have each found a time at the Thanksgiving table to thank us for the magnificent foundation they received at home that prepared them for higher learning, and for the other benefits they enjoyed while homeschooling. Yes, in front of the grandparents...who still describe what we did as "taking our kids out of school" when they were young. LOL--I suppose the girls magically learned all they needed for life. Too bad that doesn't work for kids everywhere, huh? You handled your situation beautifully. Don't defend your choice, other than to say, "This is the best choice for our family." And then make it the best choice for your family! Enjoy your precious time together--they grow up SO VERY FAST. Lori

I still like the Cliff's Notes Geometry, the little yellow book you can buy at Wal-Mart for $10. That plus internet sources are plenty, then a good SAT/ACT prep book.

As the mother of gifted/accelerated children, I can attest that it seems "not fair" that they are doing the high school level work at their young age, and should (rightly) be receiving high school credit for it. So, you just have a decision to make: When do you want to "graduate" this child and send him away or enroll him in college fulltime? I ask that question, because if you are going to keep him home until he's 18, why bother getting credits now? So what if he's doing high school grammar and science? Won't he *continue* to do high school grammar and science right up to the end? GRIN. I understand *completely*. My older daughter had TEN math credits on her high school transcript. Now, honestly, I usually just put the last four. After all, if she's completed College Algebra, PreCalculus, Calc I and Statistics at the CC, then it's understood that she had prerequisites to those courses at home, right? :) Similarly, if I'd put all the literature or writing or translating or history or science we'd done at the high school level on her transcript, it would have been ridiculous. The child is just ACADEMIC. And so, she consumed texts and topics like snack food. Anyway, it wasn't a problem to have sufficient quality work there at the end of her senior year to compose a truthful but edited transcript that seemed realistic for the powers-that-be in university admissions offices, and that was supported by her test scores and community college coursework. So, don't stress. Keep good records, and worry about counting credits when your 12 year old is a little bit closer to 18. Or 16. Or whatever age you think is good to go live in a college dorm. :) Lori

If you can afford Chalkdust, then I'd go with that. If not, then the Lial textbooks (Intermediate Algebra, PreCalculus) are self-teaching with lots of good strong problems. Maybe buy CD for the PreCalc student (since she is expressing an MIT interest) and use it again next year for the second student.

If you are talking about the Lial series, you are looking for Intermediate Algebra. :)

My best friend's best friend (is that my best-friend-in-law?) is Donna Tartt! Seriously, PV and Donna were best friends in high school in Grenada, MS, and then PV and I were best friends (are!) in college and beyond. I always feel like an author, once removed, whenever someone recommends Donna's book! LOL!

Well, I don't ban a little junk in my diet (grin) but I also reread The Elegance of the Hedgehog and it's a brilliant fiction that MFS recommended last year on her blog, and since I always read what she tells me to, I immediately picked it up and devoured. It was worth the reread while I had the house to myself while the family was in Haiti serving on the mission field. I've convinced four other women to read it this summer, so I might as well start on you lot. GRIN. Super-light fiction? I enjoy the Donna Anderson mysteries that have birds in the titles...things like Owl's Well That Ends Well and No Nest for the Wicket. And the Archie McNally mysteries...McNally's Folly, etc. I wish Archie was my neighbor! :) Medium-deep nonfiction? I just read Lewis Carroll in Numberland and it was a delightful biography, with lots of good math. DEEP nonfiction? Wanna think? I read Justification by N. T. Wright over Lent (and beyond) and have successfully widened the chasm between me and my understanding of the book of Romans. LOL. Seriously, it's beautiful and unfathomable, the Father's love for us. Pure, unadulterated junk? I just read SIX (yep, six!) books in a series by Katie McAlister that are romantic science/fantasy fiction. Dragons, magic, general rowdiness. No edifying characteristics at all. Just good fun. But of course, after gorging myself on some junk, I always go back to something healthy. My next book is Exemplary Practices for Secondary Math Teachers and a reread of Liping Ma's book. Have a fun reading summer! LoriM

Awwww, Jean! I know exactly how you feel. My firstborn got married in January, and now she lives across town, is working fulltime, and we rarely see her, except at church on Sundays. She's happy and busy (although right now she has a summer cold!). CONGRATS! Enjoy the day. I hope you get to be "Mother of the Bride" in exactly the way you wish tomorrow. I'll be praying for you all. ((Jean)) LoriM

I read Perelandra aloud to my 7/8th grade class last year, and they all LOVED it. I might suggest you do that with the first book. The chapters are short, and the vocabulary is a bit strong for many modern teens, particularly young teens, and it might "read" better if you can pause and discuss the big words. :) Honestly, my kids couldn't wait for me to read what happened next. The looks on their faces when they realized where Perelandra was...it was terrific.

You can probably guess what I'll recommend, since I lean toward "regression" in fundamental math skills. :) I would suggest she take PreCalculus at the CC (which is a FIVE semester hour course at our CC, and meets for 6 class hours each week) to get her groove on before she progress to Calc I second semester, assuming she does well. HTH, Lori

And just to complicate things, in our classical school Logic replaces Science in the 8th grade curriculum. It's the only year that Logic is a separate, formal study, and afterwards it's incorporated into both rhetoric and mathematics...as well as Science. But it works very well for us in 8th grade, because "middle school science" is mostly a waste of time (says a middle-school science teacher!). Now, you know I don't really mean that, but we either would accelerate a high school level science (which is what I did at home, but wouldn't in the classroom), or we'd spend a year on general science primarily for the purpose of teaching them to think and reason like scientists. What better way to learn to think and reason than Logic? Anyway, in high school, I called that course "Ethics" and incorporated Biblical studies as well as right-thinking and formal Logic and Rhetoric studies. In middle school, it was just part of our Humanities block.

I still prefer Cliff's Notes little yellow book for $10. Essential Geometry, no muss, no fuss. Summer course, then get on with Trig in PreCalc.

I'm so glad you went ahead with a celebration. My younger dd said repeatedly how "anticlimactic" graduating felt after attending CC for a year...and yet, when the time for diploma came, she cried and thanked us most prettily. (Not to mention the speechlessness upon receiving her iPad--that was fun!) Have a great summer!

Well, it worked out that way for us, sorta. My older dd was a fulltime CC student but "dual enrolled" at age 16. She took 16-19 semester hours each semester, including summers, until she graduated with her AA at age 18. She moved on to the university, and graduated with her BA at age 20. My younger dd is 17 and graduated after a year at the CC (primarily due to the changes in the dual enrollment program), so she essentially finished all her high school coursework at 16 as well. It didn't require a lot of extra effort for us to do this with our girls. Mainly, we just made good progress in every subject from age 13 forward, and got an early start on maths and sciences. Both my girls did Algebra 1 at age 12, and a rigorous lab science every year. So, when they suddenly seemed "ready" to be college students, they had a good sturdy background to support that. You know, "four years" of high school is very arbitrary. What is really important is a strong liberal arts background in literature, history, foundational knowledge in the sciences, good math skills, and the ability to read, write and communicate well in a variety of forms. It also requires a maturity of thought, and a self-discipline, a desire to learn and a teachable spirit. Tragically, some students haven't acquired that by age 19, and yet many are ready at 16. :)

I would assign the 9th grader essay questions and response papers as well as the senior, but would grade accordingly (gently for the freshman, more strictly for the senior). It will probably help to develop a rubric ahead of time so that you don't find yourself comparing/contrasting the two performances and giving your younger child a complex. :) I think it's much more natural for the students to be studying similar topics, but with differing assessments and perhaps even slightly differing views on the same topics. (One might be researching a biography, while another is interested in weaponry, for example, but from the same time period in history.) My dds are 3.5 years apart, but very often studied the same subjects. My younger dd surprised me at how well she measured up "conceptually" but needed mercy and guidance on her writing skills when she was only 12-14 compared to her sister's 16-18yo. HTH!

My recent-graduate DD and my DH are part of a 19-person team going to Haiti this week to build homes for earthquake victims. Please keep their team in your prayers if you are so led. Love & light, Lori

I highly recommend the book Home-Designed High School for your reading pleasure this summer. :) It is the book I wish I'd written, and read after I'd already successfully navigated 90% of the hurdles with my own oldest. Very moderate, but gentle reminders of all the "musts" related to high school for a college-bound student. And as far as the science bit, we used spine texts and continued studying the subjects classically, with lots of reading, writing and thinking. Most courses used more than one textbook, and several living books, and many hours in the lab. HTH, Lori

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/ HTH, Lori

Most middle school and high school texts contain classic problems on interest rates, sales tax, and global population growth, etc. Even if you find other problems, the examples you cite are presented in nearly every text (and probably too young for them to be relevant IME). Don't toss out the baby with the bath water. Now, I'm all for finding additional word problems, and using more than one text as a resource for a 6-8th grade student...but some of those problems you've mentioned can evoke the best conversations, and give kids a truer picture of where math will impact their adult life. Sticking to problems that calculate area of a rectangle or volume of a cylinder for too long are exactly why many people leave math saying, "When will I ever use what I learned?" I'm reading an excellent mathematical biography of Lewis Carroll right now, and it's fabulous to see the kinds of problems he encountered in texts he used as a young student. They were all "real" and "adult" in nature...and by necessity, calculated by hand. :) HTH, Lori

You won't need anything else. The Lial curriculum is written to the student to self-teach. You probably won't need the TE, but it may be nice for answers to even problems. (Honestly, though, I'd just have your student work the odds, and check answers in the back of her own text.) You will be happy to have a solution's manual for your Algebra 1 student next year...that much easier to check own work. Lial books are written for remedial learning of high school material at the community college level. So, they are written for adult students, and directed toward the student to self-teach. My younger dd used Intermediate Algebra and PreCalculus at home (she'd already completed an Introductory Algebra course). HTH, Lori

In the classical Christian school where I teach upper school math, we will teach the sequence: 8th Grade: Algebra 1, Logic 9th Grade: Algebra 2, Physics 10th Grade: Geometry, Chemistry 11th Grade: Pre-Calculus, Biology 12th Grade: Calculus, Science Elective (Adv. Bio or Adv. Physics or CC dual-enrolled course) HTH, Lori PS (At home, we just did math as we got to it, so we did algebraic geometry and geometric algebra! And then we did science agressively, so we had units of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy every year of high school.)

It depends what you mean by combine. My Dds used at least 3 or 4 different science textbooks for each of their courses, but they certainly did a reasonable amount of work, not everything in every book. Some sources have clearer explanations than others.

We did the same thing for dd#2.

Fred plus the Home Study Companion should be meaty enough. :)