Tokyomarie
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Posts posted by Tokyomarie
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Just bumping this post to the top for a new day. I'm really hoping to get some good feedback from people as they think about what is/was on their mind during that decision making process concerning homeschooling for high school.
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Great comments, Nan!
I add this: Don't forget that teens have mental/intellectual growth spurts just like younger children do. A teen who at 13 or 14 may not seem to have a lot of potential for a 4 year college may be awarded a scholarship for a 4 year college when she's 18!
Have some goals in mind when beginning the high school years but be prepared to revise those goals based on the student's progress through the years.
Don't worry that your child's future will be thoroughly ruined if she doesn't school with lots of books and writing for 8 hours every day from 9th-12th grades. If she's exploring her interests, learning to be helpful around the house, learning to serve other people at home and in the community, and generally engaging with life when not hitting the books, she'll be fine.
Whodda thunk that a teen who spent many an hour fiddling in the bathroom and with no classical violin training until 2 months before her major auditions could get accepted into a professional university music program with violin as principal instrument?
(Well, said teen actually did become self-motivated to hit the books about 2 years before she finished high school & she did have significant other musical training, but still, when she was 14, I wasn't really sure she was "college material.")
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I've also posted this on another set of forums, but since this is also for parents looking at or doing high school at home with their teens, I thought I would post here, also.
If your first child is between 6th-8th grade and you are trying to make the decision IF to homeschool for highschool and if yes, HOW to homeschool high school, what are your questions? What do you wonder about when you're thinking about this decision? What do you worry about when you envision doing homeschool high school?
If you are already homeschooling high school but can remember back to your questions, feel free to jump in.
If you have just started the homeschool high school journey and your first high school homeschooler is in 9th or 10th and you're on the fence about whether to continue, why? What's making you reconsider the choice to educate your child at home for high school?
If you started down the homeschool high school path but have since enrolled your child in a classroom high school why did you make a change? Are you happy with the change?
I've graduated two from our homeschool already and anticipate taking my son through high school. This year I am on our co-op's leadership team and we're wondering what questions families just starting on the journey into high school today have. We think they are somewhat different from the questions that families were asking 7-10 years ago when we started down that path, but I thought it would be interesting to ask here and find out what younger parents are thinking.
Thanking any and all contributors in advance!
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Thanks - that's really good input.
We are planning on a selective private school and will look very carefully into its suitability. There are not that many home educators in the UK and it's extremely rare to HE for the last two years of school, so there wouldn't be any community to be accepted into at that age.
I'll definitely keep your thoughts in mind though and think hard about the best situation.
Laura
Hopefully, being a selective private will be a plus in the character of and level of intellectual stimulation from the peer group. I would try to discern some of the deeper aspects of the culture of the school with respect to acceptance of newcomers in general and whether they've any experience with those with diverse cultural experiences.
In our case, our only viable high school option, for reasons of distance, would have been the local semi-rural public high school- waaaaayyyyy too wrapped up in sports to support the academically inclined student. That's not to diss everything about the school. Its culture simply wouldn't have been a good fit for my dd.
I know the process of coming to a decision on when to move to the UK has occupied a lot of your brain cells- I remember other posts of yours on the topic. When the time comes, I hope it is a smooth transition for your family. Ours was not so smooth, though I tried hard to anticipate and prepare for the challenges of moving to a country our children had not lived in for over 10 years. I'm glad those early days after repatriation are long past!
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I intend for the boys to go to school for at least two years before university. They are double outsiders, growing up abroad and not going to school. I'd like to reduce that a little before they are thrown into college.
Laura
I know, Laura, that you're looking at the UK system rather than the American system, and the options available may be different. I will say that for my oldest "double outsider" as you've termed it, homeschooling combined with dual-enrollment in college classes back here in the USA was a better way to go than enrollment in our local American public high school. She actually found more acceptance as a TCK who is also a gifted student within the homeschool community here than she did from public-schooled peers she met in community activities.
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So glad they were found! What a relief for you and your son.
The larger state schools are a challenge as far as knowing when to make a follow-up call, but some of them have also have a place on the student's web account where the student can confirm whether their materials have been logged or not. Dd#2 applied to two Big Ten schools last year so I can sympathize with the challenge of knowing how long to wait before making a query. One showed her materials as being logged pretty quickly even though it was weeks before we heard from them about the next step (granting of audition). The other was much slower and I finally did call to be sure.
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I am so sorry to hear you are dealing with this headache! I just can't imagine..... and I hope this gets resolved satisfactorily.
For the benefit of others, because I had heard of things like this happening, I was seriously anal about following up on my mailings and any faxes to colleges to get a human being to say to me, either by email or phone, "Yes, we have received all of your daughter's documents." I know these admissions folks are busy people this time of year but the peace of mind that a verbal or written confirmation gave me was worth the bother I put them through.
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I just don't think I can do another classic TOG year. I have ordered Y1 and I feel like the sun is shining!
We have taken 6 years to get this far in history and I don't think my younger children are ready for the content of Y4. I was thinking of having dd read SOTW 4 this summer and then jumping back to Ancients.
What say you ladies and gentlemen?
I think this would work. I would much rather see a mom who is enjoying the materials she's using than one who is getting burned out because the Classic version just isn't as easy to use. I'm not sure whether I'll start this fall or in 2009, but I just purchased TOG Redesign Yr. 1, and based on samples (I haven't received my package yet) I'm sure I will be much happier than I was when I tried Classic Yr. 2 when it first came out.
I did do a kind of "squashed" breeze through 20th century when I was at the end of our first rotation. I had taken longer than 4 years to get through and I had a goal to have my dd do a more thorough 20th century later in high school. I didn't skip 20th century for her but I compressed it into about 2-3 months of reading the spine and related dialectic level literature but not doing any written assignments.
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I've heard lots of good things about it. I mainly would be using it for history, and I'd like something my ds can do mostly independently.
Thanks.
Colleen
I'm doing Core 5 this year with my 7th grade ds. I find that many parents with 10 or 11 year olds doing Core 5 express that the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer is too difficult and not engaging for them whereas slightly older children do better. My son, who turned 13 in Oct., after a breaking-in period of learning how to find information and record it, is doing well and it's just about right on his level. The readers and read-alouds are too easy to use as for a typical 7th grader's main literature/reading curriculum for the year, but they add so much to the study of culture. Because most of them are quick reads, it's not difficult to add a separate literature study for your work in English. As for other writing assignments that go with Core 5, the recommendation is always to use the ideas but adjust your expectations for output to the child's learning level.
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On Self-Educated vs. Accelerated:
I don't see Self-Educated as belonging with Accelerated. The Accelerated board is primarily about younger students whose development is so far above the norm that typcial "grade level" curriculum won't work. Self-Educated is about adults choosing to learn things they didn't learn in their formal schooling. The resources for learning discussed on the High School board are the same resources an adult might choose to use.
On breaking up or combining boards:
Let's just make sure that general chit-chat stays in its own category. I think posts about solving parenting problems that affect a child's education at a given stage are fine on the curriculum boards, but I don't have time to wade through any general chit-chat. I already have a group or two that I sometimes go to when I'm feeling chatty. I want my TWTM board experience to be about finding the resources I need to educate my child at home.
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I would prefer if a split be done that it be K-5, and 6-12! That seems more logical. Most 6th grader's are either in the logic stage, or on the verge of it. In my opinion, they should not be grouped with the grammar stage. :(
~Melissa
This is why I would prefer labels that designate boards according to developmental level. Many families assign "grade levels" according to chronological age for purposes of participation in community groups or for documentation, but there is a range of developmental levels within any group of students of a given chronological age- esp. those on the cusp of the usual ages/grades for a jump in development.
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Something that covers 5-8! What do you think? It really needs to be distinct- There is too much of a gap to wade through everything.
I can live with the forums divided either way though I like the idea of dividing along the lines of the trivium- grammar, logic/dialectic, rhetoric. And I would like those names to reflect stages of development rather than chronological age of child or the grade level that is assigned for documentation or community group purposes.
The reason I like developmental groupings for curriculum questions is that as children may be moving out of one stage for certain skills while not being ready to move on in others. This is especially true for children who are 2E- gifted with learning challenges such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc. They are thinking at a higher level than their written language skills may reflect.
I had not previously visited the K-8 board much because my need for curriculum advice was mainly centered around resources for high school. Now I have a middle school aged conundrum kid who reads at high school level, has a knowledge base in math and history/geography approaching high school, whose analysis skills are many ways still at the dialectic level, but whose writing skills are clearly at the grammar level. My need for curriculum information now spans all three levels- at least for the next year or two- and I would like to be able to browse posts according to learning level more easily.
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I have not used this yet, and the package is new, but Sonlight has released a package that contains Thinkwell's Economics CD-ROMs, Randy Alcorn's Money, Possessions, and Eternity, and a novel, The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, a blank journal, and an IG (which is mainly a schedule). I'm actually hoping to use this resource myself this summer so I can't yet comment on what it's like. Just wanted to say that it's out there as a possible choice for an Economics course.
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Can Sonlight history be bought all by itself? I've found the Sonlight website hard to understand because it seems they try and push the complete package.
I also find it hard to find grade levels since they sell cores by letter.
If I wanted to do Sonlight along with SOTW 3 for 2nd and 3rd graders, with readers... how would I do that?
Thanks!
The pre-school and kindergarten level cores are sold by letter. Currently the cores targeted for grades 1 and above are sold by number, but each level of history is meant to serve a range of ages so the numbers roughly correspond with the LOWEST grade level that would suit the typical student.
Over the years, Sonlight has expanded the options for combining components of the curriculum into packages at the younger age levels because of differing pace of development in reading and writing in young students. Have you looked at the actual catalog- not just the online descriptions? I find it easier to understand the various options for purchasing components by looking directly at the catalog. There is a PDF of the catalog available for download. Of course, you can also request the paper version. The new catalog comes out every year in April.
To answer your basic question, yes, Sonlight's history component can be purchased individually. You would also need to purchase the IG because it is not included in the package labeled "history." If you want to cover the same time period as SOTW 3, look at the Level 2 history.
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We really made the decision quite late in the ball game for our dd. For a number of reasons, we could have made that decision when we returned to the States in 2000 and we were determining whether she should be in 6th or in 7th grade. We decided on 7th based on the normal American cutoffs but I sometimes wish we had stayed with 6th, the grade she was attending in Japan based on Japan's April-March school year.
Making the decision late in the game made it a bit awkward for a few months but dd adjusted quite nicely. Knowing that it was our confidence in her emerging skills and her potential for admission to more competitive college programs that guided the decision, she was ok with it.
Now, in hindsight, I am doubly glad we waited on hs graduation. Dd was a more mature and confident student throughout the music audition process and has adjusted quite nicely to her university this year.
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Maria,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm not sure that deciding to delete year one will be an option if it does not look like it will be in ds's best interest, given that we are using NARHS.
Heather
Maybe it would be good to ask NARHS how they have handled the issue for other students beginning their high school career in 8th grade.
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Some colleges specifically ask that only the last 4 years worth of work be included on the transcript sent to the institution. In other cases, a transcript arranged by subject without a start date and only a projected graduation date might allow for all classes in a 5 yr program to be included. It is really very school specific.
I did a 5 year program with my second dd, who graduated at age 19. We only decided after her third year in high school to stretch her to 5 years because she had such an academic growth spurt late in her career that we felt she would be able to aim for more competitive colleges if she had the extra year. We kept the records for all 5 years, but when we prepared the actual transcript to send, we found that we didn't really need to include the courses she did in the first year. She had a strong enough transcript without listing those first year courses.
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I agree. Small change, big improvement.
As I said in the thread I started, it has become impossible for me to use hybrid mode. I will now be stuck using linear mode, because all the very long links to the individual posts cause the scroll bar to disappear off my screen. Without a scroll bar, I can't move to the bottom of the thread without fancy two handed maneuvers, including using my left hand to operate the track pad.
ETA: I wonder if there is an intermediate setting somewhere between only allowing 30 characters and allowing unlimited numbers of characters that would require a person to have a gigantuous screen in order to view the whole line and still have a scroll bar. In a first reply, approximately 100 characters in the link (not the users name or time stamp) would show up on my screen up to the spot where the scroll bar should be.
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The keyboard arrows will substitute for the scroll bar- after I make sure to click on the thread box so the arrow keys make the thread box scroll, not the whole page. But since I don't use a separate mouse- I only have the track pad on my laptop- that means that I now must use my left hand to operate the track pad and the right hand to operate the arrow keys. The distance between the track pad and the arrow keys is about 3.5 inches, which is too wide for operating the track pad with two fingers and using my pinky to operate the arrow keys. So, that idea doesn't really solve the problem.
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:( I'm feeling quite frowny about the change to the interface in hybrid and threaded modes. I read my forums in hybrid mode and use the thread at the top of the page to find new posts to the thread. With the longer post snippets at the top section, there is no longer any scroll bar- it disappears off the far side of the page. This makes the top section useless. In this case, I lose the benefit of hybrid mode because I then have to read every single post to find out what's new.
Please reduce the length of the portion of the reply that shows in the threaded section.
Thanks for all your hard work in getting this new forum software up! I really do like the change over the other board software.
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Core 200 starts at about the time of Christ. My older daughter did Core 200 after she had done ancient history & lit using other materials. We did use a world history textbook alongside Core 200 to fill in with more of the political and cultural history, but the Core did discuss a lot of those issues as they intersected with religious history. I can't remember the last weeks of the core without looking back at the IG, but it does cover church history through the 20th century.
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I have read the College Confidential boards off and on for the last couple of years and read more of the forums last year when my 2nd daughter was in the college admissions cycle. The music major forum has some very knowledgeable, experienced parents who post, so I would recommend it for any family with a potential music major.
Other than the application & audition process for music, of which I am most indebted to the parents of that forum for posting their insights, I read the forums for the schools of interest to my daughter. That was helpful for getting some visit and application tips. Reading the Parents Cafe has opened my eyes to the thought processes of people who I wouldn't normally spend much time with in real life, though it gets to be a bit much sometimes.
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My older daughter used Sonlight's Core 400 for government study. It is a full year course. She did this study at the same time as she did American History and liked studying the development of our American government in tandem with history. She is a deep thinker, likes to draw connections between events and ideas and this was perfect for her.
My second daughter used NorthStar Academy's one-semester online course that uses the ABeka text and some videos from Wallbuilders along with teacher-created lesson materials and assignments.
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I've done various on-line classes, not teacher-led DVD courses, but after being exposed to TWTM I've preferred to keep history and literature under my domain. I've farmed out writing at times but a full-fledged traditional English class doesn't appeal to me because the literature included usually doesn't mesh with the history I'm doing.
I personally might choose to do outside courses in science, math, and/or foreign language first if I wanted to help the student become more accustomed to other teacher's demands. That would allow me to stay in charge of the humanities portion of the curriculum.
Do I have to make my college-bound oldest do physics next year?
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
I'm unclear here. Your daughter is just turning 16? Does that mean she has 2 years left before you graduate her or is she going to graduate early? If you have 2 years left, I would think about having her do a biological science for her 11th grade year, such as Anatomy & Physiology or Marine Biology since that interests her. She could take it at the CC or she could do it at home. Then, you could revisit the idea again of whether to do physics during her 12th grade year, after she's had another year of math.
If she has one more year of high school left before your graduate her, I guess I would say it depends what sort of college she's aiming for. If you think she's going to be a humanities/social science major, she can probably get by without physics for college entry, unless like someone else says, you are planning an application to the very top schools. I would choose one of the biological sciences for an additional science since that would fit her interests. If she only has one more year of high school and is planning an application to a top-tier college, she should have physics on her transcript. In this case, I think it might be beneficial for her to take a physics for non-science majors at the community college where she'll have someone else to walk her through the course and tutoring help available if she needs it.