We used it and were very happy with it. It can be used at a variety of age levels, just adjust the pacing. I would recommend buying some of the supplemental exercise books and other simple reading material that is annotated in the Orberg method. If you are interested in having your student do the National Latin Exam, just be aware that the order of grammar topics is not well aligned with the order of topics presented in Orberg.

I will throw something out that is not quite what you are looking for, but might actually be a good fit. We did the free online U.S. history classes from Hillsdale. There are two U.S. history classes: The Great American Story: A Land of Hope. This class has 25 lectures by the Wilfred M. McClay, who wrote the accompanying textbook, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. There are multiple choices quizes for each lecture, and also discussion questions that you could use as essay prompts, if you wanted your student to write some papers or answer "essay" questions for a test. American Hertiage: From Cololonial Settlement to the Current Day. This is only 10 lectures (with multiple choice quizes), but it has an excellent reading list of original texts. You, of course, asked for an interactive lecture, which these are not. But I watched the lectures with my daughter and discussed them with her. And since the courese are free, you only need to buy the book, Land of Hope. There are links to online downloads of the original documents, although Hillsdale sells a reader that contains all of them (and more).

The open-endness of DO is both a blessing and curse. It does allow us to work around other time contraints (especially my daughter's Irish dance competitions). The first year with pre-Calc she stayed pretty much on schedule. But this year was a heavy dance year and I allowed her to prioritize her British Lit class, the teacher of which had strict deadlines. If we are lucky, both Calculus and Physics will be done by the end of August. Since the British Lit class wrapped up, I have been able to keep her pretty close to the weekly plan on the DO syllabus.

Thanks. The AP Statistics looks like a real option.

Consider using Familia Romana by Hans Ørberg. Rather than putting a focus on translation or using Latin to teach English grammar or root words, Familia Romana puts the emphasis on reading and understanding Latin as we do when we learn other foreign languages. The book has only Latin text in it. Each chapter builds incrementally on the previous chapters so that the student, aided by pictures that illustrate new vocabulary, and grammatical examples, can work through the next chapter. There are supplemental books that are also useful, some by Ørberg and some by other followers of his method. I learned Latin along with my daughter and so taught her myself, but there are online resources. Here is one from the publisher: https://www.hackettpublishing.com/familia-romana-online. The book has about 36 chapters. Nine or ten chapters a year would be adequate through 7, 8, and 9th grade. There is a follow-on book, Roma Aeterna, but you might want to spend a year reading other easier texts before moving on to it. It is quite demanding. Also, you should consider taking the National Latin Exam, regardless of what text you choose. There is a level for beginning students which would be useful to take when starting with Familia Romana, in part because Familia Romana teaches the grammar in a different order than most textbooks and by the end of chapter 9, you may not have all the grammar that would be needed for the Level 1 exam. My daughter complained that there were never any prizes for the things she was good in, so we were delighted to find the NLE. She has now earned 6 gold medals.

I thought of another book that is less overtly political than my earlier suggestions: And Ladies of the Club https://www.amazon.com/Santmyer-Helen-Hooven-Ladies-Hardcover/dp/B00J5T4L34/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=and+ladies+of+the+club&qid=1620223417&sr=8-2 This book wasa best seller when in came out in the mid 1980s. Having grown up in Ohio, I found it especially interesting since it traced the lives of the families of a group of women in Ohio who form a book/literary club right after the end of the civil war. It gives excellent insights into social, religous, and political attitudes from 1865 to 1930. I found the religous topics particularly interesting, as it explores the conflicts in beliefs and attitudes among various Protestant groups in matters ranging from Christmas parties to vaccines. The men in the novel are largely Civil War veterans who become the prominent businessmen in town and leaders in the Republican Party at a time when Ohio was a key political player. The portrayal of blacks, Jews, and Catholics in the town's life is also very interesting.

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. Be sure to get the new translation of the recently rediscovered original German manuscript. https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-at-Noon-Arthur-Koestler/dp/1501161318/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1CPGZSKEJD2RE&dchild=1&keywords=darkness+at+noon+by+arthur+koestler&qid=1620177694&sprefix=darkness+at+noon%2Caps%2C276&sr=8-1 Gulag Archepeligo by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Witness by Whittaker Chambershttps://www.amazon.com/Witness-Cold-Classics-Whittaker-Chambers/dp/162157296X/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=autobiography+w+chambers&qid=1620177988&sr=8-7 I also second King Leopold's Ghost, but I would pair it with the Joseph Conrad novel, Heart of Darkness.

My dd has been very happy with the math classes from Derek Owens. Unfortunately, she needs a math class for senior year and is now completing calculus. Can anyone recommend an online Statistics class? I would prefer it not be AP, as we have other priorities than math classes.

Hillsdale College has a wide array of free courses related to politics and history. The lectures we have done include recommended readings, quizzes, and discussion questions. https://online.hillsdale.edu/#home

DD is eighth grade and we are on track to finish Familia Romana (Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata by Orberg) in January (currently on chapter 32 of 35 chapters). We have used it for the last 4 years. I expect us to continue with the next book by Orberg, Roma Aeterna. Prior to Familia Romana, we used I Speak Latin. We have been very happy with Lingua Latina.

I second the recommendation of I Speak Latin. I have written about it in these forums in the past, so I won't repeat all that since you can search on it but just give a few short reasons: It teaches real grammar and vocabulary It is not workbook based, but focused on speaking and listening It's fun It is scripted for the parent.

I would recommend KISS Grammar. Very little writing, mainly analyzing sentences. It's free and is available online. I used it with my daughter and she knows more grammar than I ever did in school.

Well, I know that I am a minority opinion on these boards, but I found SSL a complete waste of time, and we used it at a much younger age that 3rd grade. I suggest instead I Speak Latin by Andrew Campbell (http://ispeaklatin.com) . Its completely scripted for the parent that knows little or no Latin, is fun and engaging, and focuses on speaking Latin (so there isn't a bunch of writing and translation). Best of all by the end of the 50 some lessons, your child will have learned key features of Latin grammar: genders for nouns, different cases, endings for present tense verbs, adjective endings, etc. Even if you do not continue with Latin, these grammatical concepts will help pave the way in other European languages that you might study. The book suggests making flash cards by drawing pictures and writing the Latin word on the back. I suggest taking pictures instead. You can print hard copies cheaply at Costco, or import them into a computerized flashcard system like Anki. This book would be more fun if you have more than one student. I only have one daughter, so we dressed up her stuffed animals in old t-shirts (tunics) and gave them all Latin names. That way we had more people to interact with and give directions to. In contrast all you get with SSL is some random vocabulary.

We did Singapore Math in two (approximately) 15 minute sessions a day.

You might consider I Speak Latin (ISL). It does not focus on translation, but on teaching Latin as if you are learning a modern language. It is well scripted for the teacher/parent (even one who does not know Latin--I learned along with my daughter) and does not have a lot of seat work. The author suggests having the student make flash cards of the vocabulary by drawing pictures and writing the Latin word on the back side. We switched to doing photos, that I printed cheaply at Costco (later we switched to the computerized flash card system, Anki). Unlike SSL, you will cover quite a bit of real Latin grammar by the end of the book. If your purpose for learning Latin is specifically to teach English grammar, ISL should be supplemented with a good English grammar course (I recommend KISS), since ISL does not drill grammar in the traditional fashion. KISS Grammar would help them with the basics of recognizing adjectives, nouns, subjects, direct objects, etc. in English as well as Latin and give your boys names for the grammatical concepts to discuss the Latin grammar that they are learning by copying patterns in ISL.

We followed the weekly schedule in the HIG, marking in both the textbook and workbook were we wanted to by the end of Friday. I tried to spread the number of pages out evenly by day, but did also pay attention to the individual lessons. I didn't care if the workbook got behind the corresponding textbook lesson by a day, since I figured it was good way to cement things in DD's memory. But in most cases, I think we did the corresponding lessons on the same day. I did split the math lessons into two sessions: morning for the TB and afternoon for the WB. That was a strategy to make math less onerous and to help cement the lesson in her memory. We usually did lessons 5 days a week, but sometimes compressed it into 4 if the number of pages to cover was not too great (especially if there was a holiday that week that we wanted to take off for).

We did AoPS Prealgebra after Standards 5B. On the whole I was happy with it, but I wished that I had used direct instruction rather than discovery method when introducing each topic. That would have made it more like the math we did with Singapore. And we probably would have had fewer melt-downs. I did feel that AoPS had too many problem geared to math competitions that were too puzzle-like and didn't reflect any real world application of math. On the other hand, if one can solve those puzzles, one definitely has a very good grasp of the concepts.

We followed the weekly schedule at the front of the HIG. I marked the pages we were suppose to reach by Friday in the textbook and the workbook. Then divided those pages over 5 days. Of course you have to be careful not to let the workbook get ahead of the textbook lessons. But I don't remember that be a big issue. Because of holidays, etc., sometimes I divided the pages over 4 days, so we could days off. My daughter had no problems keeping to the suggested schedule.

KISS Grammar. It has short exercises and the student constantly reviews since each section just adds one more concept to the items that must be identified in the sentences being identified.

OPG definitely reflects the pronunciation patterns of its author. I found a number of them differed from my own. The long-u words was a source of some amusement in our family, since my wife's English grandmother had very used the long-u sound (with the initial y-sound) for words like "tube" and "student." My wife would imitate her grandmother with an exaggerated accent, and we just explained that there are lots of different regional accents in English. Rather than say things are wrong, we talk about certain pronunciations being "standard" or "non-standard." Most people have some non-standard pronunciations or grammatical usages. I was disappointed that Susan Wise did not explicitly address where her pronunciations might differ from other common pronuciations. The funniest incident of this sort in our house was the short-e sound. I was reading the list of short-e words: pet, let, met, etc. When I came to "g-e-t," I said "git" using my regional Ohio accent. Only as I heard myself say "git" did I realize that I did not pronounce that word with a short e. We still laugh about that incident whenever we recommend OPC to other families.

My daughter hates writing anything out. We did Singapore through 5B, and she tries very hard to do it all as mental math. We started AoPS Prealgebra back in September and I used the first chapter to demonstrate how teaches in "factory" school expect their students to write out the proofs--one has to show each logical step. She did not like having to do so. We are now in chapter 9 and she still tries to write the minimum possible. She likes list the problem number and then write the final answer next to it. At first she tried to get away with writing a few numbers off to the side, but it was difficult to figure out which numbers went with which problem. At least now, she draws a box around all the work that goes with the problem and circles the final answer. But it is still a struggle to get her to write the intermediate steps.

Yes, I think it would be beneficial. I have had a terrible time getting my daughter to neatly write out math problems so that I can follow what she has done. At first, she wanted to list the problem numbers on the left hand side, and then just write the answers there. The associated work was scribbled off to the right in no organized way. I have emphasized to her that I need to be able to find the work that goes with each answer, and I have tried to get her to write down the problem she is working on and then write each step below that, and then the answer. But she still wants to cram all of her work in a tiny little space, and resists writing most of the steps. She gets upset if, when correcting problems, I write the problem in larger script on the blank half of the page. She complains that I am wasting paper (as if we had a shortage). We also used Singapore Workbooks for 1 through 5, so it was not really an issue before. But now we are doing Art of Problem Solving Prealgebra, which assumes one is doing the problems on a separate page.

Unfortunately, we did not discover Anki until we had finished ISL. Indeed, we were most of the way through our first year of LLFR. We started out trying to make hand-drawn flash cards for ISL, then shifted to taking pictures that I had printed cheaply at Costco. I never got around to entering all of our ISL vocabulary into Anki. I do have cards for LLFR from chapter 1 to 21. I am currently making the cards for chapter 22. We based our deck on a couple of shared decks that seem not to be available any more. Neither deck was complete when I imported them. I converted the cards to forward and backwards, and added pictures (some of our own, but also ones off the Internet). There were some inconsistencies between the two original decks, which I have not completely cleaned up. Also, neither of the original decks went beyond chapter 20. I also created some grammar cards using the cloze feature. If you want this deck, I don't mind e-mailing it to you, but send me an e-mail so I can mention some of the issues/inconsistencies.

I suppose that is possible. My daughter is also very adept at languages. We raised her bilingual with German, and had also done some Spanish before starting Latin. So she was comfortable with learning languages from the very start. But she does not like the physical act of writing, so I preferred a more oral program. ISL is definitely more oral. LLFR has exercises at the end of the chapter and in the supplementary books. Sometimes we do them orally, but I think I usually did them written on a white board (which dd prefers over paper). I don;t think there is any advantage in multiple introductory books. SSL was a complete waste. Minimus was fun, but not productive. The only real question would be, might your child get overwhelmed by the pacing of LLFR without a preliminary course geared to children? Because they share approaches, ISL works well as an intro to LLFR,, which does move along quickly. ISL is nice because the lessons were easily covered and geared to a child. While it is true that the LLFR repeats the grammar learned in ISL, it also throws new things at the student. I think it benefited my daughter to have had ISL first so that she was pretty solid on the first two declension and present tense verb endings before starting LLFR. Also, the lessons in ISL introduces some neo-Latin vocabulary, so that you can talk about things in your daily life. My daughter found ISL fun (we dressed her stuffed animals up in togas and gave them Latin names so we had more participants), and that helped keep her interested in Latin. (She also loves the story in LLFR.) I also highly recommend using Anki with whatever book you choose. Anki has made a huge difference in our retention of vocabulary.

Just to clarify, the text that I have been calling Familia Romana is part 1 of Lingua Latina (the full title is something like Lingua Latina per se illustrata: Familia Romana Pars I). I have been very happy with I Speak Latin and Familia Romana/Lingua Latina, so I am glad to hear that I am not alone. :laugh: There seem to be very few users of ISL on these forums, but the book deserves a wider audience. Similarly, Familia Romana is not so well known, probably because it is actually intended for an older audience, but my grade-school aged daughter loves it.