I'm not in the States, OP, so you can ignore me if you like. :) To me, the bigger question is... What's the purpose of things like extracurriculars, volunteer work, or part-time jobs for teens? (I realize that everyone is going to answer that differently. :)) Maybe, OP, you and your son could answer that question together. If you both agree that the point (for you) to all of those things is just to have things to put on a college application for a selective school and he doesn't want to go to a selective school, then you can alleviate some of your worry and not push yourselves to do those types of things. If you decide that the point to them (for you) is something less tangible (experience in the "real" world, confidence, gaining a social skill set, etc.), then maybe it's worth pushing yourselves out of your comfort zone even if those things won't be needed for a selective school application. I think it all depends on what you and your family see as the purpose of extracurriculars, volunteer work, and part-time jobs for teens. :) And please understand - I'm not making any value judgments on anyone's thoughts on the purpose of those things for teens! Everyone's family is different, everyone's situation is different, and everyone has to answer the "purpose" question for themselves. Just my two cents. (Even though we don't have pennies in Canada anymore. Maybe I'll have to round up and make it my five cents. Doesn't seem worth five cents, though...)

I've put together two threads on the options for high school biology and chemistry. Here's the chemistry one: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/453617-homeschool-high-school-chemistry/ And here's the biology one: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/468303-homeschool-high-school-biology/ I'll start work on a physics one but probably not until the end of April when I'm finished teaching. Maybe those threads might give you some ideas?

You're right, floridamom. It is an interesting point. My apologies - I think I helped to steer the thread off course. :) So why do we think this is? As I mentioned in an earlier post, some of the YEC adherents that I know are also into many of the Whole Foods kind of pseudoscience. As I said earlier, that actually makes more sense to me - accept all flavours of pseudoscience and not just pick and choose. I do know some Whole Foods lifestyle adherents as well and they are arrogantly dismissive of a YEC worldview. I know one young lady who goes to a psychic on a regular basis but is an atheist. Of course I also know many people who dismiss all kinds of pseudoscience. :) So why do some people feel that it's valid to pick and choose among the varying branches of pseudoscience?

Absolutely. This is why I want the alternative remedies to have to submit to the scrutiny of clinical research and trials. I feel badly for the average person, though, because the media keeps taking a small study, blowing it out of proportion, and then taking another, this time contradictory, study and making it the next big thing. Vitamin E was supposed to be the cure-all according to traditional (not even fringe) media a few years ago. Now they're reporting that taking it has health risks. I'm just not sure how the average person with little to no scientific literacy is supposed to make heads or tails of any of it. In a way, I can't blame them for turning to alternative stuff. All of it - Western and alternative - probably just seem like a big, confusing mess to most people. Alternative purveyors have just been better at selling their stuff in layman's terms - I think Western medicine could take a page from that playbook. ;) I don't know why the really fringe stuff like homeopathy still hangs on. I have a theory that it has to do with people replacing their faith in a deity with faith in something else magical but I'd like to do more reading before I make a statement on that. :)

I have a 5 year blank grid (goes from Grade 8 to Grade 12) that I use to pencil in what I think we'll be doing in each subject for each year. It helps me to see the big picture and to make sure that dd will have the prerequisites she needs for the courses she'll be doing later in high school. I can email you a copy in PDF form, if you like, and you can pencil in your own stuff. :)

Thanks for the book recommendation, Floridamom! Looks interesting. Surprisingly (for the wife of a pharmacist ;)), I don't have any problem with people trying alternative remedies. HOWEVER (a big however), I think the vast majority of people that are trying them and using them don't realize how much they are gambling with their health by not, at the very least, consulting with their pharmacist about any traditional medications they may be taking in combination with any alternative remedies they may be considering. I have heard over and over again that "it's natural so it's safe". AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!! People also don't seem to realize that if they choose to cut their traditional pharmacist out of the picture, the possible detrimental interactions between the different alternative remedies and/or traditional medications that they are taking won't be caught by the pharmacist (who's job it is to catch those interactions). Some alternative remedies DO have biochemically active ingredients and they ABSOLUTELY CAN have an effect on any traditional medication you may be taking! (Sorry - don't mean to be virtually yelling. I just get very, very worried for people sometimes.) This is why I would have much less of a concern with the alternative medicine business (and it is a multi-billion dollar business) if it would subject its remedies to the same scrutiny, research, and labeling policies as Western medicines. If the remedies were shown to be effective, they could be available at pharmacies only so that pharmacists would know what alternative remedies you were taking along with any other Western meds you were taking. The fact that the purveyors of alternative remedies won't allow their products to undergo the same scrutiny as Western meds but still want to keep them on the shelves tells me that those companies care about the almighty dollar more than they care about the health of the people taking the remedies. Ironically, that's what adherents of alternative remedies accuse Big Pharma of doing. Funny, isn't it? ;) And I do agree, Cricket, that many Western meds mask symptoms instead of curing the cause. For me, the difference is that with Western meds, I know that that's what they are supposed to do so I know the root cause is still there. My back is killing me right now and I know that Advil will take away some of the pain but isn't going to fix the root cause. Advil isn't marketed as a cure for back injury. :) With alternative medicines, I don't see that same kind of attention to detail. Most purveyors of the remedies don't distinguish between treating the symptoms or treating the cause. They just seem satisfied if the patient feels better regardless of whether it's a "band-aid" fix or if the main ailment is being treated. They don't seem to bother informing the customer which is being treated - symptom or cause - mostly because I don't think they know (no tightly controlled studies, etc.). I could be wrong on this, though - I haven't made a study of the packaging claims of tons of different alternative remedies. :)

I will start to work on one but it won't be for a few months yet. :) I will also need the physics gurus of the board to look over the thread and make sure I've evaluated programs correctly. I do have some experience teaching all sciences at the high school level (which is why I felt relatively comfortable doing the big bio thread as well as the chem) but I always feel better when experts in the field have given a thread the OK. ;)

I absolutely agree with those who are saying that science doesn't know everything - if anyone ever tells you that it does, you can call them a damned liar. ;) My problem with alternative medicine is not that it doesn't help people feel better some of the time - I'm sure the placebo effect comes into play and, as I mentioned on the other essential oils thread, there are complex biochemical compounds in all kinds of places that can have a biochemical effect in the body. Chemistry and biochemistry have definitely not studied every compound there is nor all the biochemical interactions between every compound, either in-vitro or in-vivo. My concern is with the method that's used to study alternative types of medicine. The reason that it takes a drug in Western medicine up to 20 years to come to market is because it has to go through many, many tightly controlled double-blind, and sometimes triple-blind, studies with as few other variables as possible to make sure the the effect (or non-effect) that's observed could not come from anything else other than that drug. A few posters have said that the alternative remedies have made them feel better and I'm not saying that they didn't. The problem comes when the company tries to market that remedy. Because all they have is anecdotal evidence and the remedy hasn't been studied under tightly controlled conditions, all the company knows is that x number of people feel better - they don't know that it was the actual remedy and the remedy alone that did the trick. Maybe for a few of the people, it was just coincidence that they felt better. Maybe for a few others, it was the placebo effect. Maybe for a few others, they were taking another remedy that interacted with the first one and that's what caused them to feel better but they never made the connection or reported it in their testimonial. Can you see the problem? If the company now tries to market their remedy as "Cures XYZ!", they would be lying. They don't know that it was actually their remedy that made those people feel better. I realize in Western medicine drug testing, you can't always control every variable (we are talking about humans here and we're all unique) but they certainly do the best they can to minimize variability so that if they see an improvement, they are better able to say that the improvement was due to the drug and not something else. That's the scientific method. I'm absolutely not saying that a remedy doesn't help someone feel better unless it's been studied using the scienctific method but the problem is you don't really know it was that remedy. Folks might be now saying that they don't care if it was actually the remedy that worked as long as they felt better. Fair enough but the one of the other parts of the 20 years it takes to bring a drug to market is testing for side effects. Even after a drug is brought to market, it's still monitored for long-term side effects. None of the alternative remedies I know of do that kind of monitoring for side effects. What if that alternative remedy you took makes you feel better now but damages your liver in the long run? What if the alternative remedy seems to help by alleviating a symptom (let's say pain) but doesn't deal with the underlying cause of the pain and because you've self-medicated with the alternative remedy, the underlying caused remains undiagnosed and damages your health in the long run? What I'm getting at was partly echoed by another poster - if you're an adult, you should be able to make decisions about your own health. What I want people to realize is that unless you are the kind of person who looks at ALL angles through the lens of the scientific method and is willing to do a LOT of extra research on an alternative remedy from many, many different sources (not just one slant) and can evaluate whether those studies are valid or not, then you are gambling with your own health in ways you may not realize. Please understand me - I look at Western medicine through the same lens! Western medicine has made many mistakes and been wrong many times but I can look at those Western medicine studies and have all the info I need to determine whether they are valid or not. Unless alternative medicine is willing to subject its remedies to tightly controlled double-blind studies, I can't get the info I need to make a decision on validity so I have no choice but to dismiss the remedies.

See - I've actually found that the YEC adherents that I know tend to be the same ones who are on the other alternative medicine/lifestyle bandwagons - coconut oil for everything, essential oils, anti-GMO, etc. which sounds different from what others have noticed. At first, I thought it was odd - I expected the adherents of YEC and the adherents of alternative medicine/lifestyles to be polar opposite groups, as the article suggests. Never the twain shall meet and all that. ;) When I started realizing that the YEC adherents I know were embracing the Whole Foods kind of woo (I do like that ;)), it actually made more sense to me. Both are based on pseudoscience so why believe in one and not the other? I'm not saying I think it's a GOOD thing that folks are turning to pseudoscience but it does make logical sense to embrace all flavours of pseudoscience and not just pick and choose. It does seem to be only one way, though - the YEC adherents I know are embracing the Whole Foods woo but the Whole Foods adherents I know do not seem to be embracing the YEC worldview. To me, that's the part that's most interesting to think on - why one way and not the other? Gah - I want to say more but I have to head out to teach. Darn it!

Glad you found the thread to be helpful, Deb! :) I've not taught in a co-op situation, just in public high school and now in CC, but I wondered about one thing... If many of your students are headed into health professions, are you sure that they don't need honours chem? I'm in Canada, not the US, so we could be talking apples and oranges here but in Ontario, students who are headed into registered nursing, pharmacy, medicine, etc. all need Grade 12U Chem in high school which is the equivalent of honours chem in the States. The students who are headed into practical nursing (nursing assistant) are one of the few who don't need honours chem, only reg chem. Just wanted to check. :) Maybe some folks in the States can chime in?

So glad to hear from you, Bensmom! I was thinking about my post afterwards - science is my passion and my intent wasn't to scare everyone into never trying any hands-on stuff but I do want everyone to be safe when they do the hands-on stuff. :) I would think there would be enough oxygen in the air space above the agar that sealing them with tape right after swabbing would be fine. As a safer alternative for everyone, though, I would suggest purchasing cultures from Home Science Tools to inoculate and grow your own bacterial colonies. Here's a link: http://www.hometrainingtools.com/introductory-bacteria-set/p/LD-BACINTR/ They also sell individual cultures so you don't have to buy the set of three. If you want to do the anti-bacterial lab, Bensmom, you should purchase one of the cultures from Home Science Tools or another science supply store. There are two reasons - first, it's much, much safer to work with those cultures (none of the bacteria they sell are pathogens) and second, in order to get accurate results you have to have only one variable in your experiment. If what you will be changing are the different anti-bacterial substances, then all other conditions must be controlled. If you used bacterial swabs from your environment, you wouldn't always be testing the anti-bacterial substances against the same species of bacteria so you won't know what factor the effectiveness of the anti-bacterial substances is due to. Using bacterial cultures from your environment would mean that you have two variables that aren't controlled so you can't tell if your results are due to changes in the anti-bacterial substances or changes in the bacterial species themselves. Does that all make sense? :) Forgive me if you know all of this already - I get into "science teacher" mode and I'm like a runaway train. ;) Home Science Tools also has antibiotic discs you can use to test for antibiotic sensitivity in bacteria. Here's a link: http://www.hometrainingtools.com/antibiotic-disc-set/p/LM-ANTIKIT/ I always thought it would be a cool science fair project to culture a bunch of pure, safe bacteria (from a bought culture) and then have the student test the anti-bacterial properties of the antibiotic discs as well as different over-the-counter substances that are said to be anti-bacterial (anti-bacterial soaps, tea tree oil, other essential oils, etc.). If you choose to do this, Bensmom, let us know how it turns out - I think it would be awesome! What's your disposal plan for the cultures that you've grown, Bensmom? Even using the safer, bought cultures, one should always have a disposal plan to make sure the cultures are destroyed before putting them in the trash. It's good lab procedure. :)

I just wanted to second what Momto2Ns has said - please, please, please be careful! I know that growing your own bacterial colonies can sound like a wonderful way to approach biology from a hands-on perspective but you can end up culturing some virulent stuff. Look at it this way - if the tiny bit of contact you have from touching a door handle in a store that someone else has just sneezed on has enough bacteria on it to make you sick, then culturing a petri dish full of them at home and exposing you and your children to the colonies could make all of you very, very sick. Even when we cultured bacteria at the high school where I taught, the students swabbed surfaces, innoculated the agar, closed the petri dishes, and sealed them shut with tape. They were only allowed to look at the colonies through the sealed plastic lids of the dishes which were then autoclaved before they were thrown away. The high school has actually stopped doing this lab because of safety issues. If I might please make a suggestion? Take your petri dishes, seal them shut right now with tape, and take them to your local hospital or medical facility at your earliest convenience. Before they autoclave them for you (I'm hoping they will), the lab techs could probably help you with identification. If you don't want to do that, please at least seal them shut. For disposal, you could either put them outside for a few days if you live somewhere really, really cold before you throw them away or you could put the open dishes in a bucket of strong bleach solution which would kill the bacteria and destroy any mold spores that you've grown. Like Momto2Ns, I don't mean to sound harsh - I just worry about safety. :)

Thanks for the article share, Queen Goddess! I've been thinking more about this topic and the topic of pseudoscience generally since I posted in the other essential oils thread. I have some thoughts but I need to prep for classes tomorrow so I'll have to come back later. Just wanted to say thanks for the link.

That company is closing down and everything is at least 40% off - that might help a bit. :) You could also get the text used from Amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/Contact-Canada-Fraser-Cartwright/dp/0195414896/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2DPPHEHU796TB&coliid=I37JU7D8GHQZTN The guide from Marquis doesn't seem to be available on Amazon but it might be available on a different site.

The only curriculum I've seen for high school Canadian geography is the one by Vince Marquis that accompanies the text "Contact Canada" from Oxford University Press. I've never looked through it so I can't give an opinion as to its quality. Here are some links to purchase: http://homeschoolandmore.ca/catalogue_det.asp?id=2045&categoryid=146 for the text http://homeschoolandmore.ca/catalogue_det.asp?id=2046&categoryid=146 for Marquis' guide

To celebrate, the Canadian Amazon is taking 20 bucks off of the price of Kindles today only. Just noticed that on the website. :D Go Canada!

Just wanted to throw something to ponder into the mix. While I will always take the anti-pseudoscience position (I'm "Team Science" all the way ;)), essential oils do contain compounds which could prove to be biochemically active. I do not accept (as I've seen touted) that rubbing them on the outside of a child's ear will cure an ear infection nor do I accept that some sort of topical application will cure cancer but they do contain complex biochemical compounds and I can't dismiss the chemistry outright. The in-vitro study posted above (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22171782) is interesting. As ThatHomeschoolDad pointed out, it is in-vitro as opposed to in-vivo so, again, I would caution anyone against using that study to bolster belief that applying an essential oil to any part of your skin will have an effect on cancer but I think the study does show that the oils can be biochemically active. Please believe me - I am as against pseudo-science as it is possible to be. I'm sure I have alienated people in real life and online in my attempts to point out the uselessness (and sometimes danger) of pseudo-scientific beliefs. Oils distilled from plants, though, are the one area that I think warrant further thought and research. Again - I DO NOT think that rubbing them on some part of the body will have much effect (unless it's to treat a superficial epidermal ailment) but the chemistry in them should be studied. Will anything come of it? I don't know. I studied chemistry, not medicine. :) But I do know that plants are storehouses of potent biochemical compounds and are worth a look-see. :) P.S. In that same vein, I would caution anyone who is using essential oils that they are not necessarily "safe" because they are natural. There are compounds contained in plants that can make humans very ill and can be fatal. Some plants are very, very good at defending themselves and the flora part of nature is not always gentle and kind. :) If you are using essential oils for anything other than aromatherapy, please be aware that they can be very irritating to the skin and should NOT be taken internally - particularly by children - unless you've discussed it with your doctor.

I think it looks great, Amy. For a kid you were told would never graduate, he's doing fantastically! One quick question - what kind of advanced math are you planning on for Grade 12? In Ontario, students only need 3 years of math to graduate so you could stop at Alg 2 if you wanted to. You could also move the Consumer math from Grade 13 to Grade 12 although he'll probably find it fairly easy after taking Saxon Alg 2. :) Ah - Grade 13. :D I did Grade 13. I've also taught Grade 13. I tell you - those kids were a joy to teach. An extra year of maturity makes a world of difference. I think they were also more likely to do well in their first year of university due to the extra year's maturity. I was sad when they got rid of Grade 13 in Ontario. :( Actually - I have a few more questions but just because I'm curious for my own dd. :) What's the high school course that goes along with Canada: A People's History? Have you used the study guides from Scholar's Choice before? What are they like? Looks great, Amy!

No advice but :grouphug: . As an extreme introvert and a very "type A" personality, that would be difficult for me. My sister has adult children living at home right now and is the opposite of me - she's an extrovert and a "go with the flow" kind of personality - and even she is finding it difficult for many of the reasons you describe. Hugs!

Thanks, ItGWN! :)

Thanks, Jen! Do you (or anyone else) have a sense of how AoPS compares to LoF in terms of difficulty? I know AoPS is more rigorous but I'm wondering how much more rigorous. Maybe I'm trying to compare apples and oranges, though. Maybe the goal of the two programs is completely different. Thoughts?

Thanks, Sue!

Thanks so much, everyone! It's so helpful to bounce things off of others. I wasn't a weepy girl either, Sue, so I'm a bit out of my comfort zone. :) Oddly, my dd overall isn't a girl I would have thought would have been weepy and, thankfully, it seems to have passed. I'm used to dealing with teens from Grade 9 on up from my years of teaching high school but not students in the Grade 7/8 range. Based on what I saw and what I'm hearing from others, I don't think I'd teach Grade 7/8 for love nor money. ;) My original math plan looked like this: Life of Fred Beg Alg - Gr. 7 Adv Alg - Gr. 8 Geo - Gr. 9 Trig - Gr. 10 Calc - Gr. 11 Either Stats or Lin Alg - Gr. 12 My alternate math plan (not using LoF) looked like this: Jacobs Alg - Gr. 8 Jacobs Geo - Gr. 9 Foerster Alg 2/Trig - Gr. 10 Foerster Pre-calc - Gr. 11 Calc (wasn't sure which program) - Gr. 12 You guys are right - I could meld the two schedules (by shifting my LoF schedule forward a year and ditching the Stats/Lin Alg year). My alternate plan could be her main math program and she could read Fred. I don't think she would get the same challenge from just reading Fred and not attempting the Cities but she does like how he presents the math. Is Jacobs considered a solid geo text? Does Foerster have a geo text, Sue? I know I've seen discussion here about older editions of Jacobs vs. newer ones. I bought the 3rd edition before it went out of print but I've also got a used 2nd edition in my cart at Amazon. The 2nd edition is considered better for formal proofs, isn't it? I'll have to go digging on the board to find some past threads. :) I keep looking at AoPS but I don't think it would be a fit with dd. The science/math nerd part of me really wants to pick up a copy, though, to look through myself. Maybe I'll see if I can find a used copy of the alg text and I'll buy it for myself as a 42nd birthday present in a few weeks. ;) We were using the "Zillions" supplement for Fred, ItGWN (In the Great White North - I gave you an acronym ;)), but now that I'm thinking more about it, I think dd's weepiness was getting in the way of her comprehending anything that posed a challenge. The "Key To" series was probably further down the challenge ladder than I needed to go but it seemed to do the trick. I think the fact that the booklets were short, plain, to-the-point, and focused on one topic at a time were the benefits for her last year. Thanks again, folks, for being a sounding board for me. If anyone else wants to weigh in on Fred or on other math curricula, I'm all ears! :) (P.S. Forgive me if this post is disjointed. I'm watching the gold medal women's curling game between Canada and Sweden as I'm typing.) (P.P.S. We won!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I'm not sure if I can phrase this to make it coherent but I'll try. :) My dd is currently 13 - she'll be 14 at the end of April. She's technically in Grade 8 but we've been working at the high school level for science for the last 2 years. I think she's a bright girl :) - I don't know if I'd say gifted but certainly bright. She's a STEM girl - with a chem teacher for a mom and a pharmacist for a dad, I suppose it was more likely than not. Her current thoughts on post-secondary are leaning towards geology or geochemistry. We started last year (Grade 7) with Life of Fred Beginning Algebra. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Fred - I'd place the difficulty of his high school curriculum somewhere below AoPS but slightly above Jacobs. (Feel free to correct me on that or to disagree - I know Fred isn't everyone's cup of tea.) (A brief aside for some background - the whole concept of doing non-integrated math and science for at least the first two years of high school is foreign to me - here in Ontario, we have integrated science until Grade 11 and integrated math until Calculus.) She began to struggle last year with Fred's Beginning Algebra about half way through the book - around factoring, I think. It shocked me a bit - we did Singapore all the way through and she finished 6B in in the middle of Grade 5. We did the 4 middle school Fred books in Grade 6 (Fractions, Decimals & Percents, and the two Pre-Alg books) and I thought that Beginning Algebra in Grade 7 would be fine. It wasn't. There were many tears. (She was also 12 - do all 12 year old girls go through a weepy phase??) We dropped Fred and she worked through quite a few of the "Key to Algebra" books - I wanted her algebra to be rock solid before moving on to anything else. At the start of this year, I decided to try a different curriculum - partly to see how it would go and partly to give the weepiness a chance to clear up. ;) We went with Jacobs Algebra with the honours track schedule from Kolbe. She seems to be doing much better this year - much of what she's done so far has been a review of either Fred or what she did with the "Key to Algebra" books. She's pretty much at the point in Jacob's that matches to where she left off of Fred last year and she's asking if she should go back to Fred. She really likes Fred - she's got a quirky sense of humour. :) I feel somewhat badly that it took us this long to get beginning algebra back on track - I keep feeling like I should have pushed her a little more. Ah well - that's a topic for another post. ;) All that rambling to ask this - what do others think of Fred at the high school level? Not enough? Too... weird? I know AoPS is highly recommended on the board but I'm not sure that dd is "mathy" enough for it - KWIM? I don't think Jacobs challenges her but it did help her past the weepy stage so it had its benefits. Is there any other curriculum that falls between Jacobs and AoPS in terms of difficulty? Or am I looking at this the wrong way? Should I let her keep on with Jacobs? Math isn't her passion - she sees it's usefulness in the areas of science she's interested in but she isn't one of those kids who LOVE math for the sake of math. Any thoughts?

:) That is true but it's not exactly the same thing. What we need to look at is the melting point of each specific kind of oil. Olive oil has a melting point (or freezing point) of around 21F - about the temp inside your fridge. That means that at temperatures above 21F, I'd expect olive oil to be liquid and at temps below 21F I'd expect it to be solid. You'll notice, though, that 21F is quite a bit lower than 76F. The general rule of thumb is that the higher the percentage of saturated fats in a particular type of oil, the higher it's melting point. And the higher the level of hydrogenation in a particular type of oil, the higher it's melting point. There are variations, of course, and mixtures of fats will have broader melting point ranges than the individual components. Since the melting point of virgin, non-hydrogenated coconut oil is 76F, then chemistry tells us that it should be a liquid above that point. Since olive oil has a melting point of 21F, chemistry tells us it should be a liquid above that point. You can't really compare the two in the way that you mean to - it doesn't make sense from a chemistry standpoint. :)