My experience is with US edition, but assuming they are close enough to answer your question.... I have never used the HIG. We just do the textbook lesson together and then student does the WB on his own. 6A and 6B is mostly review, but at a slightly more challenging level. Because of that, I used grade 6 to transition away from doing math alongside ds. He read through the lesson in the textbook himself, and because he was already familiar with what it was about, he was usually able to do all the problems on his own and then check his answers in the answer key. Because it was mostly review, he found it easy and went through at double pace. We also skipped some of the practice/review sections. He finished both A and B in December/January. This worked out perfectly because he moved straight into Dimensions 7A, which turned out to be quite a challenge. He didn't finish 7B until the end of 7th grade, so it worked out well that we had that extra semester.

I wouldn't worry about her grade level not matching the number on the book. This is why we homeschool, right? Because in a classroom setting, the class would race on ahead whether she had mastered previous concepts or not. At home you can go at her pace, and eventually everything will probably start to click and she'll speed up on her own. FWIW, the Singapore grade 6 book is mostly review. I think the extra practice is a good thing. However, if by grade 6 you're still in grade 5 book, that's okay because you've got some wiggle room where if you don't end up making it all the way through the level 6 books, it was just review anyway. I'd view 6th grade as the year to get caught up to grade level, if it is still a concern for you by then. Doing Singapore put my son on pace to complete Algebra I in 8th grade. Algebra I is a standard 9th grade course, so even if you are one grade behind all the way through eighth grade, you are still right on schedule for 9th grade level work. You can do Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and Precalculus in high school and be prepared to enter a STEM major in college. I'm seeing no disadvantages long term for a 4th grader to be in 3B.

I look at the table of contents and count how many lessons there are to complete. Or in the case of math (we use Singapore), I count how many workbook pages plus textbook practice and review pages there are. Then divide by 36. That tells me how many lessons to complete each week. Then round up so you have some wiggle room. There will always be those days where dd has a meltdown and it seems best to put the book away and finish the next day rather than push through. In the higher grades, there are times when I needed to split a practice over two days because it ended up being too much work. I do have a scheduled amount of time that I plan to spend each day on each subject. Sometimes more time is needed, and I have to make the judgement call whether to keep going or put it away and finish the next day. If it happens to be a super easy lesson, I might let them off easy that day, but if I lost time earlier in the week taking two days for an assignment, then I might try to double up on the easy sections to make up for it.

Is there an adblocker for Kindle Fire? I use Shmoop but usually use my Fire - keep it next to me on the sofa so I can read the chapter summaries after I finish a chapter.

At the university I work for, applicants with credit over 10 years old are not automatically awarded transfer credit. The transcript gets sent to the department chair of the program they are applying to, and the chair can approve the credit. Because of this process, if someone called and asked if we give credit for courses taken over ten years ago, they wouldn't get a straight yes or no. They would have to apply for admission and go through the whole evaluation process. It's been my observation that the chairs are usually pretty lenient about accepting the credit.

Thank you for the responses. Some of these have already been tried, but I've added a few new titles to my library list.

I posted this exact question a year or two ago, and I'm sorry to say that my challenge continues. Hoping the high school board makes the difference... My son reads the same books over and over. He turns his nose up at most everything new I pick up at the library. I keep searching the "customers who liked this also liked..." feature on Amazon, no luck. Part of this is personality - he tends to show disinterest in just about every new activity we might suggest. But I have another theory that I have yet to test, and that is that he is growing up - he doesn't play with any of his toys anymore. So I think he might be ready for some adult literature. However, I don't think he's ready for all of the themes/content present in adult literature, so figuring out what to offer him is difficult. He's 13 and will be starting 9th grade this fall (one year young). His most recent reads are Masterminds series by Gordon Korman and Codename Conspiracy series by Chris Ryland. Favorites from the past include Mysterious Benedict Society, Kingdom Keepers series, Peter and the Starcatchers books, and the Left Behind youth series. Hoping to get him enjoying some fresh new reads this summer. I've suggested the adult Left Behind series, he says no. I've suggested Joel Rosenberg - I think he would like it although I can't say I'd be okay with handing over one or two of those. He says no. I suggested Frank Peretti, he's not interested. I am out of ideas (probably because most of the fiction I like to read is, well, girly...). My husband doesn't read so he's no help. Please!! Suggest some (clean) fiction for young teen boys who are maybe ready for some more advanced plot structures and language. If you are familiar with Masterminds or Codename Conspiracy, what genre would you call those? Even knowing what genre to search would help... TIA :)

Oh no! I was going to register ds for Introduction to Computer Science. I never emailed them or anything, though. I don't think we can do $495. Hoping someone has suggestions for an alternate course!

Yes, just update with final grades. The main thing the admissions office needs is confirmation that the student graduated. Graduation date should do that. However, if you are sending the transcript prior to the graduation date, I don't know if they would consider that valid. I'm surprised that they have a June 20 deadline for that since so many high schools don't have graduation until around that time. Maybe you should double check with the admissions office about that. At my university, our computer system auto-assigns arbitrary deadlines to things that don't really have a deadline. Very annoying. So possibly that is going on here?? My university would accept a faxed or emailed (emailed is preferred because it will print clean) transcript as official from a homeschooler, but I'm sure all colleges are different. If I were you I'd send it electronically and then follow up with a mailed copy to be safe. You shouldn't need to resend a university transcript if the one they have on file is still the most current.

Not sure of the total off the top of my head, but I usually end up assigning about 25 pages of a chapter book per day. For my older one, that usually ends up being one book every two to three weeks. This year I bought discussion guides, which has caused us to go a lot slower through three of the books. My youngest usually gets one or two picture books to read each day in addition to the chapter book, although sometimes it's zero, depending on how many extra books were recommended in the SOTW activity guide for that week's chapter.

I am an admissions counselor and at my university, we would ask you to provide an official transcript from the B&M school in addition to the homeschool transcript. You could still list the B&M coursework on your transcript, just notate it as such. As far as GPA... I'm not really sure how we'd handle that, to be honest. It's possible someone would calculate a cumulative GPA, but it's also possible that whoever processed the application would just choose a transcript and enter that GPA into the database... so if I were you, I'd list three GPA's on the transcript: the B&M, the homeschool only, and cumulative. Then the college can choose which one they want to use or they may have their own method of calculating GPA.

Since no one else has answered... I don't have knowledge of SOTW 4, but I do have a very old AG for volume 1 with the newest edition textbook. The biggest difference is that the coloring pages and map quality are much nicer in the newer edition. I bought a PDF of the new student pages only and occasionally, the old map instructions wouldn't work on the new map - like a city or border wouldn't be there. Also occasionally the review questions in the old guide would ask for information that was not included in the textbook. It didn't happen often enough to justify buying a new activity book, in my opinion.

I used Trail Guide to World Geography with my ds. I'm not sure whether or not I would recommend it. I found it extremely frustrating, although it got a lot better once I learned that I needed to buy the recommended atlas (that's where all the answers to the questions are... so not any atlas will do). It would have been even better had I owned a set of encyclopedias. I will probably still use it again with dd just because I already own it, but I might break down and buy an encyclopedia CD-ROM. It has its good points too, so if after looking at all your options you want more information about it, let me know!

History is not a favorite subject in my house, especially with my ds. So after finally finishing SOTW 4, I decided we all needed a break from history and decided to do world geography in 5th. In 6th, I combined ancient & middle ages to "catch up". I wasn't really happy with the outcome that year. I feel like ds didn't really learn anything. For 7th & 8th, he's back with SOTW 3 and 4. In high school, I plan to go the traditional route of 1 year American, 1 year world, and 1 year gov/econ. With my dd, I started off in 1st with a light American history and then started the cycle in 2nd. We are going at a slower pace to make sure we have time to read all the good books, so I expect we won't be finished with SOTW 4 until about 6th grade. That leaves 7th and 8th open for either American + World history or, what I'm leaning towards - American and world geography.

Here is a free aviation course http://goto.erau.edu/aviation101/.

I work 20 hours a week. I think the keys are: get up and begin school at a scheduled time each day, work to a schedule, have kids do whatever they can independently, and multitask where you can. I don't have the luxury of sleeping in every morning and beginning school whenever we get around to it. We get up and must be at the breakfast table by 7:30am! I have a schedule of what times we should be doing each subject each day. I don't always stick to it absolutely, but it does help me stay on track, cut off bunny trails, or end a lesson before we're finished if needed. On Fridays I don't work and what a difference it makes starting late and not paying attention to the clock. It seems like it takes me twice as long to get through each subject when I'm not paying attention. Multitasking is also very important. There's no idle time. If your child is working on something by herself for ten minutes, that's ten minutes that you have to grade another assignment or go peel potatoes. Also go back and reevaluate the curriculum that still requires your time and see if possibly there are things your kids can do themselves - especially the older ones. For example by the end of Singapore 5B, my ds had caught on to things well enough that he started figuring out the lessons from the textbook, on his own. I stopped teaching it to him. Also by the time we did Apologia Anatomy, he did that on his own too. He read the chapter on his own and then wrote out a narration in a composition book. I gave him some direction as far as what I wanted diagrammed/illustrated. That was that. For spelling, AAS is great but I found it to be a lot more teacher intensive than necessary because both of my kids seem to catch on naturally. So I have moved to R & S, which includes phonics but is pretty independent. I just check their work and then give a spelling test at the end of the week. After grade 4, I dropped spelling entirely as a curriculum. It just seemed like a waste of time because he already knew how to spell all the words. Instead I focused on correcting & practicing misspelled words in his writing. My youngest still requires my attention for most subjects but there are still thing she does on her own: R&S spelling, listening to SOTW audio, pre-reading Zoology pages, the occasional NJ pages, and reviewing French flashcards. Pre-reading helps a lot. Even though we still go over it together, if she's already read through it once, she is able to answer questions more readily and we get through it all faster. Also, I work the whole day on Mondays and so both kids are totally on their own that day. So what I do is make sure whenever we come to a practice or review in Singapore, I skip it and save it for Monday. Sometimes her dad has to help her, but he is okay with that. He just doesn't want to actually teach it.

I bought the first two discs to go along with SOTW 3. It took almost the entire year to get through the first disc (I think I only had him work on it once a week). My son enjoyed it, so I recommend (he is not a history person so this is saying a lot). However, the next disc looked like a huge jump in challenge level - more like high school - so I decided not to have him do it.

If you are otherwise happy with Singapore at it's really just the one or two sections that he struggled with, maybe you can find some additional worksheets online that you can print for free. I have also had success getting a Math Start or similar book from the library that illustrates the concept. If you feel he needs extra practice on every section, I don't know. Singapore does have those extra practice books, but personally I feel that the textbook and the workbook include an awful lot of practice and review as it is. And I don't even have the IG. So possibly he would be better off with a different curriculum that presents the concepts in a way that makes more sense to him, rather than heaping on additional work.

The activity guide I think has a page in the front about adapting SOTW for older students. I think it even lists the corresponding pages from two encyclopedias for each chapter. (I used the My Father's World adaptation of DK History of the World so unfortunately the AG was not of use to me in that regard).

I think WWE is the better measure of what kids are capable of - especially boys (their hands get tired so easily). I made a huge mistake right around that age of trying to make my ds hand write all of his own narrations. That did not work out well. For literature I think what I did right around fourth was have ds fill out a little book report form that fit on a bookmark. We kept all his bookmarks on a binder ring (got that idea on this board!). The front side he filled in title, author, etc. and gave it a star rating. On the back I put maybe 4 or 5 lines for a summary. That was just about right for him. I will be implementing that idea for dd this coming year. For SOTW and science I always encouraged him to give as much information as possible - I thought that was more valuable than sticking to a short summary. That's why having him try to write it all himself was such a disaster. I'll add that getting him to hand write science was much easier than history because he LOVES science so it didn't seem as much like work then. So my advice is that as you work up to your kids writing out their own narrations, start out with just their favorite subject.

I didn't use volume 1 with my middle-schooler, but after not loving the encyclopedia spine option, I went to SOTW volume 3 for my 7th grader. I bought the PDF download of the narration questions in print, which he filled out on his own. I had him outline the corresponding pages in DK History of the World, and then he had a literature book that was at his level that corresponded to the period (book list in The Well Trained Mind). He did the map activity. I had him create a timeline notecard for each chapter with an illustration he found on the internet. I had him take the test. I haven't used the grades 1-2 tests, but I looked at a friend's and I think they are super easy (geared towards early elementary). So you might want to take a look at the volume 3-4 tests and use that format as a model to create your own or add on.

I only did DM 7, but since no one else has responded, I'll give you my $.02. My understanding is that after 8, the student has completed the equivalent of Algebra I and some of Geometry, but not all the topics covered in a normal geometry course. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do about geometry when he was finished - possibly choose a textbook and skip over topics he had already covered, although I was bothered by the idea of buying a very expensive textbook only to skip over a chunk of the topics. Anyway, ds started DM 8A and really struggled with it a whole lot. He was working independently - so possibly we would have completed the series successfully if I was working through it with him - but alas, I needed the time to work with younger dd. So after just the first chapter or two, we switched to MWB (Foerster's) Algebra I and it was a perfect transition. Some review, but not much. I'd say that DM 7 A & B are the equivalent of pre-algebra, and if you were to move on to something else after that, it would be Algebra I. Hope that sorta helps!

Yes, his paper does follow the prescribed organization/flow. THAT he is always very good at. Yes, I have always relied on the TG rubrics. I agree, the rubric has always helped me decide if it's good enough. I feel like this particular situation is outside the realm of what has been addressed in the TG. So hmmm.... maybe that he has stuck to the structure is good enough then? Yesterday I told him he could be done for the day when he came up with his simile and metaphor, while I thought more about what to have him do. But then he decided on his own to delete two paragraphs. So he's rewriting it anyway! I guess HE answered my dilemma for me...

My son is working on the essay assignment in WWS level 2, week 25. It's the one where you have to model a one of two previously studied. My son chose to model the "pig" essay. The assignment is to compare two things, and explain why the one that is commonly thought to be less good or bad is actually better. He has chosen to write about why modern popular fiction is better than the classics. This is the first assignment that involves writing about your own opinion on something and defending an argument, rather than regurgitating facts. I'm having a hard time figuring out how much work he needs to spend on getting that part of it right. I found a lot of flaws in his logic and it also seemed like he deviated from his main argument. BUT... he's only 13 years old/8th grade. He's not rhetoric stage yet. And the example essay we have in the teacher's guide is about how twinkies are better than broccoli... so it's not like the example presents a super strong case :) So on the one hand, I feel like the essay needs to be completely rewritten. On the other hand, he's also really struggled and labored over this assignment and I feel like he needs to be done soon. I don't know how much revision I ought to expect. An example: Classics are supposed to be better because they contain universal truths that have endured through time. His counter argument is that books shouldn't need to make a point because they are for entertainment. And modern literature doesn't try to make a point, so it's better. So we got into this long discussion where I pointed out that all authors have a worldview and YES, his favorite modern literature also tries to make a point. So it isn't a valid argument. He needs to say something more along the lines of - "Modern literature conveys its truth in a context that the reader can better relate to" or "universal truths are not of value; it only matters that I enjoy the story". Am I being too nit-picky here? Is it worth rewriting? Another example: "Books shouldn't try to make a point about anything. If someone wants to make a point, they should write an essay". I said he got off topic. He's supposed to be arguing that modern literature is better than the classics. His opinion that arguments belong in essays, not stories is irrelevant. Again, worth making him rewrite it?

I'm not planning to continue after level 8. My ds already has very few grammar problems in his writing, so I don't see the need. If at some point he does start to have trouble, we can always go back and do some of the level 8 lessons over. I only assign him the even numbers or the odd numbers for each lesson, so literally he hasn't even done half the exercises in this book.