Why can you not adapt the assignments? Why does he have to do busy work? As a homeschooler, you the mom decide the grades. So you could tell your son, that the grade given at the co-op will count for 25% of his overall grade and the rest will come from his own passions that you can link in any way you want to the topic under study. I would absolutely take control of your child's education. Yes, he needs the friendships so needs to be in the co-op, but No you don't have to have his academics revolve around it. Just my 2 cents worth given that I have a child with a learning disability.

My ds is definitely the exception. When MIT closed down, he was in the orchestra as a class that was fulfilling his arts requirement. Being a tech school, they switched the class to the physics of wave form of the music when they tried to do the mixing of all the different instruments played across the world. There were so many problems because of all the different types of environments, recording equipment, time delays, etc. It became a different class, but still an excellent class nonetheless. In addition, because the concertmaster and associate concertmaster dropped out, ds became the concertmaster for the MIT Symphony orchestra for the rest of the term, which was a real feather in his cap. So just one small positive, in the otherwise miserable experience of university and covid for our kids.

We are in NZ, so covid was delayed here (Elimination strategy was successful for 2020 and 2021). My younger ds started university in February of 2022 (southern hemisphere calendar). 90% of the country was vaccinated when they finally released the Aucklanders 3 days before all the universities started up for the February Term. No one here was wearing masks because there had been no covid. In the first week 1 of school starting, 18 out of 20 people on my ds's hall got covid on the same day. 90% of his dorm got it that week. The cafeteria closed down because there were no student workers and the chef got it. They had to outsource to a restaurant all the food for 2 weeks that was delivered to each kid's door because they were in isolation. His RA on his hall got it the worst, and all the RA's for the entire dorm got it that first week. All classes went virtual for 2 months. All clubs closed down. I'm sure masks would have slowed the spread, but with omicron in a dorm situation, basically everyone is going to get it. But having *everyone* sick at once was a big problem.

I completely agree. For years, I kept looking for THE program that would help my child. I wrote a massive summary of all the curriculum that I read one summer (link below). And in the end what happened is that *I* learned to be a writing teacher -- one that could identify my ds's problems, prioritize what to work on, give effective individualized instruction, and guide the process. I did not actually end up using any of the curriculum that I read (and owned lol). Rather, I came to understand in the following years that I needed to read read read lots of different things to really understand what it was to be a good writing teacher, not a facilitator of a program, but an actual teacher of the unique child sitting on the sofa next to me with all their idiosyncratic strengths and weaknesses. I completely agree with EKS that interaction the key. I also highly recommend Engaging ideas. I've read that book multiple times throughout my 8 years of teaching high school. It is excellent and really impacted my approach and how I created writing prompts that were engaging and fun and drove my younger boy's love of learning and love of writing. He was a writer for the Sustainability Trust this past summer. It is hard to believe that my dysgraphia boy came to love writing, and I believe that this passion and excellence was developed because of the personalised program that I created by using this book. Here is the first piece he wrote this summer https://sustaintrust.org.nz/blog/urban-heat-islands

Paxlovid to the rescue. Dad is doing great -- he quit throwing up at about 10pm last night, and the strep throat is not quite a sore with the antibiotics. Mom has an iron constitution so she has had snivels for 2 days and now is on the mend. So all is well. Thanks for asking. And yes, it is very hard to be an 22 hour flight away.

My parents finally got covid, and my dad is crazy sick. ☹️ Unfortunately, my mom has Alzheimers and my dad is the primary caregiver and they live independently with no external help. They are 84 and 81. My sisters and I are running around trying to figure out what to do because my dad at first refused to see a doctor. When he finally did they found his O2 at 91%, that he had strep, and that he was taking paxlovid with some other meds that were a bad combination (He had them prophylactively prescribed him him a year ago, so had them in his house). I have been trying to call him all day, and my sister got a hold of him only to find out he was throwing up which is why he was not picking up the phone. Not a good day.

I take on the responsibility for tutoring a kid for one subject and I charge $7500 per year. And that is where they also have a school and a curriculum set out. So $50k per year for full homeschool responsibility is definitely a minimum.

Here in NZ, they are not legal. Either you attend school or you are homeschooled. And if you are homeschooled you must be taught by your parent/legal guardian. You can't pay someone else to take responsibility for educating your child. Here in my city, I have once seen a one-day school for homeschoolers that ran for 1 year, but to be on the safe side, they hired a registered teacher. In 20 years I've been involved, there has never been a co-op in a city of 400,000. It's just a bit risky legally to try to outsource, so people here just don't.

My mom was 60. My grandmother at 60 gave up and had a hysterectomy. My aunt on the other side got pregnant at 55 (and miscarried at 4 months). So I've got a long way to go. I've been in perimenopause for 10 years and my periods are reasonably regular at 53. I need a new IUD, and just can't face it, but also can't face getting pregnant at 55. gulp.

My older boy was like this. By the age of 5 he had had stitches in his head 4 times, including 1 very large tear in the middle of his forehead down into his nose (still quite visible at the age of 23). He was just reckless - biking, trampolines, tree climbing. After the 4th time, my mother told me that I needed to "teach that child some risk assessment". So that is what we did. We talked about how to assess risk, what to look for, what was acceptable risk, how to protect yourself, etc. He only had two other injuries in the following 7 years after we implemented this approach (a broken arm while ice skating and a concussion after falling out of a tree). So I get it. I suggest you take my mom's advice. Good luck -- it is scary!

Glad it was helpful.

This is what we did for the transcript (I cut some stuff out in the screen shot, Acronyms were superscripts). It is not padding if the work was done. deleted

I had a 'science and technology' section where I put the programming. I also had a 'fine arts' section where I put all the music classes (performance, theory). I would suggest you put MIDI class in whichever section you would want to beef up and highlight. So for an engineer, I would put it in the 'science and technology' section' to highlight the variety of technology classes that he has taken. However, if your student was applying for a degree in music, I would have renamed 'fine arts' to 'music' and put it there. My point is that the transcript is a marketing document, and it helped me make decisions once I viewed it that way.

We focused on things that interested them that they could see and touch -- so mostly nature based. 4 year old project: we identified and photographed all the different species of ferns in the forest behind our house. We are in NZ where there are a LOT of ferns, so like 30 kinds. We then made a poster and had him practice a little presentation for his extended family. There was a large memory component here because he did memorize all the fern species and even to this day can recall their names and identify them in the forest when we go tramping. 5 year old project: we hunted down, identified, and photographed all the 'mini beasts' in our yard. So worms, insects, centipedes, etc. We had to read up on lots of different ways to collect them and convince them to come out. We had to problem solve why we would find none when we tried a pit trap or a sheet under a shaken tree. We then categorised them based on phylum and class. Nothing to complicated for a 5 year old, but I showed him the idea of 6 legs for insects, 8 for spiders, decapods, centipedes, millipedes etc. Then we created a poster with yarn connecting all the different related photographs. Once again, a strong memory component here, because he had to learn who was who so he could figure out if he had seen one before or if they were related. He would get so excited about a new one. One time he was jumping up and down "I always wanted to get a pseudo-scorpion." LOL . All together we found about 50 in our yard. 6 year old project: we identified and photographed all the different kinds of mushrooms. And then tried to figure out which was the most abundant by counting them and then drawing a map a labelling where you could find them. We made mushroom prints and classified them based on gills etc. Once again, we created a poster and a presentation 7 year old project: we identified and photographed all the different kinds of clouds, and studied how to predict rain based the the clouds. We then tracked his predictions and if it rained for 10 days to see how accurate he was. We made all sorts of equipment and he recorded everything for a couple of months in a little book in his cute handwriting. poster and presentation. 8 year old: How deep is the soil throughout the forest and why does it vary. This required a lot of digging with shovels. lol. I wrote this one up completely as we did it and can track down the thread if it would be helpful. For all of these we would also watch any documentaries we could find, and get little kiddy books out of the library. Very fun. I brought it up in this thread because the content was memorable and also had a large memory component to it. Ruth in NZ

Welcome to the board!

My older ds did math competitions, and it was a very important part of his life for 6 years. We are in NZ so didn't have exams that had questions like AMC or AIME; all of our competitions were proof based like the USAMTS. So I can't advise on how to prepare for the AMC. However, I can say what we did and you can ask me any questions you like. By 12yo, ds had finished AoPS intro A and geometry, and he decided to push through AoPS intro to combinatorics and number theory. This got him up to the level of being able to pass the exam to get into our national math camp. We then made a major push to up all 4 topics and complete the intermediate series over about 1.5 years. He did this with the AoPS classes to increase the pace he was working through the books. This was very effective and got him up to the next level in the competitions so that he could take the BMO, AMO, and APMO. At that point he started self studying with more advanced books and with cool proof based questions. The work he did in 11th and 12th grade allowed him to place out of 7 undergraduate classes. As for fragmented learning, this is simply not the way we did it. We did all 4 intro books then all 4 intermediate books. He did not do any practice questions from old exams during this time. However, his exams were proof based so AoPS prepared him well, and I believe that the AMC is multiple choice? I also think the AMC is more of a speed test, so I would assume that more drill and previous exams is required for your dd. As for distraction, absolutely not. The competitions were just a way to find people with shared interests, study together, and travel overseas (IMO 3 times). My ds is not really a competitive kid, it was more just a fun hobby that was a side effect of his love of math. He now has a Bachelor's degree in Maths and Physics, and is currently getting a PhD in physics in quantum computing. Because his math background was so strong in high school, he was able to take 2 undergrad courses and 7 graduate level math courses for his undergrad math major. This means that now in his PhD, his math background is stronger than any other PhD student in physics at his school because his undergrad was basically all grad classes. Given he is in theoretical physics, his strong math background is incredibly useful. This was just our experience, but I'm happy to answer questions. Ruth in NZ

I have no resources to suggest. So @Lori D. please come and give your 2 cents!

How about just getting a list of prompts that you think are directly relevant for his needs/goals? Work through the following process as slowly or quickly as needed. Each # below would have a different prompt: 1) You model how to write an essay with him watching and asking questions. 2) co-write an essay with you in charge 3) co-write an essay with him in charge. 4) watch him write an essay and give feedback in real time, 5) Have him write an essay with you nearby and available 6) Have him write an essay with you giving written feedback which he uses to edit etc Start with prompts that he knows something about and is interested in, and move overtime towards less interesting prompts that he knows less about. Also move from short essays to longer essays. Plan for 36 essays over 2 years (one every other week), or even weekly essays if they are short and he needs that much work. Basically, design your own program so that it is streamlined for exactly what he needs at the speed he needs it.

I was just coming to say what Lori did. My younger boy had learning delays, and the path we took needed 2 things. 1) time. Kids learn a lot in the 4 years in high school, so you need to have appropriate expectations for a 9th grader (I don't know the age of your kid). 2) collaboration. IMHO, writing requires mentoring. So don't expect a child who has struggled with writing to be able to get a program and do it independently and learn to write. Now my kid had/has dysgraphia, so his path required a LOT of the above 2 requirements -- I worked with him for 2.5 hours per day, 5 days a week, 40 weeks per year, from 7th grade to 12th grade, side-by-side on the sofa to get him to university level writing. So that is the worse case scenario LOL. I'm sure your dc won't require that much time and collaboration. But I suggest that you think about what is required from you beyond finding a program to follow. For some kids, writing is just tough and they need a lot of support. Ruth in NZ

Have you looked into Project based learning or Problem based learning? We did this with the kids when they were young with their science fair projects. Questions like: What is the most common mushroom in my local forest? Can I predict the weather using clouds? How can I time the traffic lights? We continued with the approach with my younger boy when he was in high school for his English/History/Geography/Government rolled into one. He asked and tried to answer questions like: What was the impact of colonization, leadership, and natural resources to the differences in development between the DRC and Botswana? What were the causes and consequences of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami? (the physics of waves, the immediate aid response, and the long term social and economic impact, how International aid agencies work, differences between countries in both how the wave hit and how they responded etc.) These were 6 week long projects when the kids were young, and moved up to 6 month long projects by high school. Because they were real world problems that the kids were curious about, they were interdisciplinary and very very engaging. This approach doesn't focus on memorizing like in your title, but it does address the concern you mentioned in the quote above. These projects STUCK. My kids can remember what they learned when they were 6.

I've gone back to university. I'm currently working on my masters degree in environmental management, studying how legal/structural issues in society constrain how people think about environmental issues. Very fascinating. I've also picked up a part time job doing the science legwork to litigate environmental issues. The current project is evaluating how the law for pesticide approval has been interpreted in policy. So I get to evaluate how the required study design and required risk factors are too reductionist and ignore the complexities of the real world. Then the lawyers get to litigate. It is very fun to mix all my science and math skills with real life issues.

Nothing Naughty unflavoured. I use pea protein. eta: oh stink, I think it is only available in NZ.

Censoring is a strong word for what I did. I simply told my kids that the book had xxx in it and I didn't think that they would like it. They could overrule me if they wanted, but they trusted me and never did. Game of Thrones, for example. I told my 16 year old ds that the person at the bookstore felt quite strongly that ds should wait until he was 18, that there was torture, sexual violence, etc. DS was good with that recommendation, and read something else. I am actually more concerned about the deep seated racism in classics that is insidious.

I would pass on Huck Finn. It is very dark in the first half, and uncomfortably funny in the second half. Huck is brutalised by his father, which is very clear in the book. I did Huck Finn with my younger in 12th grade and it took a lot of processing to make sense of it. You also have the problem with the n word, which you either say over and over, or you change for the reading. It is pretty yucky either way.

I did Tom Sawyer as a read aloud last year with my niece who was in 7th grade, and through her eyes, I saw the complete passive characterization of Becky. We had some very long and interesting discussions about that. Then we read the Hobbit, with no female characters at all. After those 2, it became clear that she was desperate for books with strong female characters, and I will say that a lot of classics are definitely lacking in that area. So something to consider if you have a dd.