Back in 1999, when dd was 3 and I'd never even heard of homeschooling, the bookstore had stacks of the white Kingfisher History by the checkout, remaindered at a dollar each. I bought one on the theory it had to be worth at least a dollar, and when I looked at the later edition, I was glad I'd gotten the first. Of course when TWTM went viral and the first edition was selling for $100 on eBay, I wished I'd bought many more at a dollar each. :D

Other: Artes Latinae & "immersion" (prayers & weekly church service in Latin)

Flipping through it at our local bookstore, I came to agree with the reviewer who said it was a political fable not intended for children. There were some very disturbing sections which I would have hesitated to have my children read. It really did seem as if NYRB had been misled by the bears into thinking it was a children's book. I thought about getting it for me, though. It looked good. :001_smile: ETA: NYRB publishes some fantastic and off-beat older books for the adult market, too, which you can often find remaindered. Our book club recently read A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, reprinted by NYRB, which is another book that looks at first like it's intended for children but isn't. (Hughes also wrote The Spider's Palace, a collection of stories for children, which is pretty weird, too; my 14yo found it disturbing, and my 7yo found it enchanting.)

OhElizabeth, thank you so much. I am going to do as you suggest. I hope I didn't make you crabby with my question--it really is good to get a direct, detailed comparison from someone familiar with different programs one is considering. Siloam, I'm going to bookmark your comments and re-read them after ordering the books--I think it will then all come clear to me. May I consult you on that overview spreadsheet in a few months when I get back to the states and do my ordering?

Our official motto is that of John Milton's school: Disce aut Discede (Learn or leave). Our unofficial motto is: Knowledge is better than ignorance. It's the usual answer to the question "Why do I have to learn this, anyway?"

For anyone familiar with this course ... I found the books for Blocks 1-11 at a used bookstore in Texas years ago, and dd14, very mathy, began them last year. She loved them, and is finishing Block 11 now (we went more slowly than I assume most students do). Dh checked her work and discussed the topics with her. It finally occurring to me to look for the OU website, I see that, besides the Study File and Study Guide (which we didn't miss at all), there is a DVD-ROM and rock specimens kit for the geology block. For anyone who's used this, or a similar course: how helpful is the DVD-ROM? And how would one go about purchasing it? Is it worth the price? Dd14 said she would have liked to have had the rock kit for that block. What exactly is in it? We're awash with fossils and geological specimens in Central Texas, and I bet I could reconstruct it. Anything else you think I ought to know, please tell me. We're vacationing in the UK for the next couple of months, and maybe this would be a good time to save on shipping.

What's old is new again. Google for "Houston miracle" from many years back. Then, the fudging of numbers wasn't being linked to homeschooling; but it was pretty well-known in Texas hs circles that high schools would deal with problem students (discipline, truancy) by advising the parents to homeschool--or at least to sign a form saying they were going to homeschool--and then the truant officer would leave them alone. The leader of one support group I was in would talk despairingly of phone calls she would get from these parents, asking "where do I drop my kid off for home school?" I thought that after the national embarrassment (60 Minutes exposure) this sort of thing would be at an end. Guess not.

Replies from my husband who has coached middle & high school math teams: Roughly middle school, or a very interested older elementary student. Full arithmetic, but not algebra or above. Yes. It's not for teaching calculus, but for introducing, at an early age, some of the concepts of calculus.

You'll have them all ready for Proust, then.:D

I liked Willows well enough, but The Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter just left me feeling vaguely embarrassed for Grahame all the way through. I could see why Pink Floyd named their album after it, though; I think the right recreational substance before reading would have helped immensely. :001_smile: <--rave smiley

Thanks for all the help. Okay, I've just looked at Writing Tales sample pages for book 1, and it looks very much like the Aesop level of CW. OhElizabeth, can you tell me what you like so much more about WT? They both seem to focus a great deal on mechanics (spelling, punctuation, grammar), which we don't really need; dd is very good at those--except for her atrocious spelling--and I'm really looking for straight composition. She's at what I would roughly estimate to be a 4th-grade level for writing. Okay, my tentative plan is this. Dd#2 is pretty reliable for straight narration. I did Aesop's fables and some stories from History Stories of Other Lands with dd#1 in a way pretty similar to what I'm seeing in the Aesop level of CW. I think I'll just wing it again with dd#2 for a while, working on amplification and abbreviation of the basic narrative, and then move on to CW Homer when the moment seems right.

... on my part, that is. I never found a writing curriculum I really like for dd-now-14, and now she is out of my hands and in the tutelage of others who didn't drop out of their English Lit Ph.D. programs. Many years ago, a friend showed me the CW books she was using with her daughters. I thought (stupidly, arrogantly), "This looks like it was just cribbed from the BYU Progymnasmata site. Oh look, there's the URL for BYU. Why would I pay good money for something available on the internet?" We even did exercises for a few months based on the progymnasmata, just to see if it would be interesting. Dd loved it, but it was too time- and energy-consuming to come up with my own assignments for her based on the framework at the website. Now dd7, who's quite good for her age but isn't a natural writer the way dd14 was, needs a decent writing curriculum. LLATL doesn't provide enough opportunities to write. Some of her other curriculum (e.g. Bible studies) incorporates writing assignments, but I really want something systematic. Tell me why I should, or shouldn't, use CW. In descriptions of it on these forums, it sounds exactly like the writing course I figured I would plan out on my own, but obviously haven't. Everyone describes it as teacher-intensive: does that mean I need to sit down with dd to explain, model, and read her work (that's fine), or does that mean I'll have to come up with my own implementation of the progymnasmata (more than I could chew)? I'm confident (arrogant again) about my ability to teach writing; I just need someone else to do the coming up with and planning out of exercises for me. Hoping that made sense.

Testing signature

Yes, the distant outreaches of the suburbs of the suburbs! Hoping to pick your brain at a park day (when we get back to the US) about a couple of things, esp. therapy for the littlest dd.

Ah, you'd be W.'s mom. S. says hello to him. :001_smile:

We found three old Uncle Wiggily books, and middle child latched onto them. We were forced to read the stories to her daily. She was on the cusp of reading, and would follow along, stopping us occasionally so she could try reading the sentence, which dragged out the process and prevented you from entering that mind-escaping state where you're reading but really thinking about something else. She'd clearly decided these were the stories she would finally learn to read on, so what could we do but acquiesce? My husband offered to write a macro for more Uncle Wiggily stories: UW meets a feeble creature in need of assistance; UW helps out; UW later encounters slight inconvenience; rescued creature appears and comes to his aid. Rinse, repeat. Like Androcles and the Lion rewritten for kindergartners in Purgatory.

Though just to keep things fair and in perspective, one reason I could never use Seton is the uber-Catholic and anti-Protestant (sometimes beyond bias to the point of falsehood) view that affects nearly every part of their curriculum I've ever seen. If we could all strive to see others' views and historical actions with the maximum, instead of the minimum, charity and generosity of interpretation--especially when we're teaching our children about them!

My take on statements of faith is that one of their purposes is to permit those signing them to be able to assume that others in the co-op, support group, or whatever association are all of one mind. If I have to write in alterations, or interpret points with one eye shut and the other squinted so as not to conflict with my own beliefs, I'm both defining my own faith down to the lowest common denominator and representing myself in a false light to others who have signed the statement of faith wholeheartedly. In other words, if something about it makes you hesitate, walk away. (I have used this principle more often within the Catholic Church than outside it, by the way. Just the basic Creed for me, please.) YMMV.

My dh, who teaches Intro Logic at Big State U., highly recommends Barwise and Etchemendy's Tarski's World for self-taught logic at a high school age (not quite the same as the syllogism-based logic of most hs curricula). Our 14yo found it helpful.

I've heard several homeschoolers object to Mary Poppins on the basis of a chapter with racial stereotyping. For the benefit of anyone concerned about that, the chapter was revised by Travers herself in the '80's to replace the objectionable material. The artist also replaced the illustrations for that chapter. I don't usually care for "cleaned up" versions of the classics, but when it's the original author, I'm good with it.

D'oh! :blushing: You're right.

... and your explanation also demonstrates why 0 to the zeroth power is undefined, rather than being 1. If x = 0, then (x^n)/(x^n) would be 0/0, and any number divided by zero is undefined. Yay math!

What! You mean you didn't find that exhilirating? :D

Except of course 0 to the power of 0, which is undefined. I'm confused here. -(x^0), unless x = 0, will be -1, not 1, for the very reason of the order of operations that you pointed out. Otherwise you seem to be saying that (-1)(1) = 1.

It depends. Is the problem (-x)^0 or is it -(x^0) ? That is, are you raising -x to the power of 0 (therefore, where x = -5, raising 5 to the power of 0), or are you raising x to the power of 0, and then making it negative? Any number to the power of 0 equals 1. It might help to think of it like this: x^3 = 1 * x * x * x x^2 = 1 * x * x x^1 = 1 * x x^0 = 1 You see, you divide by x each time, so there's only 1 left when you get to x^0. So it will come to 1 if you are raising -x to the power of 0, and it will come to -1 if you are raising x to the power of 0 and then finding its negative. It doesn't matter what x equals, or whether it's positive or negative.