We're not starting until August 30th because I have an old fashioned belief that August is still summer. When I was in public highschool, my parents let me skip now and then when my brother was home from college. It gave us some much valued time together and I loved that! So I'm voting with the enjoy-your-son-being-home group and waiting another week.

I am currently pursuing a masters degree and I have not found this to be true. Nor was it true when I was an undergrad.

You can count your credits either way. University admissions people are used to seeing it both ways. In addition, if your daughter is going on to an Indiana college/tech school, they will recognize that the transcript looks like an honors diploma. You could point that out on the transcript just to make sure. Most colleges will look at your daughters work in terms of it meeting their requirements, not those of a particular state. That said, an honors diploma safely covers the requirements that most colleges will demand. My suggestion for now, is to just keep good track of your daughters work and whether it was a full year or half year course. You can adjust which way you count credits later. There are some good books out there on homeschool transcripts that I have found to be very helpful and also comforting because I was so nervous about that! My favorite is this one, but there are others just as good. http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Homeschool-Transcripts-ebook/dp/B002WN2XAI

We love Trisms. My daughter did DAW in 7th grade and is doing EOC this year for 8th grade. One nice things is that the program can be adjusted for your child's age and talents. We skipped History Makers because, after discussing the differences with Cheryl at Trisms (not Cheryl in SoCal) we decided to start with the next level because it offers more in term of writing assignments. My daughter is strong in writing and I want to develop that. We did use IEW somewhat, but skipped it for many of the assignments too, though she did watch all of the videos. Trisms is researched based. For us, by the 3rd unit, may daughter was pretty much on her own. I helped find library books and occasionally web sites for her, but that was about it. Each unit to took approx 2 weeks. At the end of each unit, she and I discussed her worksheets/assignments in detail and she taught me what she learned. Trisms guides the student in learning, but does not teach, thus the student practices learning independently. In addition, she was able to organize her own learning schedule so that she could complete the unit by the due date that I set for it. Practicing this skill in itself is of great value.

I got some materials through Pearson that way too. In Indiana we don't have registration forms, but I did sign a home school form through Pearson to promise that I will not sell or give away the materials. No such luck (so far) with Wiley. I would think that the main concern is the cheating issue. But it might also be a statement against homeschooling too, given how the policy was presented to me.

My daughter has been using Singapore for several years now. She is doing NEM 1 now. It has never been very difficult for her, yet she is quite advanced for her age and is able to handle challenging problems. I think that's part of the strength of the program. The student re-visits concepts over and over again, each time building a level of difficulty. Also, there is a lot of time spent on review so that the student does not forget what they've learned. That pays off in the long run.

Another idea is to use sticky notes instead of highlighting. You'll have to remove them eventually, but only after you've got a section of the book down pretty well.

Has anybody had any luck getting approval from Wiley to use their book companion sites? We are using the books Human Geography in Action and Human Geography: People, Place and Culture. I've been rejected as unqualified because I am not a certified teacher. Is there anyway around this?

The stone cold sober schools list struck me funny...Although I went to Calvin College many, many years ago...it's the Christian school I was referring to a few posts up.

We are going to be using The Spectrum this year along with The Teaching Company High School Chemistry course. I'm considering it a first year course to lead into AP Chemistry next year probably using Zumdahl. Am I on the right track here or do I need to fortify it even more?

Some kids will party and some kids won't at any school. I went to 3 different colleges and here's what I found. The Christian college had as high of a party ratio as the state school that was known for that. At the Christian college, it tended to be the PKs or kids that came from a similar strict upbringing that partied out of control the most. My theory is that they came from such controlled and protected upbringings that when they did get a little freedom, they didn't know how to handle it and had to learn the hard way. Most of these kids settled down also by their junior year.

Why not stick with Singapore? I would encourage you to keep working at her pace rather than try to have her Algebra ready in a year. The nice thing about Singapore is that it does give a really good foundation and that does help in the long run. In addition, it apparently works for her. Do you let her use a calculator? That's how most people do math now days. Also, it would free her from that struggle so she can focus on understanding. If you want to work with her more on memory work such as times tables, etc, you could still do it separately from her regular math work.

If you buy it used, the past owner needs to de-register it so that you can register. Rosetta Stone allows their product to be registered on 2 computers at a time and the package allows for 5 students on each computer. From my understanding it will only work for 30 days unregistered. Since we registered ours right away, I didn't test that. The homeschool edition is pretty nice in that it helps you to keep track of how your student is progressing and time spent. I don't believe that you spend much more (if anything) to get this feature. Some things to watch out for: If the package is advertised as still in the shrink wrap, it's illegal. Rosetta Stone does not shrink wrap their product. Also, if the price on a new copy is way below the registered dealer price, then it's probably illegal. Many illegal copies go up on Ebay, so you want to be careful about that. If you use Ebay, go with a registered dealer. What I found is that Rosetta Stone offers about the same price as their registered dealers plus they have all of your purchase information should you run into problems later with registration, etc....So that's a nice feature along with the 6 month guarantee. I was willing to pay the approx $10 more that I spent for that!

It may be too much depending on your daughter. When I was deciding between AP HG and AP WH for my 10th grade son, we chose HG because with the online courses, WH was recommended for 11th/12th grade students and very mature 10th graders. One issue with WH is that your daughter must be able to write a good essay pretty quickly. HG doesn't require as strong of essays, rather they are just looking to see if the student answers the questions correctly. You may want to consider breaking up her world history study across 2 (or even 3) years. Maybe by era, such as Ancient and Medieval this year or by region - European History, Asian History or something like that. Each of these would be worth a whole credit. Then you could plan on taking the World History exam next year or even the year after. Of course, you know your daughter and I don't. It could be that she is very capable of doing WH this year. Just wanted to offer another opinion/approach for you to consider

In addition, Rosetta Stone is often sold illegally, and these disks will not continue to work. So make sure you buy from a registered dealer or Rosetta Stone itself. For a serious language student, Rosetta Stone is probably not the right tool, though it could accompanied by other materials to make it a stronger course. For us, we just want to get through the language requirements and be able to communicate using Spanish or at least understand a little bit. We have all kinds of ways to practice and get our hands on outside materials given we live in a community that is about 20% Hispanic. One nice thing about it is that my kids like it better than other things that we've tried. Given neither one of them are passionate about learning a language, that's a good thing. Another nice thing is that they can hear a repeat of what was just said rather than having to go back to the just finished section of a CD a hear a whole conversation over again. In our last course, that got really cumbersome.

Last year my son took Biology from IUHS correspondence which is a state accredited high school. He was assigned virtual labs and they considered it a lab science course. Quite honestly, I do not. So this year he'll be doing real physics and chemistry labs. I would go ahead and list virtual labs on a transcript in the materials used section, but I would also make sure (as you are) that your child has some real lab courses too.

I put my own course together also. It's an AP course that was accepted by the college board as such. The list I gave above was just a small part of the syllabus that listed real books. We're using several textbooks and videos also. Textbooks: Human Geography in Action Human Geography: People, Place and Culture The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography Also several videos from the Power of Place series along with a few others.

The virtual public school sounds like and excellent idea and it would certainly save money over the private school. Another upside is that he will have covered basically the same material as the public school students.

Yes..Level 1 of Rosetta Stone is equal to one year's worth of Spanish study, so Level 1 equals Spanish 1. I included that Level 1 is 1 credit because I thought that it would make it clearer that it is considered a one year course. It follows then that level 2 is the same as Spanish 2. It is a one year course to be taken after Level 1.

1 year for Spanish 1 = 1 high school credit 1 year for Spanish 2 = 1 high school credit

Also, if your child reads any serious journal articles or magazines you should include these. We're keeping a list of books, serious articles and even movies/documentaries. You don't have to include them all in a transcript, but it's hard to say which things will be most useful...who knows if your child gets a passion for special effects science and the horror films really were useful.:eek: I like Gwen in VA's idea of a "Sampling of books.....".

It is my understanding that Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 would be equivalent to 2 years of study. If you have the home school edition it will include a CD with extra stuff that you can use to to round out the course. I haven't yet looked closely at the extras.

:bigear:

We are doing Singapore NEM but from the research I've done on Art of Problem Solving, it may be just the thing for her. I emailed AoPS and got a reply from Richard Rusczyk himself! I questioned where AoPS would work well for a child who used Singapore Math. He answered that the Singapore math students come to AoPS quite prepared. Although we are sticking with NEM this year, I am considering moving to AoPS for next year. My daughter started on NEM 1 last year and my son, who is transferring from a more standard math program with Algebra I is doing some of the geometry in NEM 2 and then all of NEM 3A and 3B. If it looks like the transition is not working for my son, we'll be moving to AoPS right away.

We must be really dull...I'm planning on using the first day of school to go over their courses, and then have my kids write their goals for each course and their plans for reaching those goals. They're supposed to be thinking about that now.... :001_unsure: This year, at the beginning of each week, they will be reviewing their goals and then planning/writing out their schedules with assignment due dates and progress in mind. At the end of each week, they're going to journal about something that they learned or achieved during the week. So our first day isn't a celebration, rather it's a serious reminder that their learning is really under their control. I can help, but, the fact is, they have to own it.