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mazakaal

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Everything posted by mazakaal

  1. I don’t know about the ‘for life’ plan as I have just the annual plan, but do be aware that Plus doesn’t have all of the courses offered by The Great Courses. I love it and find it totally worth the money, but there are other courses I’ve had to purchase separately for dc’s school.
  2. I'm using Understanding Astronomy from The Teaching Company as the main core of the course and will have ds work through Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide. I have The Astronomy Book on hand for reference and can also supplement with other Teaching Company videos as I have a Great Courses Plus membership this year, but the main required work will be Understanding Astronomy videos and Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide.
  3. I'm still thinking through ds's astronomy course and thought it would be fun to add in a few films. All I can think of are October Sky and Apollo 13. Any other ideas for good astronomy-based films?
  4. Thanks! I found answers on Chegg but for the 4th edition, and I've got the 5th edition. Maybe I shouldn't have waited for that latest edition to come out! Now to decide if I should register with Chegg and hope that the questions haven't changed too much between the editions. 🤣
  5. Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was planning to have him read the book on days that he's not watching one of the GC videos, so he'd hopefully get through a good portion of it over the course of the year. I understand what you say about watching with him and discussing. I had just hoped that this would be one subject that he could do mostly on his own. I'll need to work closely with him on literature and worldview. I had hoped that science would be one of the subjects that didn't require too much of my time. Thanks for your input, though. I'll give it some thought.
  6. Ds asked to study astronomy for his science credit this year. He's a reluctant learner, so I'm happy to follow his lead as much as possible. I have Great Courses Plus, and Understanding the Universe seems to be highly recommended, so I decided to use that for the core of his studies and then learned that Filippenko has a text. I've just received the new edition of it and discovered good comprehension questions at the end of every chapter. I'd like to have ds either answer those questions or do the questions in the guidebook for the GC videos just to make sure that he's paying attention and learning something. I'm just wondering if there is a place to find an answer key to either of those so that I don't have to basically do the whole course myself to find the answers. Any ideas?
  7. Generally, I've kept all of my kids' school work for one year (other than some special things that were kept long-term) in case anyone came checking up on us. But I've kept all of the high school work they've completed. I'd kind of like to make some space for other things and I'm wondering if there's any reason to keep the high school work for my 21 year old. What have you done with old high school school work?
  8. Thanks so much to you all. I've just copied and sent your responses to my friend. Thanks! 🙂
  9. I have a friend who is looking into home educating her youngest who is now 3 or 4yo. She's interested in a Charlotte Mason style education for him. While I did look into it with my kids when they were very young, we ended up veering away from it, so I have no idea what is out there for Charlotte Mason curriculum other than Ambleside Online. I did a quick google search and found Simply Charlotte Mason. Has anyone used that and have an opinion on it? The family lives in Spain, so her access to curriculum is very limited. She can't check for copies in her local library or ask around at her local homeschool group. I'm going to give her my very old copies of Charlotte Mason Companion and Educating the Whole Hearted Child, which have been sitting on my shelf for almost 20 years. (How does time pass so quickly?!) Any other suggestions for her? Thanks.
  10. I think it was one of the previous exams from the National Latin Exam website... https://www.nle.org. It's been several years, so I'm not 100% sure of that. I just had him do a previous exam and graded it myself, so it's not an 'official' exam or anything. Hope that helps.
  11. We live and homeschool overseas, but I don't have any experience with integrating public school grades in a foreign country into a homeschool transcript. But if you are planning on only being in that foreign country for only a few months, I think it would be really doable to make up the credits of the one semester in other school years and summers, especially since it would be quite early in his high school. You could do only core classes in the half-year that you are at home, and it would be easier to squeeze them into a shorter school year. Then you could do some electives over the summers. And then, as others have said, you wouldn't need to include the foreign school's grades on the transcript at all. Another thing to consider, though, is the value of the public school experience as compared with the value from exploring the new country free of a school schedule. Just something to think about.
  12. Thanks for all the great ideas, guys! He’s already read the complete Calvin and Hobbes collection and the complete TinTin collection when he was younger, but most of those suggested we haven’t tried yet, so this is super-helpful. Thanks!
  13. Generally all he's interested in is video games and superhero movies. He's not really into sports. He's not interested in The Hobbit, Harry Potter, or Rick Riordan, but we haven't tried any of the other ones. Thanks!
  14. Ds really dislikes reading and has for the past few years. Because his 'literature' this year is 'movies as literature,' I'm having him read anything he wants for 30 minutes a day, just to keep him doing some reading. But he doesn't even like the books that he chooses. Could you please share any books that your reluctant teen boys have enjoyed? Thanks!
  15. I included Latin I that ds took in 8th grade on his transcript because it was high school level and he did respectably well on a standardised Latin test that I found online, so I knew that he had actually learned it. 🙂
  16. Save your absolute favourites and give away or sell the rest unless you have plenty of space for storage. I know that we have some that have sentimental value for the kids, so we'll hold onto those and any books that I thought were fantastic and would be afraid of going out of print. But most of the books, while good, are just not worth holding onto long-term. Our house just isn't big enough. 🙂
  17. Thanks, guys. It will make her feel much better to know that there isn't too much Trig on the test. I'll have her do a couple of those practice tests as well. Thanks!
  18. Dd is preparing to take the SAT next month, and she has done the exact same math progression as older ds - Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II. He did above average (can't remember what his exact score was but it was in around the 70th percentile) when he took the SAT in spring 2015, having not taken any Trigonometry or higher level math. Obviously she's a different person and may not score as well. That's not the issue. She's doing Khan Academy to prepare, and says that she has absolutely no idea on most of the questions - that they're all Trigonometry, which she hasn't studied. I'm wondering if the SAT exam has changed to be far heavier in Trig than it was in 2015 or if maybe Khan Academy is giving her those questions because she seemed to have mastered the majority of the other materials when she did the placement exam on their site. I don't want her to stress out about the SAT, as she can take it again in the autumn. I just want to know how to reassure her - that either she needs to just do the best she can on the topics she knows and try to guess on the others (LOL) - because she can work on the Trig over the summer and retake, or that she doesn't need to worry because there won't be as much Trig on the exam as there is on Khan at the moment. Hope the question makes sense. Thanks for your help.
  19. I've been thinking through history for my youngest. I'm planning on having him study Ancient and Medieval History for 9th grade next year, and I'm hoping to give him some level of variety and choice through the course of the year to keep him interested and engaged. He's a challenging kid because he finds pretty much everything boring. I've looked at several different spines, and right now I'm leaning toward, instead of giving him one spine to work through while adding in some extra materials that I pre-plan to give variety, giving him a list of topics to cover (Assyrians, Babylonians, Classical Greece, etc) with a general idea of how many days to spend on each, and let him choose from a couple of different spines and several Great Courses series (I've signed up for GCPlus) and either read and do associated questions in text or watch and answer a couple of questions from the discussion guide. Has anyone else done something like this? Does it sound like it might work? Any thoughts or suggestions? The other thing I'm wondering about is long-term planning for history. Originally I thought I would do the above plan for next year and then go into Renaissance through Modern Times for 10th, American History for 11th, and Government and Economics for 12th (or split American history into two half-year courses and do Government in 11th and Economics in 12th like dd is doing right now with MFW) - so generally a fairly typical high school progression for history. The only catch is that, though we're American citizens and we're doing an American high school education, we live in the UK, and the kids have grown up here pretty much their entire lives. Dd wasn't particularly excited about doing American history, but I've forced her as I was told that it is a requirement that I can't get around. Dd is more compliant than ds, and she's done it without much complaint, but I'm thinking that ds will probably prove to be more challenging. So I'm trying to think ahead to maybe get around the problem a bit. I'm wondering, if I my plan for next year works out, maybe I could keep up with the same type of history study stretching Renaissance to Modern Times out to a two or three year course and incorporating readings from something like Paul Johnson's A History of the American People into it at the appropriate times with some of the GC videos that cover American history, and then put it on the transcript as 9th grade Ancient and Medieval History - 1 credit 10th grade Renaissance to Colonial Times - .5 credit, Early American History - .5 credit 11th grade 19th Century World History - .5 credit, 19th Century American History - .25 credit, American Government - .5 credit 12th grade - 20th Century World History - .5 credit, 20th Century American History - .25 credit, Economics - .5 credit So has anyone done history like this, more in keeping with the original WTM four-year history rotation? I'd love to hear how it worked for you and how it was received by colleges. Ds is not especially academic, so he won't be applying to any highly selective colleges, nor does he have a long-term interest in history. He's hoping to go into Graphic Design or something similar. So I'm just hoping to hear that a college wouldn't be completely put off by such an unconventional history progression. Thanks!
  20. Hi. I’m so sorry for your loss. I didn’t see this when you first posted in January, but I just wanted to let you know that I was widowed in July 2014, and I’ve homeschooled since. It can be done. It was hard work, and I had to be really organised, but we were able to keep going with schoolwork through dh’s illness in 2013 and 2014, except for youngest who was put into a small private school for about 7 months (January-July 2014). We did have a bit of break immediately after his death since it was summer break, but during that time I had to pack up our entire lives, make an international move, and get kids registered for homeschool classes and sports to begin in early September. It was an absolutely crazy time, and I honestly don’t know how I managed it looking back, but somehow it all worked out. I had given the kids (10, 12, and 16 years at the time - the oldest had finished school) the option of taking the year off of formal schooling, but they wanted to keep doing schoolwork and stay busy, so that’s what we did. I also had heard the same thing that another poster mentioned that it’s really important for kids to feel stability. Anyway, there’s of course far more to the story than what I’m sharing here, but I just wanted to let you know that you can continue homeschooling after the death of a spouse. Feel free to pm me if you want. xo
  21. Dd won't be taking the AP exam unless I manage a trip over there that coincides with the date of the exam, but it's great to hear that your son has enjoyed it and learned a lot! Thanks!
  22. It was your post on the psychology movies that got me interested in this for dd. I didn't realise that you used the Sonlight workbook as well. Glad you enjoyed it so much. I think this will be a great addition to dd's senior year. 🙂
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