I'm not a huge fan of Sonlight generally, but I like the look of this course. Is the Sonlight workbook good, or should I just get the Myer's text?

This is hugely helpful. Thanks so much for your response!

I'm a bit disappointed to read your review of the MFW lesson plans, but glad I read it before purchasing. Thanks for the heads-up! So now I'm re-thinking my plans. When you used the Larry Burkett book the second time with the Money Skill curriculum, did you use any of the MFW plans at all? I'm wondering if I should just get the Larry Burkett book and have dd use it on its own if the MFW lesson plans were so poor. Did you feel like the Money Skill course was really necessary to add in? And did you give a half-credit or full credit for the two things used together? Thanks.

I’m going to be using MFW Personal Finance course for my dd next year. I haven’t used it before, but I thought I’d throw it out there so you have another option to look at. https://www.mfwbooks.com/item/60280/Personal-Finance-Elective/

I need to be braver and do things that are completely out of the box, but I just don't have the confidence that it will provide an adequate education. So even if I'm willing to try different subjects, I still fall back on searching for a text or curriculum for it.

Just to clarify, there are some things that we do together that we enjoy, but the majority of it is not in any way related to school work. I miss the engaging curriculum choices of primary years. I find most of the curriculum for high school to be quite dry and/or preachy. If I, an adult who loves learning new things, doesn’t find it particularly engaging, I totally understand why my kids don’t get very excited about it. Even when I try to find curriculum based around their interests (criminology for ds, art history for dd), they still find the materials themselves less than stellar. 😞

Thanks, Evanthe. Your courses sound wonderful! I would love to take some inspiration from you and do something similar, but I don't know if I have the creativity. I think part of my problem, as well, is that my kids wouldn't get excited about comparing Shakespeare and Twain or doing a creative writing course. I had hoped to spark some enthusiasm for ds this year by following on from his interests and doing a criminology course, geography which would be very self-directed letting him study various areas of the world that interest him, movies as literature, writing from his interests, etc, and he still finds most of it boring. I don't know what to do to get him engaged in learning again. Dd does her work with a better attitude than ds, but just does it to get it done (other than art) and doesn't want to have any discussions about anything she's learning. Sorry to moan. Thanks for your response. xo

I’ve tried doing work that is more ‘unit-study-ish’ this year with my ds. He had to repeat 8th grade (very long story short - he’d been in school and came home part-way through the year, too late to organise a high school work load) and I did everything I could to make it more interest-driven. It’s still been a slog for most of it. I’d love to hear how you’ve organised your unit studies, @Evanthe.

Am I the only one who sometimes longs for the good old days of Story of the World, great historical fiction titles from the Sonlight catalogue, and the Apologia Exploring... books? I received an order of some of next year's curriculum from CBD today, and with the order they sent a catalogue. The curriculum that I ordered looks fine, but as I thumbed through the catalogue I was reminded of all the materials we used in primary school that was so wonderful. I can't think of any of the high school curriculum that my kids have used that was spectacular. Some did the job, some was frustrating, some was boring, but none was really great.

Thanks, guys! I've just ordered the Spielvogel text. It looks really good!

Wow! Thank you so much for taking the time to break all that down. That is very helpful - I really appreciate it. And I'll check out the Online Italian Club. Thanks again!

I've been on their website nearly daily for the past few weeks researching options for September and was thinking about taking advantage of the free trial this week as ds will be away and I'll have a bit of free time. I went on their website today and was pleased to see that it's on sale! Usually it's £13.99/mo if you do the three month membership, but now £9 for either the three month membership or for a year. I'm so excited!

Thanks!

I used Practice Makes Perfect as a supplement for older ds when he did Breaking the Barrier Spanish. I don’t think it would be enough for younger ds on its own. I think he’s going to need something that’s more organised. I hadn’t thought of OU, though. I’ve just been on their website, and they do have Italian, but I can’t figure out if they offer individual courses. It looks like you have to be registered for a diploma program. Do you know if the other homeschooler was just doing Italian on its own? I expect that the uni offers Italian classes for people in the community. I had looked into it for dd for Russian III. But I think that it would be way too challenging for ds for Italian I.

There’s a similar one here, but the Italian course they offer looks like it’s for tourists, not really something that will count for a high school credit.

I just watched the sample lesson with Mrs. O'Connell. She looks so sweet! From the website, it looks like they are in Tennessee. Are all the classes listed at Eastern Standard Time? Ds doesn't want to take any online classes, but I may override him on foreign language. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if BRA will work for us as we'll be out of town for the first two weeks of classes. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I'll look into it - if maybe he can start a couple of weeks late and cover basics on his own. Thanks!

Thanks, Lori!

This is good to know. Thanks.

I wasn't aware Kolbe had those guides. Thanks so much!

Bumping this up. Has anyone done Italian with their dc?

Bumping this up. Has anyone used this combination or have any thoughts?

I'm thinking of having dd watch the GC Economics 3rd edition course and read Sewell's Basic Economics and use either some of the questions from Sewell's website or some of the questions from the GC study guide to check on comprehension and give a grade. I'm just wondering what the best way is to schedule it. Should I use the book or the videos for the spine to determine order of topics studied? Also, could I count this as a one credit course? I had planned on it being a half credit along with a half credit of post-Civil War American history for 12th grade. Then I received Basic Economics from Amazon and realised just how much reading it is! I have a lot of other books that I can add in if it needs a bit of boosting to bring it up to a full one-credit course - The Economics Book by DK (which I was just going to use for reference), What is Wrong With the World by Chesterton, Outline of Sanity by Chesterton, Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang. I was thinking that if I used Basic Economics as the spine, she could do one chapter a week with the associated questions and any videos from GC that line up. That would last 27 weeks. Then she could either do 23 Things or Economics in One Lesson to finish out the year. Does this sound do-able? I'd love to hear how others have used the combination of GC and Sewell. Thanks so much!

I'm looking to do world history - ancients to medieval times - with ds next year, and I want a good, basic spine that we can add interesting enrichment to (Great Courses, Crash Course videos, Mental Floss History of the World, The Greatest Stories Never Told). I don't want it to be massively long as he's not an avid reader and he's got the other books for interesting stories - so just something that gives a good overview. I'm a Christian and would be happy with a Christian perspective, but that's not essential, and I don't want half the lessons to be on Bible stories as he already has a good understanding of that. I have Notgrass, and that's just too Bible-story-heavy I think. I'm considering People, Places, and Events of World History by Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum or World History Detective by Critical Thinking Company. Does anyone have any experience with either of those or any other suggestions?

I'm slightly annoyed with ds who had said that he wanted to learn ASL for his foreign language requirement. I did all the research and found several good options for him for ASL and showed them to him today so he could give feedback on which appealed to him. He decided he didn't like any of them and wants to learn Italian, which we had tried a couple of years ago, but just with some low key books I found at a local shop - tourist Italian. Now I need to find a high school level course for Italian for ds. We live in the UK so there are no community colleges that offer it near here. I know some native Italian speakers, but they are definitely not the type to be able to teach the language. I've searched the boards and found some ideas in this thread from 2015. Right now I'm looking at Espresso Prego CyberItalian - the self-study course - the other options are too expensive Oggi My questions are Are any of these sufficient for two high school credits? I'm thinking ahead; I don't want to do one year with one thing and then be stuck for Italian II. Are there any other options for Italian for high school? Thanks.

Thanks for asking this question. I think Botany would be fantastic for my daughter next year, but hadn't thought of it before seeing this post. I like the look of GH and Botany Adventure and will probably add in the Introduction to Botany on GC.