Great! Thanks so much!

If you use Great Courses Plus, do you have access to the guide books that are normally mailed with the DVDs? Can you download them or something?

It's put out by Summit Ministries... https://www.summit.org/curriculum/

I would love to hear your thoughts on the curriculum. Thanks.

I've used American School of Correspondence. Ds used them for just about everything freshman year. It was a bit boring, but it got the job done, so now we just use it for specific subjects. They have different options. Ds did the full correspondence - do all the work at home out of textbooks, mail in the tests and wait for tests to be graded and mailed back. Dd now uses it and uses the online test option - does all the work at home out of textbooks, takes tests online, and receives grade immediately for majority of test, waiting a day or two for grading of short answer portion. My youngest ds is using the full online option for an 8th grade science course, and we really don't like that at all. I had wanted him to do the textbook with online tests, but they didn't have that option for this course. In our experience, that works the best. The only thing that American School doesn't have, that you are looking for, is scheduling. They send you the books with the daily questions and answer key for the child to self-correct, and all test grading is done by the school, but the child is left to work at their own pace. I actually work out a schedule at the beginning of the school year, just dividing the number of assignments by the number of school days and writing out what needs to be accomplished each day to finish by the end of the school year. American School gives the kids a full 12 months to complete the course, though, so if you get behind, you're okay. Hope that helps.

I'm looking at these for dd next year, possibly to use not in their entirety but as a supplement for the Great Courses Economics 3rd edition course or to use in conjunction with the Crash Course videos. I'm trying to find economics materials that are fairly neutral in their presentation - not uber-pro-capitalism Republican nor ultra-left-liberal/socialist. Would either of these fit the bill as a good, solid overview of economics?

Honestly, I think it really depends on your dd, her personality, how difficult it would be to keep her mouth shut to avoid the confrontation, and how mature she is to brush off the differing beliefs of others. My ds took a course on American history and government in a very conservative environment. He had spent the majority of his life living outside the US and therefore had a very different point of view about America and its assumed position as the 'greatest country in the world' than his classmates. He didn't mind speaking his mind and taking the heat from the other students, and they were actually pretty good, enjoying healthy debate and befriending him in spite of his point of view. But it could have gone horribly wrong if he had been different or if the other students had been different. So, unfortunately, there is no easy yes or no answer to this. Only you know your dd and the class that she would be going into.

I'm an American citizen living in the UK, and I get SS surviving child benefit while living here with no problems. I have a US bank account that the money is direct deposited into. Your husband might be able to set up an account on the SS webiste to see what your estimated benefit will be in the future. I tried to do it, but I no longer have a US address, which is required to set up the account. If you guys maintain a US address, he can try to do that.

I'll check these out, thanks!

Thanks, ScoutTN and Junie! I'll have a look at those as well. 🙂

Thank you so much! I feel like myself again. 😉

I used to be extremely regular on these forums, but have only posted intermittently the past several years. I've been on the boards a bit the past few weeks as I try to figure out what curriculum to use for next year, and I noticed that my profile says that I only have post numbers in the 30s. I know that I used to have numbers in the thousands, so I thought that maybe the boards reset or something while I was off them, and I didn't really give it a second thought until today. I'm trying to figure out what to use for Economics for dd and remembered that a few years ago I was in the same predicament planning ds's economics course. I had asked for advice here and had had a really good discussion, which I wanted to look back at. So I searched the high school forum for posts on economics and found my old post. It actually has my old name mazakaal, which I used to use, with the thousands of posts numbers. Then it occurred to me that I had changed my name a few times over the years that I was on the boards, and mazakaal was the last name I had used. MEPinUK is one that I had used a while ago. So why, when I log in with the password that my computer has stored, did it create a new account for me using an old name? According to my profile, I joined April 13, 2018, but I've been a member with the same email since the old, old boards. I think I joined in around 2002 or something. Is there any way to go back to using the mazakaal profile? Has anyone else had problems with this?

These are fantastic! Quizlet is the only one that I had heard of. Thanks so much!

It looks really good, but dd has had some bad experiences with live online courses, so I don't think it will work for us. Thanks, though!

This looks fantastic! Thank you! I'd never heard of that curriculum before. I may just buy the complete curriculum and use it for dd next year and ds who still has 4 years of high school to look forward to. I love that you can pick and choose the books that you want to do, and it's a very reasonable price for the full curriculum. Thanks so much!

Excellent! That's one I've never heard of. Thanks!

So far my daughter has done Sonlight Lit 230 in 9th grade, which was mostly reading and discussion questions with little writing, MFW 10th grade world literature with a private tutor who oversaw all the discussions and writing assignments, and MFW 11th grade American literature with mostly reading and discussion questions with some writing assignments. I've not assigned all the writing assignments because she's doing a writing course with Write at Home. She'll be doing a course with Write at Home again next year, but I'd like her to have a half credit literature course as well. So far I'm thinking she could either do Shakespeare using the Great Courses DVDs and read the plays that are covered by the lectures, which wouldn't include a lot of writing, or one of the Lightning Lit courses that has books she hasn't yet read (am I correct in remembering that these courses are all intended to be half-year courses?). I'm just wondering if there are any other good options for a half-credit literature course.

Very cool! I've never heard of that, but it looks fantastic! Thanks!

Reading History Like a Historian looks fantastic, but my fairly unmotivated kids would probably not appreciate it. 🙂 But feel free to mooch away. The things that I've found are: Masterbooks - I'm interested in the Applied Engineering for ds Crash Course - I love this for a supplement The Great Courses Plus - I've used their DVDs for things in the past but never knew they had an online membership. I think I'll be using their Economics for dd and possibly Astronomy for 10th grade There were some other interesting, new things that I stumbled across, but these were the ones that I wrote down and plan to use.

I'm in the midst of trying to figure out what to use next year for dd (going into senior year) and ds (going into freshman year), and I've stumbled on what look like some very cool new resources. I used to be addicted to these boards, but haven't been around much in the past 5 years (treatment for dh's cancer, 2 international moves, and working part-time has meant priorities have been elsewhere). I'm wondering what else I've missed in that time. So, what is your favourite new resource or curriculum to use as either a spine or a supplement? Thanks!

Thanks!

This is so helpful, thanks! So do you do each lesson in one week? I thought with there being 15 lessons in each unit, that one would take two weeks with each lesson. Also, do you use a grammar book to supplement, or is there sufficient grammar instruction in the videos?

I didn't realise that there was so much on Lifeprint. I'm going to have to spend some more time on there. Thanks!

My ds wants to do ASL for his high school foreign language as well, so I'm in the research phase. I have no experience with any of the following, but this is what I've found so far: - Start ASL - they have online and offline options - this it the one I'm leaning toward at the moment and might work for you as you can just download the whole thing - SigningOnline.com - this is an online course, but not live. I think you stream the lessons (designed to do one per week) and it seems to have online quizzes and things from what I can tell. - Don't Just Sign - Communicate is a book of ASL grammar that looks good - Lifeprint.com - might be good for supplements

Thanks!