Thanks for the advice. I will make sure to have a plan B. I got a used copy, so it's older and doesn't have the separate guides. I had thought about getting them because they look like they would make things easier to have the questions with the schedule that they go with. But then I realized that the book selection has changed a bit, and I didn't want to buy new books as well as the guides. Thanks.

These looks really good as well. Thanks so much.

Dd is going into 9th grade in September and, after I presented her with many options, has chosen Sonlight Core 200. I did their Eastern Hemispheres core years ago with another child, but have no other experience with SL, and EH is not a 'typical' core, so I feel like I am quite new to SL. Anyone have any advice or tips? Things to skip? Things to make sure that I don't miss out on? She did a Write at Home course for composition this past year, and it was brilliant, so she'll be doing that again next year. So I don't need to worry about the writing assignments within the literature component. But I'm struggling a bit with understanding their IG. I see the weekly schedules that list chapters or pages needing to be read, but then what do we do beyond that? I see that there are some comprehension questions in the study guide sections, which we'll probably just do orally. But there's other info there with no instructions that I can find. For instance, some reading selections have 'vocabulary development' with them, just a phrase with a word in bold print. Is the student supposed to look up those definitions? For the map assignments, are students just meant to look at the appropriate map and notice the location of each place listed? Also, I've seen a note in the introduction that the Westminster Shorter Catechism is highly Calvinistic. They recommend finding another catechism if this bothers the parent, but don't give any other suggestions. Does anyone have any ideas of another catechism that is middle-of-the-road, evangelical, non-denominational? Finally, what do you call the course on a transcript? I'd rather not use their title, History of God's Kingdom.

This looks great! Thanks. I've messaged her.

My dd is going into 9th grade. I'm trying to get her to choose a foreign language, and she's actually interested in Russian. I lived in Russia for almost a year and kept all of my textbooks even though I never learned a whole lot of the language. She's picked them up on occasion and has taught herself the alphabet and a few words here and there. So she's had a vague interest in it for a while, and has really no interest in French or Spanish, which are of course the easier ones to find classes in. So does anyone know of a way that she can learn Russian in a way that will not require me trying to teach it to her (which would be disastrous) that will qualify for high school foreign language requirement?

I ordered veggie fajitas in a restaurant here in England, and they looked amazing, but I nearly spit them out I was so shocked by the taste - BBQ sauce!!!!! Talk about an abomination! I ate the meal to be polite, because that's what British people do - stiff upper lip, don't complain, keep calm and carry on, but I don't think I'll ever order Mexican here again. The lasagne here is completely different to American lasagne as well. It's like a whole different food that just looks like lasagne, not bad necessarily, but so unlike 'real' lasagne that I don't order it out either. So I have to agree with the other posters who said that you shouldn't prepare any British or German food. You will almost certainly do it differently than what they're used to. Of course, the British person won't say a word about it! ;-)

Sweet and savoury combined. My British friends think it's insane to include fruit (apples, strawberries, etc) on salad. I expect they would find pineapples on ham strange too. Lemonade. Over here lemonade is a fizzy drink, so still lemonade is odd to them.

Thanks! What is the name of the course? Is it the format that I described? Do the students get feedback from the teacher/tutor on their photos? Would the class count as a full credit?

My son needs a fine arts credit, and we're talking about maybe photography because he's not very artistic or very musical. Are there any online photography courses that are similar to Write at Home? For those of you who don't know the format of Write at Home, they send an assignment, the student completes the assignment on their own and sends it in to be marked and graded. The teachers give feedback and suggestions for revisions, etc. I would love something similar for photography because I don't want to have to assess his work with my very limited knowledge of photography. Any suggestions? Thanks. :-)

You can't just count hours in school. What is important is what the children are doing while they are there and how many of the hours are academic and sedentary. My youngest went to a private school here for a short time and kids were there 8:30-5:30, but a great deal of the time was spent in non-academic activity. The first 30 minutes were spent in assembly. Then they had classes until around 3 or 3:15 with a couple of hours swimming once a week, a 1 hour lunch break and two 20-30 minute breaks daily, and pe classes twice a week. In the afternoons they had sports four days a week and various fun activities one day a week (cooking, surfing, golf, etc), 30 minutes reading daily, and 30 minutes to do homework. So it was a very long day, but not overly academic. He loved it.

I agree with Laura and Monica that if you will be in and out of the same school in Germany, your homeschool curriculum choices should be led by the requirements of the school. I've been researching information for missionaries and have put together a resource list for raising Third Culture Kids. I've just cut and paste what I thought might be useful to you below. I highly recommend the book Third Culture Kids by David Pollock. Imo it's a must-read for parents of TCKs. I wish that I had read it years ago. Good luck with your new adventure! Information on raising Third Culture Kids / Information for TCKs: iCHED (www.iched.org) iCHED is SIL’s International Children’s Education Department. Their website has excellent articles about Third Culture Kids, dealing with transitions, and their education, a list of books on being a TCK, and links to online resources for TCKs. They also have links to companies from many different countries that provide home education resources. This website is a gold mine, particularly for information about educating your child. Interaction International (www.interactionintl.org ) “The mission of Interaction International is to be a catalyst and a resource working cooperatively in the development of programs, services and publications to provide and contribute to an ongoing flow of care that meets the needs of Third Culture Kids* (TCKs) and internationally mobile families.†To fulfill this goal, Interaction International publishes a magazine for adult Third Culture Kids called Among Worlds Magazine. They also have available back issues of Interact Magazine which addresses issues in TCK education and care, and their website has book suggestions. Additionally, they run seminars on transitioning to college, educational planning, issues related to MK care, re-entry for adults, and training those within the church who care for overseas missionaries. Travel With Your Kids (www.travelwithyourkids.com) Travel With Your Kids is filled with practical advice on traveling with children and moving overseas as a family. It also contains links to other related websites. The website is not specifically for missionaries, but general to all overseas travel and moves. MK Planet (www.mkplanet.com) MK Planet is the most comprehensive MK website I’ve found. It contains a blog, forums, a Facebook group, a book club on Goodreads.com to encourage MKs to connect with other MKs. There is a resource center with lists of clubs and organizations, support, scholarships, blogs, magazines, books, etc. They also have a store with books helpful to MKs for purchase and a calendar with conferences geared toward MKs listed. International Society of Missionary Kids (www.ismk.org) The International Society of Missionary Kids is a ministry of Assemblies of God churches designed to meet the needs of MKs within their organization. Though much of the information is specific to AOG MKs (scholarships, missions trips), the site does contain helpful information on schooling options and resources. Families in Global Transition (www.figt.org) - articles on issues facing families who live overseas (not just missionaries) and an annual conference Books on raising Third Culture Kids: Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. van Renken Fitted Pieces edited by Janet R. Blomberg and David F. Brooks Raising Resilient MKs: Resources for Caregivers, Parents, and Teachers edited by Joyce M. Bowers (available in print from Amazon or as a free e-book at http://www.missionarycare.com/ebook.htm#resilient_mks) Families on the Move by Marion Knell Understanding Adolescence and Third Culture Kids and Adolescence: Cultural Creations by Ronald Kotesky (Understanding Adolescence is available through Amazon or as a free e-book (http://www.missionarycare.com/ebook.htm#adolescence); Third Culture Kids and Adolescence is available online (http://www.missionarycare.com/ebook.htm#cultural_creations) iCHED (SIL’s International Children’s Education Department) (www.iched.org) - list of books on being and raising TCKs

Great gift, but has a disappointing aspect. My mom was very generous this year and sent a healthy check for me to get gifts for the kids, so I splurged and got them a Wii U with MarioKart and Splatoon. They absolutely love it, but I wasn't able to get Splatoon loaded on it. The game came with a flyer for Splatoon. You had to peel off a piece of tape to reveal the authorization code to type in and load the game, but when ds peeled the take it revealed the first 4 digits and then ripped the paper. I tried peeling from the opposite direction, but could only get the last 5 digits, and the middle section is unreadable. I couldn't find a solution online. I tried calling Nintendo customer service, but gave up after 30 minutes on the 'All our customer service representatives are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold' loop. So the gift is great, but it's a bit frustrating that the authorization code wasn't more accessible and I'm now going to have to spend an hour on the phone trying to get it sorted.

I live around 4000 miles from my mom. She's in North Carolina and I'm in the UK. And my brother is 3000 miles from her in the opposite direction. I blame it in part on the fact that my parents retired down to NC while my brother and I were in college. So when we graduated from college, we didn't have 'home' to go back to. There was no real reason to go back to our hometown in NY, and there was no real reason to go and live with my parents where we knew no one but them. So we both set up lives for ourselves wherever we wanted to. My brother was in the DC area for a while and then moved out to CA. I went down to FL for 10 years, with a year in the middle in Moscow, and then moved to the UK. Neither of us have ever lived near our parents during our adult lives. I've kind of envied people who could raise their kids near the grandparents and have built-in babysitters, but it just wasn't to be for us.

There are no legal requirements here at all. You don't even have to register if you've never had your kids in school. There is no annual evaluation or standardized testing. If you had your kids in school and pulled them out to home educate them, then you would have to inform the school of that in writing, and they would inform your Local Education Authority who would contact you to set up a meeting. They would then check up on you periodically, but there would be no particular curricular requirements. You would merely have to show that they had been making progress educationally. Each LEA is different, and I've heard of some that are very helpful and easy-going, and some that can be tough to work with. If you want more info, google search Education Otherwise. They have all the legal information available.

I'm an American living in the UK. I've home educated, had one kid in state school, and had another kid in private school, so I've got a bit of experience. That's a tough choice. I could see it being difficult to get the two older ones to and from school with the 2yo and baby to look after between feeding and naps and nappy changes. But having the quiet while the older ones are at school would be great. There are some lovely aspects to the British schools - field trips and sports days and school fetes - but I wouldn't enrol them in full-time school for those fairly minor things. You can do field trips as a family, and probably far more than the school would do. We used to do sports days with our home ed group. And there are village fetes and church fetes that you could go to. I would look into what kind of home ed groups are going where you live. Check in yahoo groups and facebook groups for the name of your part of London and "home education" or "home ed." If I were you I would probably continue home educating for this school year, and see how that goes, if you manage to make friends in the neighbourhood without school, if you find a good fit with other home educators. If it doesn't go well, then you can enrol them in September.

I've just discovered study.com and am intrigued. But I can't figure out if it can be used by more than one student within a family or not. Do you know?

I started on the boards around 2001 or 2002. I was MeganP then, but I was never a prolific poster. I used to read the boards daily until life went a little crazy a couple of years ago. These boards were my lifeline, as I was pretty much on my own with no other home schoolers around to learn from. All the other home schoolers around me were unschoolers, so everything I knew about curriculum, I learned here.

I grew up an hour outside NYC and loved being close enough to visit whenever I wanted, but would never have wanted to live in the city. I lived in Moscow, Russia for just under a year, and enjoyed it, but I don't know that I would have enjoyed it if I was there long-term. I've visited London many times and often thought that I'd love to live there after the kids are out of the house, before I get too old. Then I visited Paris and decided that it is my favourite city and I would LOVE, I mean LOVE to live there, again probably after the kids are out of the house and before I'm too old to get around easily on my own. So I would definitely like to live in a city if it's the right city, but don't relish the thought of bringing up kids in a city.

Yes! Crazy small world. I'll pm you.

Thanks so much for all the suggestions. Today was a good day. We've found some things that he likes (Cool Math Games, Uzinggo Science, Homeschool with Minecraft, SumDog, Timez Attack, Crash Course), and we'll combine those with Netflix documentaries, Discovery Streaming if it's available here, and some of the curriculum that we already had (From Adam to Us, Lively Latin, Apologia Chemistry and Physics) along with reading. The only thing that I don't really have covered is grammar and writing. He's way above grade level in spelling and vocabulary, so I'm not bothered about skipping that this year. I have a lot of old curriculum on the shelves, so over the Christmas break I'll have a look through and see what I can use, even in an adjusted, easier version. Thanks again for all your help. Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas break!

Well, not a great update for today. It was a bit of a busy day, so I wasn't expecting too much from him. After family devotions I briefly went over some of the options that had been mentioned yesterday. He didn't like Time4Learning, but seemed positive about the others. And he said that he didn't really mind From Adam to Us other than the creative writing projects, so we agreed that he would keep doing that without the writing. Then I took him to the new parkour class, which he really enjoyed. We came home and had lunch, and I asked him to try three of the websites for 20 minutes each while I worked next to him for an hour before we went to see the new Star Wars and have dinner out. He hated all of them. He tried Prodigy, Uzinggo, and Clever Dragons - said they were all boring and repetitive. I think part of the problem was that he only tried the math for each. I may have him go back to Uzinggo and Clever Dragons to try other subjects on their sites. I think that the Easy Peasy Homeschool is going to be too academic and boring for him. He did remember that when he was in a small private school the year before we left England he had really enjoyed a website called SumDog, so I'm going to sign him up for a membership on that and hope he still likes it. I also emailed Discovery Streaming to find out if it is available overseas. When they first started up I asked, and it wasn't at that time, but if it is now, I can sign up through HSBC and he can watch documentaries there. And I have Netflix, which has a few documentaries. The Netflix here doesn't have the same films available as the one in the States. It's kind of frustrating. I'll have him try the Crash Course videos, Into Science and Cool Math tomorrow. He used to do Timez Attack years ago and enjoyed it, so I'll give that a try as well. I had already talked to him a while ago about being more self-directed and researching subjects he's interested in, but there wasn't anything he wanted to research. He got juggling balls in his Christmas stocking a couple of years ago and picks them up every now and then. I've talked to him about learning an instrument, and he's considered guitar or saxophone, but won't commit to either. I may get him a used guitar for a Christmas present and just see where that goes. He's not at all interested in art. I wish I could get him to draw or paint. He's more sporty but doesn't want to commit to any team sports. My older ds finally got his basketball hoop rebuilt today, so hopefully that will give him something to do. He had wanted a pull-up bar for his room which arrived from Amazon last week. I also managed to find a used exercise bike/step-machine inexpensively when we first got here, though he never uses it. I'll be taking him to the bouldering and parkour each week, though they're both on break for the holidays now. There's a group of homeschoolers here that go to a trampoline place every other week. We couldn't get there last week and they're off until the new year, but I'll bring him to that as well. And he's shown an interest in golfing, so I'm going to try to find a place for that. I think between those four outside activities, that should be enough sport for him. At least that's about all of my week that I can devote to it. :-) I think that I do need to find some kind of routine or structure, which has been difficult lately. In years past I was always very good about having a regular routine to our days and weeks, but that just hasn't happened this year. Maybe that's been part of the problem. He's had a terrible time getting up in the mornings, and to be honest I've struggled with it a bit too, so we're not always starting at the same time every day. And things come up in the middle of the day that need to be done, so the whole day's routine gets thrown. I think that for the new year I need to really sort out my weekly activities and get a schedule put together so that we have some sort of regular routine, maybe even have it organised so that schoolwork happens in the afternoons so that his morning struggles don't throw us off so much. Hmmm. Will have to give this all some serious prayer. Thanks for all the suggestions. Keep them coming if you think of anything else. I'll have him try out those other websites tomorrow. Then we're on Christmas break for two weeks, so I'll have some time for re-evaluating and making a plan.

Thanks so much for all the great suggestions. He tried Time4Learning and didn't really like it, but is excited about Prodigy and Homeschool with Minecraft. He was already on Minecraft, and he loves Dr. Who, so that's a win/win class! And, ElizabethB, I gave him the reading test, and he scored 8.9, so that was great reassurance that the ability to read is not what's hindering him. Thanks, everyone!

Thanks, Barnwife. :-) Thanks for the suggestions, Home Again. I think those look a bit too academic. He really needs something that he's going to think is fun. Thanks, ElizabethB. He reads well, but I don't know what his reading level is. I'll run that test on him tomorrow.

We've been through a lot the last few years (cancer diagnosis for dh, treatment for dh's cancer, death of dh, moved from UK - where ds was born and grew up - to Florida, moved back to UK in October but a different location than where ds grew up), hence me not being on the boards here a whole lot. But I'm hoping that someone will have some ideas for me. My 6th grade, almost 12yo ds is having a terrible time with his schoolwork, which I'm sure is partly a reaction to all the difficulty and changes. He feels like he can't do it, that it's too difficult. I've tried to simplify schoolwork because I needed to free up my time to work part-time, and an international move takes some time as well. For this school year, I had him doing CLE math and language arts, From Adam to Us for history, Christian Kids Explore Chemistry and Physics, and Lively Latin. I showed him all the curriculum before ordering, and he helped to choose it, but now that he's doing it, he hates it. He gets a lot wrong because either he's not really paying attention or he's just forgetting everything that he learned the previous day. Last year, after his father died, I gave him and all the kids the option of taking the year off from schoolwork, just having field trips, reading, etc. None of them took the opportunity because it would put them a year behind, but I presented the option to the youngest last month, and he said that he did want to take the rest of this year off. But now that I'm working part-time (from home so there's flexibility), I can't spend all my time taking him around on field trips. And I have the 17yo and 13yo doing schoolwork, too. The condition for him taking the rest of the year off his regular curriculum was that he had to do a half-hour of math practice (either Xtra math or Khan Academy online or any of the math games we have here at the house) and two 45-minute sessions of reading (his own choice - pretty much anything other than comic books) each day. And he doesn't have any electronics until 4pm, because I don't want him just spending the rest of the day watching stupid youtube videos. Since we've just moved to a new city, I'm still trying to find activities and friends for him. So far I have him in bouldering one day a week and we're trying out parkour tomorrow. Other than that, he doesn't have much to do. Unfortunately, plan B isn't working either. He doesn't want to even do the reading and math - says it's boring. He says that he wants to do an online school. I just want to find him something that will be engaging and enjoyable for him, that he won't fight with me about doing, that will keep him interested and occupy him for a few hours a day so I can work, and that he'll learn something from. Any suggestions? eta: I've been reading some past threads and saw Time4Learning mentioned. It might be something ds would like. I'd love opinions from anyone who's used it.

This is helpful, thanks. I know that there are literally thousands of options out there. I'm just trying to narrow them down a bit for those who are living overseas and need to homeschool as there's no local school option, yet don't want to spend the countless hours researching on these boards like I did when I started homeschooling. :001_smile: