This is definitely a long shot, but - any families on here in the Houston area who are involved with the Holy House program at Our Lady of Walsingham? Their website is currently being revamped, but it's at http://reclaimingculture.org/. I'm interested in learning more about the classes offered there, especially at the high school level. I do plan to contact the co-op but welcome any other information people can provide.

Europa Universalis is on sale again for 75% off - we just happened upon this sale. It's for Lunar New Year, but it only lasts another...13 hours. Posting this just in case someone else is interested! http://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/

I haven't checked out his materials myself, but I have seen them mentioned on Twitter, so just in case this may be helpful - Tom Richey does a lot of YouTube tutorial videos and provides various materials for AP European History and APUSH: http://www.tomrichey.net/ Edited to add: Raise your hand if you thought the OP was asking if there were review materials available for AP European, not whether anyone has reviewed the program... :blush:

I'm so glad you posted about this; my husband looked into it and we definitely plan to add these to our gaming collection. I personally am an adamant non-gamer (based, increasingly, on...nothing) but he and our older 2 kids will probably enjoy playing these. Is there some efficient way to keep an eye on when these go on sale?

Ah, good to know! I was going by my hazy memory from early-90s college applications.

I'm very impressed with Duke TIP! I submitted a plea via their contact form over the Thanksgiving break, and figured it would be a few days before I would hear back from them. I had a reply in my inbox this morning! They do keep the scores on file, and they'll be sending me a copy in the mail. Such a relief! Semi-related: my son has decided he wants to try to increase his math score so he can apply to the upper-level science classes at Summer Studies, so he is hopefully taking the SAT again this Saturday. Since this was a last-minute thing, he's on the waitlist - hoping he'll be able to actually take the test. Anyway, they clarified for me at TIP that they do *not* take the highest individual scores from each section, if the child takes the test in both 7th and 8th grade. The 8th grade scores are considered distinct from the 7th grade scores. So if he goes down in one area, they aren't going to say "oh, well, his CR was this higher score last time, so we'll count that." I'm pretty sure that when colleges look at the scores, they take the highest score from each section across however many times the test was taken. I may be misremembering, though - it's been a few aeons since I took the test myself!

Coming back to post a review, a few months down the road. Sending him to the Summer Studies program was one of the best things we've done for him. It allayed a great deal of his "how do I know I'm keeping up with the Joneses?" anxieties about his abilities and accomplishments compared to his peers.He was well-prepared for the class and received a positive review from his instructor. In the months since then, I have seen his confidence increase and his motivation is more mature in terms of - this is a goal I have, here is how I will accomplish it. He'd love to go again next year but I'm not sure we can swing it. I'm hoping my daughter will be eligible in 2017 and I'm not sure we want to set the precedent of "kids in this house who qualify get to go more than once," haha.

Trying to become less of a lurker here. :001_unsure: My son participated in the Duke TIP Summer Studies last year and it was a terrific experience. He's hoping to go again this year and I'm hoping to find a giant bag of money in our front yard. Here is the dumb thing I did (well, one of many dumb things): I've never given any of my kids standardized tests. We live in Texas and it is not required that we do so. Therefore, when my son took the SAT, he'd never taken a standardized test before. When he got his scores, I did not download them from the College Board site right away. I missed the part where they're deleted at the end of the school year. (I believe this is NOT the case for ACT scores, fwiw.) Now, he's interested in applying to a magnet program at one of the local high schools. We haven't made up our mind about high school yet - my current preference is that he continue to homeschool, but I want to provide him with options. And guess who has no evidence of her child's qualifications for said program? This gal. So I'm hoping that I can say, "look, he attended the summer studies program, so obviously he is intelligent," and that will somehow magically be accepted as proof of smarts. I don't want to be perceived as trying to waltz in there with my homeschooling self and saying "I don't need to conform to your requirements because my child is SPECIAL." We didn't realize the applications were due so soon - tomorrow is the deadline. So it all may be moot at this point. The lesson here is: download the SAT scores right away! Don't delay!

Oh, that site looks really good - thanks for the link!

Bumping this thread, as I just received an email from Kolbe that the course plans for the Macaw edition are supposed to be ready by August 1.

You can't really just pick up where you left off, but there is a workaround. Scroll down to "is there an option to renew.." on their FAQ page. Their system isn't going to give you a grade based on two different sessions of the class, but you can look at the progress reports from each one and assess your child accordingly. If you did the course every day, you could absolutely do all three in one year. My kids didn't love it but we will probably use it again in conjunction with other resources to make it more interesting. I am probably going to sign up for the Discovery Education Streaming Plus subscription to make it easier on myself to supplement. My son was annoyed that he didn't have a textbook to refer to as an additional resource so I'm thinking about purchasing the Miller/Levine Macaw edition and having him do the PLATO life science. Maybe. Still looking into this.

One course could be for an intense half-year or a more relaxed (still substantive, but allowing more time to supplement with other resources) year. Or you could purchase the course, kind of forget that you bought it, and cram the entire thing in four weeks before it expires. I mean, that's what I heard from...a friend...

When my son took the SAT for TIP, there were probably 200 other seventh graders testing, and it was held at a separate campus. I didn't work with him much at all. I borrowed a few test prep books for him to look through so that he'd have a rough idea of how the test is set up. He wants to take it again next year to try to improve his math score so he'll be eligible for the upper-tier TIP stuff (he scored high enough for the middle level - his CR was by far his strongest score). He'll be taking geometry by that point so he should have a better chance going into it. I used to teach SAT prep an aeon ago for one of the big test-prep providers and that pretty much soured me on the entire industry - seeing how a student's score could improve a few hundred points just from learning "tricks" for the test, not from learning any actual content. But I did want my son to be comfortable with the general format of the test and the different types of questions. He would have gotten way stressed out if I had made a bigger deal out of it. OTOH, when my daughter takes EXPLORE this year, and then when she does the SAT for TIP, I'll probably review with her a good bit so that she DOES take it seriously. I guess it's just a matter of what is going to work best for your child in terms of balancing stress levels with preparedness.

Definitely! So far, his only complaint is that his mean parents didn't let him take his laptop, and EVERYONE else has a laptop to play on during Free Time. EVERYONE, Mom. I told him to go down to their student lounge with a deck of cards and tape a sign to his shirt that says "Mean parents kidnapped laptop. Please talk to me." Surely that would get some kids to look up from their screens. :laugh: He's been really busy and is enjoying his class so far, along with the various Mandatory Fun activities. I think this is going to be a great experience for him.

I wasn't sure how much a textbook like this would change - in terms of revisions versus additions. Would the content be inaccurate or would the newer editions just have more content? Just kind of curious.

Thanks!!! Yeah, honestly, I think the main benefit of applying to a top-tier school may be knowing "hey, I got into Awesome U (pat self on back)" and then happily matriculating elsewhere at a more reasonably priced/likely-to-give-out-scholarships institution. We are making it clear to our kids that the college source will NOT be about finding the perfect ideal fit for hopes and dreams, but looking at it from a financial perspective and avoiding DEBT as much as they can, while still accomplishing their goals as far as courses of study. Just thinking about the college-preparation treadmill sends me to my fainting couch right now...

It's the big old Biology one. I have been looking around to find a used version and I couldn't believe this was FREEEEEEEEE... I actually didn't know Concepts and Connections existed before doing a search of this forum to see how valuable My Precious textbook is.

We visited a used bookstore that has a big "FREE" bin at the front, and I picked up a seventh edition of Campbell's Biology. Can I use this in a few years for my kid to take AP Bio? Or...is this mostly just a nice paperweight to have on hand as a reference? Here I was thinking "awesome, this is newer than the one I used in 1990!" :unsure:

Gosh, thank you for providing such a comprehensive response! The student in question is only in eighth grade right now, but I'm feeling like I need to have a good grasp of our options for high school. He currently says he wants to go to MIT...based on knowing that is a prestigious college. Who knows where he will eventually set his sights, but our goal is that if he continues to work hard, he will have the opportunity to go to a top-tier college based on his high school transcript, however that transcript comes together. Having come from the private school world I translate that in my head to "take a good load of AP courses and get a 4 or 5 on every test" but I am exploring other options, as well. I think he's going to be pretty STEM-focused and so if we homeschool high school, I want those courses to be particularly strong. As a high school student, I took several AP courses and did well on the exams, which helped a great deal with admissions to various colleges and scholarships. While I did use the credit earned in high school to start as a sophomore in college, the real benefit to me was in earning the scholarship; I ended up spending four years there and getting a double degree instead of graduating early. I feel like it's a much different ball game now, though.

I just bought the one for D'Aulaires' Greek Myths and am going to do it with my daughter, Grade 6. She's read the book before so she could probably answer all of the questions from memory, but I do like the incorporation of vocabulary into the workbook. I'm generally opposed to Reading Comprehension Questions because I think they exist solely to make sure the kid actually read the text, haha, but these don't look TOO terrible - simple enough that they can be done easily without it seeming like I am ruining a perfectly good book with a bunch of busy work.

Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere...trying to get my feet wet with actually posting instead of just lurking. My general sense is that CC dual credit/dual enrollment has the benefit of giving the student experience with an actual college class - meeting professor's expectations, working with a syllabus, etc. And that AP Classes are more consistently accepted by top-tier colleges in terms of awarding actual credit. (I MAY BE WRONG!) I've taught at a private high school so I am pretty familiar with the AP route; not as familiar with dual credit/enrollment. What I'm wondering is if any of you have had your kids take a class at a CC, particularly a science class in order to have lab work, and then take the AP Exam for that subject. It seems like a bad idea because the deadlines and tests for the in-person class might not line up with the window of time for really prepping for and taking the AP Exam. But has anyone tried that? (Edit to blanket this original post with disclaimers that I am not putting down CC at all or trying to rehash AP-versus-CC discussions that have gone before. Just generally clueless about CC.)

I guess it would mostly bother me because I'm bothered about a lot of things about homeschooling right now (related to our specific circumstances at the moment), but still think it is the best of our options at present. Homeschooling is working well for us in a lot of ways but I'm not sure we have the resources to make it work well for high school. That is disappointing to me because homeschooling has been a great choice as far as our family's well-being and our lives not revolving around the school calendar, etc. I'm sort of putting an "exit plan" in place so that if we DO send him to public high school, he'll land more easily on his feet. My preference at this point would be to continue homeschooling all the way through, though. Ah, well, we'll see how it goes! dmmetler - hadn't thought about that aspect! Maybe he'll come home and lobby for going to college asap instead! And definitely shadowing a friend at school would be a great idea. (Edited): Realizing that my original post made it sound like "next year my goal is to prepare him for the public high school" when really, I want him to have a great year all-around next year and be less skeptical that homeschooling is a sufficiently rigorous approach to education. And to be ready to go to the public high school if it looks like that is going to be the best option.

He's at Davidson for three weeks and he couldn't have been happier to FINALLY be there after me talking about it all summer. I'm apprehensive he will return from this and be very resistant to continued homeschooling. He definitely wants more structure than I have been giving him, and I think he sees school as a place of unfettered academic exploration and new challenges. I try not to issue opinions of Regular School whatsoever because I want to leave open the possibility of my kids returning to school. Our family needs that flexibility, although we are going on our seventh year of homeschooling and everyone has survived so far. He'll be an eighth grader next year and I want to school him with an eye towards him possibly going to one of our public high schools. We're going to try to make it work financially for him to do club swimming so that he could try out for the high school swim team and have a built-in group of friends should we go that route. At the same time, even though I know he may not feel that he is thriving, I definitely do. We have been fairly unstructured aside from math for the past few years and I just feed him library books at every meal. In some ways, this seems like the best model for him, since he eagerly reads about anything and everything, at a high level. But he lacks a sense of accomplishment and a trust in his own abilities (despite winning various contests, etc.) and I think he sees school as the answer to that. So, these are my random thoughts on Day 1 of Duke TIP. Will he come home begging to go to regular school so he can be with kids like his TIPster friends? Will he feel more relaxed about his own abilities once he sees he can hang with the best of them? Will he take proper care of the new shoes I bought him? Time will tell.

Having looked at the OU course a bit, my first thought is: what if I myself cannot solve the problems each week? :crying: Not sure my self-esteem can handle that...

Oh, man, I am glad y'all posted about this! I will have to check it out. Trying to decide what to do as far as Mathcounts next year. I've coached a team of kids in our homeschool group for two years now, but we are in an extremely competitive chapter and I don't have a lot of students who are really "in it to win it." Which is fine by me; I think it's a tremendous experience even if you are not advancing to the state level. But this year, my son (rising 8th grader) would really like to do well, and then I have a daughter who will be a sixth grader. I'm starting her in Algebra and my son is going to do Geometry on his own and prepare for Mathcounts through a combination of Alcumus, problem sets, etc. I don't know how committed he will remain to this goal, but we'll see. Anyway - so, what I have found is that for kids who haven't encountered Algebra at all, it's very difficult to make much headway with Mathcounts. And I have a wide variety of ability levels in my group. So I think I may focus on preparing my daughter and other just-starting-Algebra kids for the competition this year, and let my son do his own thing, then add him back into the mix closer to the competition. It's also going to be a potential disaster to have the two kids on the same team because they are pretty competitive. Probably not going to find $199 in the couch cushions for me to take the class but it sure does sound appealing...