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Mrs. Tharp

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Everything posted by Mrs. Tharp

  1. No, neither will I. At least the statement of faith requirement is a heads-up. The point is, SEA's guidelines don't specify how restrictive they are. It might give a lot of their members pause if they did. "Secular" can mean anything from not explicitly religious, to the extremes SEA goes to. Most secular groups don't go as far down the purity road as SEA has. Even the parent partnership program at the local school district doesn't go nearly as far as SEA does when defining what secular includes and does not, and that's with state oversight.
  2. Absolutely. I agree 100%. I've always respected the strong sense of faith generally and in homeschooling materials.
  3. I know that the group leadership has pressured Emily to change some of her materials to fit their definition of secular. She is revamping some of the levels and they refuse to recommend them until she is finished. So whenever BYL is recommended the moderator will jump in with a caveat. I agree with the ptsd part; when I was a new homeschooler I experienced a little of that myself. But then people started freaking out if religion was mentioned in any context and slamming religion out of the context of their own personal experiences and they lost me. A safe space is fine; outright intolerance and contempt gets old.
  4. All this kind of thing makes it seem like their standards are extremely arbitrary.
  5. The Pacific Northwest. Washington, in the Seattle area. It is wonderful here, but very expensive, just warning you. DH and I consider ourselves lucky to own a house.
  6. Well, when I pushed, that's not what they said. I asked if it was okay to recommend a secular product with a Christian author and the answer was a resounding no.
  7. Yeah, she is marketing a ton of new materials on her website. I hadn't made the connection. A big reason I asked the questions because I was looking for clarity and consistency and there didn't seem to be much. As in, if I understand the rationale for banning this I'll have an easier time figuring out what to recommend.
  8. Yes, but according to the conversation I just had with a moderator, Susan Wise Bauer's Christian beliefs would arguably makes anything she writes off-limits.
  9. Thank you, yes this. Isn't the whole point to be more inclusive? Of course she can do what she wants. It would be nice if she delineated it more clearly. Maybe she doesn't because it may (understandably) put people off.
  10. I hear you. I live in a very secular area of the country and don't see that kind of thing often, though I've heard several stories about it and was exposed to a bit before I moved out of the suburbs to an urban area. My point is, though, that in this group, people are fleeing one kind of restrictive mindset and embracing another that is equally restrictive. In the case of the FB group, I doubt they understand that they are making that choice. I agree that the group is not a good long term fit. I get exasperated with religion bashing, or contemptuous speech directed at any group of people, as well as overly rigid ideological stances. I sympathize with the need to find your people.
  11. Okay, I thought it would be okay to complain here. I'm sorry to offend. As I said, they were not being very specific. I'm not religious myself, so I don't tend to hang out in religious groups. Sorry to trigger you.
  12. I didn't mean to be obnoxious. I genuinely had questions about their definition of secular since it was starting to seem more and more restrictive and I wanted to know what I could and couldn't recommend.
  13. Fair enough. I guess I always thought that "secular" meant non-religious, not anti-religious. I mean, think about how much is excluded by the criteria I mentioned. They're also not being open about how restrictive they are, unlike most religious hs groups I've seen, who are quite upfront about it. Their actual, written definition of secular does not exclude any of the things I mentioned--it only states that the materials need to reflect the ideas of the majority of experts in the field. (Think about how many widely used hs curriculum have been written by um, non-experts.) Because of this, I don't think a lot of the users realize how narrow the allowed recommendations are. To be fair, since most of them are likely to be short-timers, they probably don't care.
  14. The FB group I mentioned was started by the author of a number of homeschool science curriculum, so I suspect she's around for the long haul.
  15. Ugh. There are so many new crisis homeschoolers as everyone knows. Since I use mostly secular curriculum and consider myself largely secular I signed up for a couple of all-secular groups, one on FB, one not. Apparently one tolerates religion-bashing. Someone remarked that they were so glad to have found the group because most hsers are "uber-religious" and "homeschool to get out of teaching their kids science". No moderator stepped in to defend the many, many religious hsers who prefer not to use religious curriculum and yes, do use science. Another group has a fairly restrictive view of "secular". I understood the issue with regards to wanting secular science and non-providential history but started asking questions and found out that yes, indeed they do forbid the following: recommending web sites that sell secular and non-secular curriculum, recommending materials that are written from a religious point of view even there are no explicit religious references, recommending materials that have had religious references removed in order to appeal to a wider market (I'm not talking about "neutral" science programs, more like Writeshop), recommending materials that are secular but the author thanks God in the intro, you all get the picture. I also asked about materials written from a classical and Charlotte Mason perspective, considering how entwined they are with Christian thought and ideals, and apparently that would be banned too. The thread was deleted before I could point out how many curricula recommended as secular fall under that umbrella. Under that definition someone can write a secular text, mention their faith in their acknowledgments or something, and get banned. Anyhow, just venting. It just comes across as really thought-police-y and intolerant to me, and odd too, given all the stereotyping that goes on, how intolerant secular groups seem to be. I always thought that a religious perspective (history and science excluded) was a good jumping off point for discussion, myself.
  16. This year, in my 10th year of homeschooling, I've finally realized I feel comfortable giving advice to other people. So, at least in my own mind, lol, I've arrived. So much of the early years of homeschooling were all about dealing with my oldest son's issues with autism: the sensory issues, the EF issues, the social issues, and also trying to move to a community that was a better fit for us. Once all that was sorted, the curriculum/philosophy part got dramatically easier because I finally had a better handle on why something was succeeding or failing.
  17. Youngest ds was going to do ps full-time, but hates online learning so much that he has asked to be homeschooled this year. Math: Videotext Algebra Grammar: Fix-It Literature: Graphic novels unit, also choose books from BYL 8, MP, and BW reading lists. Supplementing with Teaching the Classics and Windows to the World. Writing: Writeshop I HIstory: Hakim History of Science with teaching guides & workbooks Science: BFSU. If I run out of time/bandwidth, Conceptual Academy Physical Science Explorations Extras: Speech & Debate elective at ps, Lego Robotics if it is not canceled, D&D with friends
  18. Thank you, SusanC!!! I did find several posts on the high school board from the physics lists but was unable to make any of them work. I've since taken the sample class offered on the Conceptual website and think the course will work nicely for older ds. I might take a year with the younger to go over BFSU, since I think he would thrive on a lot of discussion.
  19. Yeah, I thought that people would be flooding the post with replies! I definitely will!
  20. Memoria Press has a middle school level American Lit curriculum but it focuses on short stories and poetry. It still might be worth a look, as the guides are very structured.
  21. Rod & Staff worked very well for my sons, but has a lot of repetition in 2nd and 3rd grades so the student learns their math facts. You could always move him through it more quickly if needed though. It's definitely not Common Core.
  22. There's a sale on right now, but normally a course is $90. You need to buy the textbook separately, so estimate $100 for that.
  23. I am thinking of using this for my rising 8th grader who loves STEM. It looks amazing, but before I pay up I'd like to perform my due diligence. Has anyone tried it? I'd love to hear the pros and cons about the videos, labs, homework, etc. Any info would help. I did watch a sample video but would have appreciated seeing a sample of the homework they request as well.
  24. Even she is okay continuing with WWS, I would consider keeping it, since it is an excellent program and is designed to be done independently. Another choice might be Writeshop. It is teacher intensive at first, but should become more independent over time as she learns the format. And it has a daily lesson plan. For literature this year, we are doing The Iliad unit from Memoria Press. It comes with video lectures, so should be relatively independent.
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