I am a Christian who uses secular materials for homeschooling. And who, btw, finds it offending that Catholics apparently aren't considered Christians anymore.

It is a wonderful book and should be read for enjoyment first before picking it apart and analyzing. Depending on your son's reading proficiency he might do fine (my DD read it when she was 11 - my DS has not attempted it yet), or he might get more out of it listening to it (we have it as audio CD and my kids have been listening to it many many times since they have been 6 or 7). Whatever you do, I would first read the complete trilogy in its entirety before doing literature work on it.

We used but hated: Saxon 8/7 We love: The Art of Problem Solving. Below I copy what I wrote about them in a different thread: We did NOT like Saxon (used 8/7) for the following reasons: 1. The topics are touched on briefly, then the next lesson jumps to an unrelated concept, only to return to the first topic several days later for another little bite. We found this approach not effective; our kids prefer to learn about one concept in depth until it is mastered and only THEN move on to the next topic (and we as instructors believe that this is a more effective way to learn). 2. The problems are very repetetive and a lot of drill; many problems follow the same format and don't require the student to think, but follow the prescribed procedure over and over again. While this may certainly produce mastery, our children did not need that much repetition and were bored. 3. The book presents math as something useful - but utterly devoid of joy. At no point we got the feeling that the authors themselves were excited about the material. It felt like "take your medicine because it's good for you" . We have switched to Art of Problem Solving, Intro to Algebra (DD is starting on geometry next). We found that this met all our requirements: 1. The material is presented in very much depth, with student led discovery of principles and relationships. The book goes well beyond the scope of the traditional algebra 1 text and includes much harder problems. 2. While there are a large number of practice problems available, they are very varied and require the student not only to master the topic, but also to think creatively and discover ways to apply the concepts to a novel problem. 3. You notice on every page that the author is excited about math, finds it tremendous fun - and this enthusiasm radiates out to the student. This is exactly the attitude we parents have towards math and which we like to instill in our children. Please note that AoPS is not for everyone; there are kids for which Saxon may be the better fit. I can only say that for my kids who are interested in, and good at, math, AoPS was far superior to any other curriculum I have investigated.

Sorry, no help - I had DD simply take the SAT in 7th grade.

Yes, it is good that we can do this here. Actually, it is illegal in all of Germany. But then, if I lived in Germany I would not need to homeschool because my kids would actually learn something in school (we homeschool for academic reasons).

Sure he can. For elementary math, if he "gets" it, all he needs is doing practice problems to get the arithmetic skills automatic and fast. There are kids who "see" that math and do not need manipulatives, complicated explanations, analogies etc. They just know how to add , subtract, multiply etc. In order to avoid spending lots of money on stuff he finds easy, you can find many free math practice sheets on the Internet. I'm pretty sure you can cover all elementary math with just worksheets.

In ps my kids got a weekly spelling list. There would be exercises with those words every day, a pretest on Thursday, a spelling test on Friday. DS used these: http://www.spellingconnectionsonline.com (You can select a grade, there are word lists for each week) My kids hated spelling practice; they are natural spellers because they are visual learners who read a lot. Same for me, I "see" if a word is spelled incorrectly, it just looks weird.

When my kids took up Saxon 8/7 after I pulled them out of school, we started at the beginning, but went through the lesson and lesson practice problems only, not the mixed practice, to see where they were at. It was a good review, and we went quickly through the first part of the book and slowed down a bit when we hit material that was new to them. If your DD needs more practice in a specific area, you could pick out those lessons and topics (which is tedious to do because in Saxon one topic is divided into tiny bits and strewn throughout the book). It's more work for you, but might be less boring for her than slugging through the whole book.

My DD wen to public school - till I pulled her out of 6th grade. Middle school was awful. She did not learn anything, was not challenged, was bored, and on top of it she was bullied. If you say your DD has special needs then Middle School is NOT the place you want her to be. I sometimes worry that DD is lonely and try to find more activities for her; she is an extravert, just like me, and yes, for her we need activities for activities' sake because she needs people. But sending her back to Middle school/Jr High - no way.

If it helps to comfort you: the math curriculum in this country is seriously dumbed down. When my DD went to a regular school in Germany, they covered a lot of topics in 6th grade that are 10th grade in the US, such as congruent triangles and proofs about them. (It was 6th grade stuff when I went to school in Germany as a kid, too). So the fact that the US curriculum places certain topics in 10th grade does not mean that it is scary if a smart 5th grader can do them :-)

Point taken - I understand what you say about not liking the guessing. Let me just share my experience of nine years of teaching and having several hundred students take a multiple choice final exam: the ones who know only little bit and then guess on part of the questions of our four option test (30 questions in 2 hours) score around 50% which is an F. OK, it is a higher F than the random 25% (after all, they did manage to work out some of the problems), but there is no such thing as a "good" F and a "bad" F - it's failing :-) I have never had anybody guess their way to a B.

Again, a well designed multiple choice exam does test real knowledge. All it takes, for instance, is to ask a question that must be answered by solving a fully worked problem, and just offering them four answer choices without any easy way of eliminating wrong answers. Students usually do more poorly on those, because they have to do the same amount of work as on a test with open ended questions, but will not receive any partial credit for steps in their solution if it is not entirely correct. (And most students in my classes live on partial credit) If I make the wrong answer choices ones that would be obtained with the most commonly made mistakes, I can write a very hard multiple choice exam (without resorting to any trick or mean questions), that tests true knowledge and understanding. I found multiple choice exams a very valuable solution at the end of the semester to eliminate any haggling for points ;-) - while all my normal exams are full problems with partial credit, my Final is multiple choice. Guess on which exams the students get better grades.

I must confess that I am not scared at all and would like to offer my perspective. Actually, I am rather relaxed because they are accelerated - since that means no matter what I do we will come out way ahead of the public school ;-) Less to worry about. For instance: If DD scores at age 12 better than 90% of the college bound seniors on the SAT that means I do not have to worry about SAT prep - I can trust that she will do well when she is 17 and does normal prep. I let me kids work according to their level. Which means that a prepackaged curriculum is not going to fit their needs. My 6th grader is ready for algebra, he gets to do it. My 8th grader is taking College physics, that's OK. Relax. Smart kids are fun :-) And with homeschooling we don't have many of the problems they have in school: not being challenged, being bored, acting up - we have solutions for those.

While I do not do any open book tests at all, what you describe would be a poorly designed open book test. If you use the same problem with different numbers, it's a no-brainer. However, I can design a physics problem that has similar concepts, but looks completely different from the worked examples, so that true understanding is tested. It is hard work to design a good open book test. Just as it is hard work to design a good multiple choice exam that really tests understanding - much harder than composing an open question test.

We tried to faithfully start the outlining process with DS with the Kingfisher Encyclopedia and it flopped completely. The paragraphs had so little content that, in order to do a two level outline, he would basically have to write down everything that's in the paragraph in complete sentences -might as well copy the whole thing. After frustration, we (gasp!) abandoned the outlining completely. I have both children take notes on their reading the same way I did my notes all the way throughout college and graduate school: learn how to NOT write in full sentences (which will be very useful as you have to keep up with a lecturer), use bullets, highlighted headings, indents to structure it. To be honest, I never had to outline anything in my life, but I did have to take notes on reading material (because there were no copy machines when I grew up in the Eastern block and textbooks were hard to get - you had to make notes on EVERYTHING.) You can still learn how to structure, how to distinguish the main idea.

I do not know any history books for your period, but I have an 11 y/o son and I can tell you a couple of books that he loves to read: Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer Guardians of Gahoole series by Katherine Lasky Harry Potter JK Rowling Ink Heart Cornelia Funke Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson) My son used to be a reluctant reader, but always enjoyed audiobooks- so maybe books on CD would be a solution for your son? The first book DS read for fun was a collection of Greek mythology, Usborne or something like that, where the stories were served in small little pieces. Then, your son might just like it better to read non-fiction books! Have you tried?

Glad it worked out! Instructors are human and make mistakes - and most are actually grateful if a student points out a discrepancy, rather than not saying anything and the glitch going unnoticed forever.

You do not need any SAT/ACT preparation class. Get a few test prep books from the library and work through them. It's free.

We live in the US, all our family and most of our close friends are in Germany. We try to go see them once a year. We do it in summer when I don't work and stay for a few weeks. This makes things much less stressful because we get to see all friends and family but it is not rushed. Since we are staying with my parents, this is not any more expensive than staying for a short period of time. We do look at it as a vacation, because we try to do other things besides family visits - we sightsee, hike, climb etc. I hate getting there because I hate air travel - but am looking forward to being there every year. It's like basking in love and friendship.

Usually they get in a bit of everything. The one thing that is non-negotiable is math; we are making sure they study math on a regular basis. It is the only subject where we are following a curriculum. This school year, DS has not started on his science yet because he is so fascinated with history. Judging from the past year, there will be a science phase at some point when he will do less history. DD is taking care herself to balance all subjects. We are a bit sluggish with French right now, because we don't have our tutor yet.

I do not know exactly what you are looking for, but I consider us not very rigid. We have a general curriculum outline, but no lesson plans, daily page assignments, worksheets or similar structured stuff. My kids work on several subjects. Every weekend we look over it and see what they could be doing the following week. They know they are working on a certain chapter in the history text, are reading one or two books that go with it, are at a certain point in their math and Latin books. Usually they can choose freely how they want to fill their school time. I want DD to work for 5 hours, DS for four hours each day. Preferably in the morning, but they may finish in the afternoon. The only scheduled thing for both is math - they work on that when DH is available to teach/ help them. And DD is auditing a physics class this semester. Other than that, they are completely free to choose. I suggest that they do certain things (languages) with me when I am free to work with them - but they might prefer to work independently on other stuff. Our day today: DS worked on math for 75 minutes and then spent his morning doing some Latin exercises, read and made notes on a couple of sections in the history text, did some creative writing, played geography games on the computer, read a self-selected book and watched a history documentary. (Some other days he may work on a history report; he would read books form the library and spend several hours a day on the computer making his presentation. During such a time the other subjects would get somewhat neglected.) DD attended a physics lecture, worked on math with dad, read a portion of the Iliad and a few chapters in Herodotus' Histories. (On another day she might get carried away with her history text, or spend a few hours on creative writing.) Unstructured enough?

Depends on the age and number of the kids, and on their personality. For me: part-time. With my 11 and 13 year old children, who are independent and reliable, I have no problem fitting in a part-time job for about 25 hours a week. It would not be possible with little children who need constant supervision, with older kids who are not mature enough to work independently, or with a large number of kids. In those situations it would be a full time job.

I would the reason is that historical changes are gradual - there is nobody who decided on January 1st 400 that these are to be the Middle Ages. The Roman Empire declined over quite some time, it was not switched off abruptly. Likewise, the beginning of the Renaissance is no fixed date; different scholars have different opinions on when the features that made this a very distinct period in history emerged. We are grouping loosely: before 400 AD=Ancient, 400-1400 Middle ages, 1400-1600 Renaissance. Yet one can certainly make an argument for having the Renaissance start in the Middle of the 14th century. For convenience we use the grouping of the books we are working with.

There are subjects that are not about memorizing - such as physics. With the open book, you may have access to formulas and to problems of a similar kind, but the actual test problem will be different form the examples. So it can be tested whether the students understand the underlying concepts and are able to generalize what they have learned to an unknown system. Which is far more valuable than having them spend their time memorizing the formulas. I can imagine an English open book test as well: you might have access to literary terms, or characteristics of s certain genre, but then be confronted with an unknown text which you have to analyze.

It has never occured to me that we should be doing two math programs. We use Art of Problem Solving, we like it, it needs no supplementing. My kids have no interest working on two entirely different fields of math simultaneously.