My oldest did environmental science in 9th grade and will be doing biology in 10th. The Holt Environmental Science textbookbook is a good way to ease into high school science since the text is so interesting and readable.

Summer: Web Design - CompuScholar (free for the summer at HSBC) Beginning this fall: English - Socratic Seminar (Empowered Online Academy), World Literature (Impact Virtual Learning, falll semester), a short writing course or two spring semester from So Verbose Geometry - undecided World cultures - Prentice Hall World Cultures Biology - FundaFunda ASL - StartASL Food & Nutrition - Glencoe Food For Today plus supplements (food lab, cooking around the globe, etc.) at textbook site Bible (.5 credit) - Memoria Press guide plus books from a list Classical Studies (.5 credit) - Greek plays (undecided) Music Theory - Applied Music Fundamentals: Writing, Singing, and Listening by Jena Root

Thank you both, very much. My oldest just finished 9th grade, so I am still figuring all of this out. Your explanations of how you changed the information from the providers to be used in your own course description was very helpful. I appreciate the time you took to explain this to me :001_smile: (yes, I read the stickied thread...apparently it didn't stick and I need to read it again, lol)

Can you not just use the course description given by the provider? Or is that not allowed? That is what I had planned to do....

I would, absolutely. I used book 6 and half of book 7 this year with my 7th grader, and three months into the school year I noticed that the amount and the quality of writing that she was doing was greater than that of my 9th grader. The topics that she was writing on were also much deeper. Heck, the thinking that was required of her for the discussions and the annotating and the writing was deeper than anything required of my 9th grader this year. The lessons are quite long, as well...that is why we couldn't come close to finishing two books in a year for the first time since beginning the series. I regret not sticking with the series with my oldest when she was younger, but at the time it felt too babyish for her (she only used the first two books). I think it would have better prepared her for higher-level thinking and writing, and nothing I have used since with her has had anywhere near the depth that Writing & Rhetoric has. I hope to use the first of the high school level writing books (Rhetoric Alive) with her before she graduates, but I am still waiting for her to gain the necessary maturity because it will be quite a leap in the depth of thought that will be required. After using the W&R series, my middle child will be more than prepared for the high school writing series.

Right now Homeschool Buyers Co-op is offering a free course from CompuScholar called Digital Savvy that covers what you listed. Here is the description: If you don't want to use it for free over the summer you can still enroll for a reduced price through the co-op for this coming school year.

My creative learner has been thriving with the Writing & Rhetoric series from Classical Academic Press. They offer online courses, though we haven't used them. The books are very thorough and ask a lot of the student, but the exercises are varied and open-ended enough that it doesn't get boring and allows for personal creativity to shine through.

Rod & Staff 1-7. She used AoPS for pre-algebra and was well-prepared for it.

This!!!! I have had to learn this lesson the hard way with my daughter. She was obsessed with horses until I had her do BF History of the Horse. That turned it into absolute drudgery. She will spontaneously show her learning in creative projects on her own, which I think is more organic anyway; so I now leave all creative assignments out of the curriculum. This is what I am trying this year with my 13yo. Acellus is supposed to be a total git 'r done program, so I am using it for some of her core courses as well as French. She is also doing online mythology and writing courses (live classes, her choices), her choice of math program, and Visual Latin (also her choice). And that is it. She can get it done in a few hours ever morning, leaving the rest of the day free to spend her time in whatever creative project she has going on. Drawing, painting, baking, sculpting, filmmaking, photography, interior decorating, etc. She is not an academic person. God made her a very creative individual, so I have decided to nurture that part of her the most. She will get the necessary academics to pursue her vocational training (AAS in baking at a community college), but her school work will not be to the depth and rigor of her siblings (or the children of most posters here) and I am ok with it. She is very unique, with a huge talent for creativity and I will not quash that or try to mold her into what she is not.

I have one of these girls. Same age, even. I am dropping formal grammar with her for 8th grade because while she can't find an adjective in a sentence, if we are doing mad libs and I ask her for one she has no trouble whatsoever coming up with one instantly. I figure that means she knows enough grammar to get by in life. Any extra she needs to know she will pick up during Latin study and her modern foreign language in high school. I almost forgot...just for fun recently I had her take a practice ACT (just the English section, untimed) to see what we needed to focus on in order to have her prepared for community college. She scored higher than the CC's minimum score for admission. If she can figure out commas, it will go up quite a bit higher.

The TM that goes with this version does not. It assigns problems from the previous day's section, but that is it. It does not have a steady review of problems from previous chapters. A teacher can page through the book and randomly assign something, or come up with a schedule on their own, but it is not built into the textbook or TM like it is with Jacobs. Perhaps it is included in more recent versions.

The most recent newsletter from 7 Sisters said that many of their products will be 50% off in June, if that helps your decision.

If your child would benefit from daily review of past concepts, then I would recommend Jacobs. Set 1 in every lesson is a review. I tried Foerster's with my oldest, and while the teaching was great, the edition I had did not include any review, so she had forgotten quite a bit when the time came for the midterm exam. I bought and immediately sold A Fresh Approach for the same issue - blew through new concepts with no review of previous chapters anywhere.

So Verbose has two courses on research paper writing and no minimum age. None of my kids has taken those classes yet, but my oldest has taken the Essay 1 course and it was excellent.

If you look at the syllabus posted here, you can see that they build up to writing essays. Each Roman numeral on the outline is the topic that is covered that week. So the first week they cover paragraphs (and they write lots of them, not just one :001_smile: ), the second week they cover transition words, etc. Each week the teacher sends the week's assignment, which includes several pages of instructions.

So far I am liking the writing classes at So Verbose. They are $60 for a nine-week course, and the teacher in my daughter's course provides excellent feedback (both overall and line-by-line for each piece of writing). My daughter is in the Essay 1 course, which is designed to walk the student through writing different types of essays. My daughter already knows how to write essays, but I felt that she could use some feedback from someone that isn't me. I plan on using their writing courses through the remainder of my daughter's high school years.

FWIW, my opinion of Horizons was based on my personal experience with using Horizons math 4-6 with one student and Rod & Staff math 3-5 with another. For the last two years I have taught one lesson of Horizons math to one child and one lesson of Rod & Staff math (one grade lower) to another child every day. Since I am using the two programs concurrently, the differences really stand out to me. So yes, based on my personal experience, I believe one goes deeper than the other. That doesn't mean that one can't use Horizons and have a student that succeeds with higher math; obviously that is not the case :001_smile: I just don't think that I as the teacher should have to add as much to the lessons in Horizons as is necessary to reach the same level of depth and cover the amount of mental math that is already included with R&S; so in my family, with a student that is not struggling in math, I prefer to use R&S. I am not teaching anyone else's kids math, so my preferences don't extend to anyone else's family, lol.

Oldest - Rod & Staff Middle - Math-u-see then Horizons Youngest - Math-u-see then Rod & Staff My only regret with any of them was not starting my middle with MUS earlier. She "used" R&S for two years, but didn't learn a thing. Her math learning began in 3rd grade with MUS. I guess I also regret trying LOF with my oldest for a short time in 5th grade...she figured out the answers were in the back of the book and just copied them down for math each day until I figured it out. So we went back to R&S, lol. R&S is extremely thorough and has a strong emphasis on mental calculations. It also has word problems in just about every lesson from 3rd grade and up (my oldest was so good with word problems after using R&S that the word problems in Foerster Algebra didn't make her blink). It is good for the average to strong math student. Math-u-see has a non-formulaic presentation of concepts and is very good for the student who needs to be able to practice a concept with manipulatives in order to learn it. It is great for early learners who are ready for math that will teach the concepts but not be overwhelming in lesson length, and for struggling to average students. Horizons moves very, very incrementally through topics, at a slower pace than other math programs (some topics are on grade level, but the majority are presented about one year after they are covered in R&S). There is no teaching of mental calculations, so it is good for struggling learners. I would not use it with an average or strong math student; the coverage is too shallow compared to so many other math programs.

My daughter is using their Human Growth & Development and enjoying it. The course includes the basics and I supplement with library books to round out the topics or go deeper into the topics she is interested in.

This Lingua Latina course seems to be similar to Teaching Textbooks.

From http://admissions.tamu.edu/freshman/TexasUAP A&M (as an example) does not require homeschooled students to have endorsements. Their admission relies on ACT/SAT score. Don't sweat it...just be sure to meet the minimum coursework requirements, and let them take classes that show their interests and uniqueness.

They discuss by talking; my daughter had to use a headset with a mic. I asked my daughter and she couldn't recall any religious discussion whatsoever during the course; she said Ms. Shao never brought up her Christianity during class. Her only clue that Ms. Shao might be a Christian was the name of the website. No prayers, no discussion of how C.S. Lewis's faith might have affected his books...the classes were focused 100% on essay invention, arrangement, and elocution.

If I could afford an outsourced writing class again, I would sign my oldest up for LTOW I class with Ms. Shao in a heartbeat. I would sign my younger daughter up for the Intro to Essay class as well. Alas, there was no money in the budget for oursourced classes this year, so my oldest is just writing essays for history and literature, and going through IEW Advanced U.S. History Writing for some extra instruction.

My oldest daughter took Intro to Essay Writing from Jessica Shao in 8th grade. It is definitely a very gentle course with a small amount of work outside of the live class - just enough to practice what was taught and to provide material for the kids to discuss in the next class. The meat of the course is in the weekly class, which is heavy on discussion (not just a lecture). There were only two other students in her class, so my daughter had to be an active participant the entire time. I thought she benefited highly from the course; it taught her how to think through a thesis for an essay and support her argument with evidence so that her essays had some substance. It also provided feedback on her writing from someone other than me. One caveat - I don't know if Ms. Shao is still in university, but she was last year which meant that the class times were not set in stone. Once she had her schedule, she polled the students and they settled on a day and time that worked for everyone. So don't base your registration on whether the time for the course works for you unless she has stated that that is the set time for the course. Also, my daughter's class ran over time by about 15 minutes just about every week since the students were always deep in a discussion when the class was supposed to end. I looked it as a freebie, but if you schedule something else for immediately after the class is supposed to end it might be an inconvenience.

I used Build Your Library 5 with my younger daughter last year. The map assignments were primarily coloring locations on a map after reading about them and drawing travel/exploration routes. You can see what the timeline figures look like on the timeline figure page on BYL.