Mornin', all y'all! Here's something unexpected by me for sure: bagpiper playing "Still D.R.E." when Snoop Dog arrives in Scotland. Am sticky-synapsed with the flu today, so gonna keep it clean. House routines. Chicken tenders for lunch; pulled chicken & coleslaw for dinner. School: Greek, piano, math, read stuff for younger. Elder is good to go. RPG: study for 30", work on campaign for 30" Fitness: make everybody do strength training. We'll skip running because, rain. Also because we live on a steep hill with a narrow, twisty road and poor visibility.

It's a cool idea. I like to think about it. But I do actually believe that the test-optional / not using tests is related, on the whole, to a sincere effort to address inequality as it is seen by the college admission apparatus. I see a lot of concern, among both professors and staff, about disparities. Which says nothing pro/con RE effectiveness of this effort.

It's good to think about this. I'm sure stuff will change, but here's The Vision so far. Seems overly ambitious, but one's reach should exceed one's grasp I suppose ... Logic: Art of Argument, read together & discuss Math: MEP Y7 or AoPS; a few living math books Science: biology & start physics: both are based in AQA textbooks + projects to do + books to read History: SoTW + OUP series + DK encyclopedia History: The Definitive Visual Guide Geography: MP Geography English: All About Spelling or Wordly Wise Grammar for the Well Trained Mind Literature a la WTM + Figuratively Speaking Writing With Skill, some writing across the curriculum Presidential Penmanship, MonkeyType Greek, Latin (??) Religion Bible: ??? World Religion: weekly section from The Religions Book Fine Arts Harmony Fine Arts / History of Classical Music Drawing: ??? / Artistic Pursuits? Art Projects / Artistic Pursuits? Piano Technology The child wants to start a YouTube channel. !!! So, approach that goal constructively.

You are right that if general language acquisition and/or English proficiency is the goal, then Latin mastery is a poor tool. Though the experience with an inflected language, and with Latin/Greek generally, means that my older child thinks Russian is easy. 🤣 But again, for Russian mastery, Latin would never be an efficient route. My children do have to study a classical language (up to high school proficiency, then they can drop it) but it is as a "fine art": as an end unto itself. Sort of like studying literature, or art, or music. I think one of the strongest benefits I've seen, for a classically educated child, is the way ancient language readings make one deal seriously with people from a very different moral center (ie, slave-holding & rather sexist). I also used Latin to force my older child to learn to read carefully. But again, there are other routes, perhaps more effective and easier.

It is true that CLRC, of all providers we've used, best aligns with our methods and values. Values being quite ecumenical here, as in a high value on reading Real Books and having time to think, and a high value on treating children with respect. I haven't used CLRC's literature classes, though my older child is taking their Great Books sequence. He actually enjoys his Great Books class (huge win here! he's such a STEM guy) and it dovetails so well with the other work he does for me: fine arts exposure, reading across the curriculum, logic, and building writing skill. The instructors at CLRC are responsive and, in the rare case where an instructor hasn't helped us, a note to the director Anne Van Fossen quickly set things right. ETA: I had a child enrolled in a math course with Blue Tent. I'd agree with Roadrunner's summary: Blue Tent feels like an excellent traditional school. CLRC feels classical.

No, we are not changing our educational philosophy or practice. And it seems to me that you do not need to take computer literacy "more seriously" than ensuring that your child knows the basics of information safety standards -- not sharing personal information, how to behave politely online, and as she gets older, how to not leave a digital trail that will trouble her as an adult. Re-assess in high school. The world needs deeply human humans. It will continue to do so. ETA: hugs, OP. I freak out periodically myself. But then I come back around again!

Those both look terrific, and we're studying biology now. So glad the OP asked this!

Morning! Though just barely. This week I oughtta: square away a shape of younger's education get Greek recitation going for " run a strong week of basics for " get my fitness/nutrition going well, helps with PTSD bring boys' fitness back up to daily runs + their strength work by Thursday or so, unless illness makes that inadvisable finish running my RPG with boys study my RPG system, work on my campaign keep home routines going figure out, with DH, what we need to do around the oak that fell on the house and is lying in the backyard. Insurance folks will be here today, I think, to tarp off the roof which is pretty okay looking, considering, but definitely crumpled in spots. Something delightful I came across -- Appalachian Vocabulary Test.

After level 9 the flavor is MEP is significantly different, as you've probably noticed. If your student happily works through those upper levels, they are certainly excellent. But he'll need to be self-motivated, especially if you are busy with other children, and the presentation is much drier than the earlier levels. Much more pure-maths feel, to me. In this case I'd strongly consider AoPS. You could let him take the pre-tests on their site and pick a book to start with, either the main program or one of the books on counting/probability or number theory, whatever interests him. If he can pick up self-study with AoPS then you'll be golden for the rest of high school 🙂 . So whatever method is best for just engaging him (often this means letting the child pick the topic, but not always), try that. You can do the e-books or the physical. My son was much less careful about checking his own work in the e-books so I make him do physical. Some, probably more self-motivated, children have preferred the e-books (I think @Arcadia's children did?) and that seems to have gone swimmingly. Aside from that: all the textbooks you listed have such strong recommendations! They've never worked here, though. We have the strangest experience of success with only Math U See (NOT recommended for you, but it has served its purpose here), MEP & AoPS.

This is a great point, RE asking for copies from people with general access. I wish I'd considered it before recommending that! The paper's authors, however, are allowed to distribute their work privately, even if the work is published in a journal that isn't open-access. My understanding is that it is legitimate to ask for a copy of a paper from an author. However, I realized while researching this that the students would probably each need to acquire their own copies from the author in order to be above reproach.

Thank you so much! For both the article suggestions + the books. 🙂 Oh, and how! This is changing, but perhaps not fast enough. If you are reading this and want articles behind paywalls, I know of two ways to get hold of them. You can usually get recent papers by contacting the first or last author on the list (or any author, but those are the best bit -- the first author often did the bulk of the work, and the last author is often the scientist supervising or funding the work). Or, for Nature papers, know that most scientists & science professors at colleges & universities have access to those papers, and would be willing to send you a pdf. Especially if you are a homeschooler and provide the link. (see @Clemsondana's comment below -- oops)

Well, hied myself over to Amazon and it looks like these are written to a general audience, and not for readers of a particular faith. They do seem to be wonderful.

May I ask: are there other foundational papers you'd recommend, for biology especially?

Would y'all say these would good reads for secular-humanist children? My kids are quite tolerant of reading things from different world-views, but if the author's arguments rest on religious faith then it wouldn't be a good resource for learning philosophy.

Thank you both! This is very helpful. @Clemsondana-- I'm glad you brought up the possible problem of the students learning the wrong stuff from older works. I agree that it is more a risk with modern papers, and I'll be careful about it. The great books selections I have are full-length with the exception of the trio of papers. Watson & Crick are, as you point out, an easy read if one knows the science; the accompanying papers are definitely not, so they'll take a lot of work to get through and I'm hoping they cement the value of clear writing in my child's mind (of course most modern science papers are not really readable by non-specialists; still, some are clear and some are just not). If we go with Bio1 / Bio2 things can actually fall out quite nicely, I realized. Bio 1: AS-level content + readings + the Wile labs Bio 2: A-level content + readings + the coding/robot work, which is building a robot that actively senses and maps its environment. If I add in Part 1 of the pretty sweet "The Cell as a Machine", which is 5 chapters on Principles of Complex Functions in Robust Machines, the Bio 2 could be a biomechanics course. Which would tie into my son's interest in engineering, nice bonus; and he wants to tackle the book though it's gonna be a stretch for him.

Thanks for the suggestion! RE the reading: it's been a goal of mine since the beginning. He doesn't have any LDs, which helps enormously, though he is not naturally a careful reader. For reading older prose, generally, it helps that he did WTM logic-stage literature lists though we began later than ideal; we combined 8th & 12th grade lists for his 9th grade literature work. And I was able to keep him reading science non-fiction alongside his formal work as he came up the ranks. So between the exposure to older prose + his comfort with science reading, it's been okay. Aristotle was a slog! but he finally got interested in helping me find good translations 🙂 and he took some interesting stuff away from it. I think he's beginning to think that the project is not without value. 😅 ETA: Also, he started taking Classical Resource Learning Center's Great Books courses this year, which has cemented + extended his stamina for that sort of thing.

Panicking, indeed. Oh my! My 11th grader will be 18. A result of a serious illness at the beginning of high school, covid stuff, and his extreme happiness with our current plan. So far this is what we're looking at: Rhetoric: New Oxford Guide to Writing ?? Public speaking/presentation skills with his dad ?? Grammar & Writing: Finish out grammar work, Wordly Wise Tutoring with me to work on writing across the curriculum History / Reading / Literature: CLRC Great Books III with dual enrollment Homegrown history reading (Davies' Europe + Concise History of Asia + DK's History: The Definitive Visual Guide) Math: Continue in AoPS ?? AP Calc test if he's ready ?? Science: homegrown physics: Oxford's A-Level Physics book, Great Courses engineering for labs, great books + contemporary books Foreign Language: Russian 3 with CLRC (or maybe TPS if CLRC doesn't offer it) Fine Arts: tbd Technology: robotics + coding with his dad DE engineering in the evening, good Lord willing & the creek don't rise

I am doing some unusual stuff with my older, and am curious how this worked out in both the short and long terms. Did it feel successful at the time? Are you, now, glad you took that route?

I'm beginning to think about how to frame our biology course for a transcript. Mainly I'm wondering how you would give credit based on the spine/textbook, but the course has other components too. spine: AQA A-Level Biology. This content from this is usually taught over two years. My son is reading the book and working through the problems in the book. We selected this book for rigorous content + leanness, it is very clear and very efficient. labs: from Jay Wile's Discovering Desigh with Biology. We plan to do these over the summer. I picked these labs because my chief goal is hitting the requirement and engaging the child and I've found Wile's labwork to be both interesting and scientifically illuminating. reading: We are alternating contemporary books of interest with great books. Great books get WTM-style context & response papers; contemporary books are read-and-discuss. We were late beginning biology this year; so far he's read: "The Cell: A Visual Tour of the Building Block of Life" and Aristotle's "De Anima." Currently he's on Bryson's "The Body." Going forward, the great books component is coming from this list. I've marked with "req'd" the ones I'm requiring: req'd: Hippocrates (Anc. Med; maybe also Air, Water & Places; all Hippocrates counts as one "great book") req'd: Lucretius De Rerum Natura Pliny's Natural History (or selections thereof) Vesalius (On the Fabric of the Human Body) Harvey (Circulation of Blood) Hooke (Micrographia) Jenner (Vaccines) Darwin (Origin of Species) req'd: 3 DNA Nature Papers (incl Watson & Crick -- these are a group of papers published at the same time which include Watson & Crick's classic paper describing the structure of DNA) Contemporary books may include Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker", books by Matt Ridley, Murchie's "Seven Mysteries of Life." Mainly, I'm wondering how much credit to give for this. It does cover 2 years of advanced biology, and though our spine is lean'n mean we are definitely rounding it out. Secondarily, how to begin to think about describing the course. That's less urgent for planning purposes, but I'll need to figure it out eventually. Thanks for your thoughts!

** zombie thread alert ** to the OP: I have friends struggling with a good math option for their children, and would love to know about your experience with the CLRC math classes?

Okay, being accountable for today: School: spend Serious Time checking math with older; spend Serious Time on piano with younger; clear kitchen bar of current stuff and replace it with a pile of materials for each subject younger needs to catch up on, post-flu; work on younger's schedule, plan for next year enroll for next year's available online classes Home: do routines. Social: do community-building with RPG Group: write S. work on game, rules decide whether or not to run open table game on Monday Fitness: boys' runs + weights My PTSD fitness bundle; yoga before bed

I find myself unable to Ignore This Thread any longer ... It's a gift to see how y'all are doing & to think about the arriving spring. Joy to you today!

Jay Hosler's The Stuff of Life? It's a graphic novel, which can make for tricky reading, so as Support Material I'm pasting in Hatchette Book Group's advice for read-aloud graphic novels. Just to have on the thread; I know you have a lot of reading-aloud experience under your belt 😉 As a reader, graphic novels and comics give you a great opportunity to stretch your range. If kids are getting antsy when you read aloud to them, especially with chapter books, graphic novels help kids stay more engaged, as they’ll need to see each pane to grasp the story fully. Because the illustrations are so important, it may be helpful in a large-group setting to have a screen and an electronic edition where you can zoom and scroll. Read the book ahead of time to get an idea of the characters and how much of the action happens without dialogue. For graphic novels that are heavy on dialogue, it’s time to pull out your voices or try splitting dialogue duties by dividing up characters. If there are long stretches of action without dialogue, you can still add sound effects and read signs or words in the background. But to keep the action scenes moving, you can use a finger to guide children from pane to pane, go more quickly when action is fast but slow down when there’s a lot of detail to take in. Don’t be afraid to narrate even if there are no words. Even better, ask children to describe a panel or page. Stop and ask questions like, “What’s happening here?” or “What do you think she’s doing?”

Hi! I've been away from the forums and have no context for your situation, so this may not fit at all ... -- have you posted on the "accelerated" board? They might have BTDT for this. -- this is physical (not online), it is too late this year to do it, and it may not be at all feasible for your geographic location. That said: I just stumbled across the American Rocketry Challenge and it looks pretty great if it DOES fit a person's situation. -- I imagine you've considered Lego-League type stuff? that was always a fail here, but that's just us -- a homeschooling friend has just started one of his children in an Outschool program, I've linked the science page. Pro: clearly very accessible, lost of topics. Cons: from my perspective, there is probably a lot of variety in teacher quality and I don't know how accountable the parents are. Stuff isn't as much fun if most of the class doesn't do their homework/projects.

Well, after Assorted Life Events I am needing some accountability as I keep us on track. Anybody else? This week's goals: School: re-jigger schedules as necessary, get back on them, stretch goal: pick up with Shakespeare D&D role-playing-game: attend Monday's Zoom game, start working on my campaign Home: get going with FLY routines, work on getting meal plan down, making some new-ish stuff or some old favorites Fitness: get boys & I back up to speed after our round of back-back cold/flu School #2: spend serious time working on elder child's college prep stuff, transcript