Super glad you are alive. !!! Guess what: grilled pork chops here, too! barring the Unforeseen, in which case it'll be frozen pizza. Well, frozen pizza that's been made hot. Today: languages, I need to work on math to catch up with elder, American art history work, composition for elder + English for younger, history reading. Schedule rest of week. Plenty of piano. Make sure we can do some science tomorrow. Register for online classes. Non-school: have a telephone meeting/call at 12:30; house needs attention; finances need attention; fitness all around.

I just realized my prior answer was probably a little too glib ... I did make sure to teach what was on the tests after the fact, so that going forward the child could do the problems. Also: 1. Was it simply a matter of the format of the answer? Because you can allow some wiggle room there, and teach him as he goes what MUS expects. 2. The customer service is one of the very best aspects of MUS: they are great. If this annoys you, or is in any way troublesome, I strongly suggest just ringing them up and talking with somebody about it. 🙂

MUS Algebra 2 tests have a lot of problems that go back to earlier work and have not been reviewed in the lesson -- even in the "review" lessons. The main ones that threw my child were labeling the quadrants of the coordinate plane. I mean, I totally don't care about that really and none of our other math touches on it. At any rate, we ended up just having my child flag any problems he felt hadn't been taught and try to do them; I didn't deduct points for those if they were wrong. Maybe I gave "extra credit" if they were right, not sure. Also, when I was on my game I looked over his tests a day or so ahead of time and reviewed/re-taught anything I thought needed brushing up. On the positive side: can be good practice for not being totally "thrown" when the child encounters a testing problem that he can't solve. That is a useful skill to learn. 😉

Starting with yesterday's leftovers. 😉 Find independent work for boys -- reading, most likely, and some piano practice -- while I work on memory work + brainstorming our future in language classes. And I need to work on math to help elder DS. No cleaning happened yesterday, so there's that too. And: art, music, composition, languages, math, read science, maybe do some. Get elder DS's American History reading going. That'll be school. Home: look at FlyLady routines, get round of laundry accomplished, dinner is take-out with my MIL (she lives upstairs) tonight, and puzzle construction after. Time to work on our exit game. Space for grace, and love & joy.

Morning! The plan: Finish getting properly "up". Get boys working. Prep stuff to decontaminate groceries when DH gets home. Work for 30" at least on our memory work. School subjects: math, art, literature, hit the languages, history.; dabble in grammar + spelling with little guy, logic with elder one but those are both optional; fitness. Dinner by 5:15 (!!! crazy early for us) to allow plenty of time for our (Zoom-based) RPG. Exercise for me. Also: some house, some garden, some planning. ETA: esp. for tomorrow, some today: find MCT poetry stuff; find younger's next Latin; figure out fall online language classes.

Happy Mother's Day! I got locked out of the forum after Friday AM - a glitch that didn't effect everybody -- and am happy to be able to get back on. Today: keep it relatively simple. Straighten & plan; work outside; (edited to remove my hopelessly ambitious plan! for school, just dabbling today: elder studied for Latin, read a bit of literature + did some art; younger did math, bit of history reading, Evan Moor geography). Okay, for the week ahead: I'm calling it Mother's Week. Hoping to get my feet under me. School: art-rich + essentials: music, art, literature, math & languages, hit some history & science. Memory work is the biggest thing to add. Go over previous lists, term plans, clean up and incorporate.

Morning! AM focus: piano, music & art, and straightening. Some math. PM focus: history, composition, language review, finish art. Other stuff to add later.

So: in your opinion, does Mastronarde have enough support for my child & I to learn together? And does it support reading in Greek? which seems the weakness of the Form approach. For teaching, I probably have access to e-help from someone who knows classical Greek well, but it would be a sort of biweekly check-in and grading for Greek composition work (obviously Greek composing would be very basic as we begin!). And: thanks for the recommendation! He does well with the Form series format, though he more or less detests it. 😉 I will look it over carefully, perhaps DS & I can decide together. ETA: looking over it, the introductory materials is certainly easier to read, parse & take in than my "From Alpha to Omega": I'd been worried about my child simply not absorbing the introductory matter in that program. I'll try to order a copy so we can look at it more closely.

You did say any and all 😉 My own children are younger than yours. However, DH is a professor (science; he runs a research group & teaches courses) at uni and takes mentoring seriously so we have seen kids on the other end of this. I'd say that, especially after coming out of cancer treatment, giving the child as much power over his life & building passion is extraordinarily important. Naturally, you want to balance this with academic achievement at the level that will ensure he has lots of good choices going forward. Here are some ideas for you to take, leave, or toss about in your mind as seems best. Do try to at least consider even the unpalatable ones, as a way to start open-ended brainstorming. Consider a gap year -- look for what SWB says about this. There is a reasonable probability that gap year work would enhance his college application, so y'all could apply (or re-apply) in the gap year. The thing to watch for here is the college tests, esp. if he is a poor tester: SWB suggests doing the testing on schedule and pushing it into the gap year, and I think she's spot on (for most students). Consider a fifth year of high school. There is no academic/college app. drawback to this, especially now (ie pandemic time). There may be a few naysayers, but we know many people teaching / on admissions committees at competitive schools here & abroad: if it would be good for the student, it will be good for the college process. You'd probably want to make this an opportunity for the child to dig deep at something he loves. Look over SWB's rhetoric/passion suggestions. Post here for ideas if you wish. Math: if he hates math, look at Math-U-See. It is doable, concrete, and perfectly adequate; it is what I used with my elder child (now 14 years old) through his year+ of extreme illness (though not as extreme as chemo). I think that with MUS you could get the child through pre-calc without too much trouble, just start now with Algebra II. You could DEFINITELY get him through Algebra II again. If you want him to want to go to college, seems to me your best off designing courses for him that will build passion and not trying to get him to feel invested in DE credits. For history: combine a serious art practicum with an art history course? Either a survey of art history or focus on an area of interest. The area could be artistic (architecture, sculpture, or painting for ex.), cultural (Chinese, aboriginal, European) or a particular genre (Arts & Crafts movement). Farm to Table is super cool & really rich in terms of possibilities. History of agriculture, including standards of animal care, treatment of human workers, environmental stewardship & so on? Since he values volunteering, something about the development of the civic ethos in Western culture? globally? Comparison of modern cultures' civic values? For science: you can totally spin off the Farm to Table here if he personally likes that stuff. Food Science. Plus he could cook a LOT as his lab -- I do mean serious cooking. There are terrific cookbooks for the food science chef, and if you can invest in a few specialized tools for him all the better. Let him ping around on Amazon. If you want I can point you toward some starter options, and folks here could help refine & write the course description. Agricultural science. Could be small agriculture -- ie, garden-based science. Art science: this is NOT farm-to-table. Could be: preservation of art; science of art materials; science of human visual perception; science of color; anthropology of art; a survey course with bits of all the above. For math: give him math that isn't too stressful (like the MUS) and invest time in finding having him read math nonfiction. The "Mathematicians are People Too" series gives some quick and easy reads if he's willing to try stuff with a younger target audience. Biographies of mathematicians; math and art (like Math Art); stuff like that. Again, maybe let him ping around Amazon, download a bunch of Kindle samples, get ideas here, don't give up until you've found something about math that's fun for him to look at or read. And: hugs to you. This isn't easy. Please ignore anything that doesn't suit: you know your family & situation best, and clearly love them dearly.

Morning! Today's bucket ... School: languages; math; composition; reading/literature (Bible); music focus. Make sure we hit history reading, do some chem prep. is optional. Have brief morning telephone appointment. Figure out how to get biology/anatomy course going for elder. Finances: work on catching up my paperwork. School for me: Greek, math, some music theory. Exercise, fitness all around. Housework, garden.

Afternoon! Finishing school, have a 3 pm phone conference (brief, I think). Also: cleaning, exercise for me & boys, what for dinner?????

And: afternoon! We are still here, toodling along. For this evening: normalization, cleaning, exercise, prep tomorrow's school. Bicycle practice for younger, also work on adapting to his retainer which we acquired today. Tomorrow school: younger: kick off with history: finish chapter, do mapwork. Math, penmanship, languages, keyboarding/writing, bit of memory work at least. elder: kick off with Latin. Then math. Also history chapter + encyclopedia reading, languages, composition, bit of memory work. me: math + Greek, if can manage. Need to prepare for afternoon 'phone call / interview.

Morning! Immediate goals for this AM: breathe. Start school. We'll see from there. 🙂

Interested in replies. It is an excellent book. I think that there's a sense in which it is really aimed at out-in-the-world-for-a-bit grownups. When one has discovered on one's own how hard it is to read great books really well then Adler's guide is a marvelous source of ideas & inspiration. Many (most, I should think, but then y'all's children often startle me along these lines) ninth graders haven't internalized this challenge, and so they are coming to Adler as a tool for meeting their teacher's goals for them. That's a whole different banana. I like 8's idea of starting with How to Mark a Book -- concrete, and immediately useful to all their reading -- and then going over the book together a bit each day, discussing along the way. What a lovely way to bring companionship & joy to the serious study of books.

Mine is like that, too. It is okay for him not to "like" school, he just has to do it politely. I let my child pick between two excellent writing programs that I was willing to use (for us, Classical Writing or WWS). He prefers WWS. He doesn't "enjoy" it, but he does get interested in the topics & he often is pleased/proud of what he produces. So I figure that's a win. 🙂 Every child (and parent!) is different, though.

Yes, I have a copy of the galore park -- I think it's OOP. I honestly think the problem with Athenaze is that my son wasn't really studying properly; it was an online provider, so I wasn't enforcing memorization of vocab. & grammar forms; and he doesn't care about Greek in the least. We used CLRC, which is a provider we really like, and he liked his teacher; but he's also been sick a good deal this year, and the Greek was stressing him, and I didn't think it was worth what it was costing our family. Athenaze doesn't teach some important things explicitly. I think CLRC fills these gaps nicely, but he still prefers more concrete instruction esp. in a subject that's not his favorite. The Memoria Press language programs are superb at training grammar (horrid at training reading, on the other hand) so I'm sure that a foundation in First Form Greek will really help him. It may be that it is enough to make Athenaze more comfortable, maybe not. I'm considering just re-enrolling him as one option, and this year being very hands-on until he has good study habits established. On the other hand, I think it is possible that he'd have a richer experience in the From Alpha to Omega but that will require me to learn along with him. and to teach him myself; sometimes it works well for me to teach him, sometimes not so well. !! Also: If he keeps detesting it I prob. won't make him do tons more. Not sure.

Morning! @Critterfixer: thanks for the heads-up; crossing my fingers that your internet woes are minimal and easily remedied. Today is hacking away at the weekend list. As a "Mother's Day" present to myself, I'd like to catch up to elder DS in math & Greek and then work up to a week ahead, finally get the floor plan (and perhaps side "elevation" views) for our school place onto graph paper or into some simple program, and eat well & exercise. So that's the focus. Mother's Day gravy would be getting gardens going, hedge organized. One of the best things about this spring is seeing the improvements outdoors -- and, come to think of it, in the children -- from work I've been doing over the last year. Helps me be inspired to keep plugging away. School for today is arts-centered: literature, art, music history, languages + math; science focus with younger (components of soil, read Tiner together, go over week's labs and make sure we have stuff on hand). History??? Cooking: asparagus custard, pizzas, maybe a breakfast or sweet treat. Weekend list copied from yesterday: school organization/planning: neaten school space check work (Greek, math) work on memory work for 15-20" sketch of next week would be great. find/order binders to have on hand. my school work on Counting/Probability xx work on Greek xx house 2-4 rounds of cleaning each day. sketch of plans for meals, incl. lunch and dinner work on floor plan of school space garden water, weed &c. draft hedge plan for area near gate. Doesn't have to be perfect. site + plant lists for 2 children's gardens get plants in ground, sow thyme seed on space outside garden window, consider thyme on spot near car Mother's Day planning figure out something for MIL plan for myself to feel celebratory. Or to maximize chances thereof. dump run? Exercise. Catch up with DH. END OF DAY: well, got some stuff done. !!! for tomorrow: start school with fitness, one round AM and one round right after lunch. Do Inferno with elder, schedule 2 math sessions if possible 20" each, and make sure that languages get done. Allow time for art if possible. When to do grammar/word study this week??

I'm wondering about high school credits for classical Greek language. My elder child will finish First Form Greek before he begins his high school Greek work, and he really doesn't want to Athenaze (we tried it twice with an online provider and crashed & burned both times, so that is rather a last resort at this point). I'm looking at doing one of these two things for his upper-level Greek: Galore Park's Greek (Introduction to Classical Greek) which is a GCSE 13+ book and then "From Alpha to Omega" Go straight into "From Alpha to Omega" First question: is the Galore Park course (prepping for GCSE 13+) worthy of high school credit? Second question, I have in some very old notes that completing "From Alpha to Omega" would be the equivalent of High School Greek 1 & 2. I think that the program is essentially a one-year intro college course. So does the two-year high school credit sound right? Or, if we do Galore Park's Greek first and spend about a year on it, could/should I give credit for 3 years high school Greek study?

Morning! Happy Saturday. This weekend: school organization/planning: neaten school space check work (Greek, math) work on memory work for 15-20" sketch of next week would be great. find/order binders to have on hand. my school work on Counting/Probability work on Greek x house 2-4 rounds of cleaning each day. sketch of plans for meals, incl. lunch and dinner work on floor plan of school space garden water, weed &c. draft hedge plan for area near gate. Doesn't have to be perfect. site + plant lists for 2 children's gardens get plants in ground, sow thyme seed on space outside garden window, consider thyme on spot near car Mother's Day planning figure out something for MIL plan for myself to feel celebratory. Or to maximize chances thereof. dump run? Exercise. Catch up with DH.

I'm glad you found that -- I was going to mention it! Esp. if he is a more confident writer, as you described. I must confess that it is the outline-teaching that has cemented my loyalty, I think. My child has not learned this skill easily from me, but I realized that when he was supposed to do outlining at the level (2-level, I think) that he's been doing in WWS, he felt really confident that he could do it easily. I want him to have that confidence for all his writing. We did have to work through the literature analysis section very carefully, adjusting some stuff and setting other stuff aside, because he just does not think about literature the way the program does and was beginning to believe that he is "bad" at literature. But all the non-fiction teaching has gone very well, with only the usual challenges of teaching any subject to a real child 😉 .

Thank you for this.

Thanks for that: it is the first one I've seen that might easily work for us. Undated + 6 days/week. 🙂

@Amccracken: I have only a quick moment right now, but regarding your post about narrations & notes: are you reading in the teacher book too? It might answer your question. Can't remember right now.

Another Lynn had great questions for you! I think WWS is and excellent program, and doesn't require a lot of parent time once you get going. Others may have different experiences regarding parental time. However, you do need to check work more or less daily and if the child gets stuck he will need your help (the teacher manual has particular sections for helping the students along). I'd very strongly suggest starting in WWS over the summer (or right now, at the end of your school year) so that if it does not work you have time to find something different: you can get the first 6 weeks of both parent and student books free at the Peace Hill Press website and trial it. Expect it to take more of your time at first as you find the groove, and if it works then you have a head start on the year's composition! But you may prefer to just try it in the fall. The Well Trained Mind Grammar will require a lot of time so you want to use something else there. There is just no way around the intensive time you'll need to spend with the child unless you enroll him in the online course (which I suppose you could do for WWS too, if it suits your situation). Voyages in English, for example, is highly recommended in The Well Trained Mind. HTH! ETA: One aspect of WWS that I just love: the rubrics/checklists for the writing assignments. It keeps me focused on what is being taught and I don't worry about phrasing and so on. It keeps me from being too demanding, and over time my child's writing style keeps improving.

Morning! This morning: get some fitness in early, lots of piano, including theory & listen to a contemporary piece on YouTube; history of classical music; poetry writing, reading (elder). Shakespeare. Also should do languages today, esp. French 2x (lesson once, then review later), math and composition (elder). Get outside a lot, piano lesson, dinner: ???? asparagus custard, maybe grilled pork chops, would love to make a dessert. Exercise all around. Time with DH. Notes for going forward: practice/drill piano theory with younger, daily. work to daily engage music creatively. Find way to stay in contact or chat again with J. to help develop an interest-raising regimen.