We did American history and government together my youngest's senoir year. And Econ too. We didn't intend it to work out that way, but got so far behind because of procrastination issues and a house fire that we had to do them all at once or skip one. It worked out pretty good. American history and government complement each other well.

My MIL is mostly very good, but here are some things I wish she'd done better: 1) Allow your IL to choose what they want to call you--mom, your first name, Mrs + your last name. In my case my MIL requested to be called mom, which I do, and have never complained before, but I'd rather have called her by her first name. I HAVE a mom, and she is not it. Less confusion if I don't call two people mom. 2) If you must give advice, FOR GOD"S SAKE don't check up to make sure your in law is taking your advice. 3) If you have a problem with the IL, tell them so. Don't try to go through your child, and don't hold it in until you can't anymore then explode at the IL. 4) Don't offer to help then resent it if they accept your offer. 5) Don't criticize their housekeeping, home decorating, child-rearing, schooling choices. 6)Don't come into their home and tell them how things "must" be done--e.g. "You must have a light over the sink, there isn't enough light there." Maybe the IL is happy with only the natural light and never does dishes after dark. It's not your business, even if you do help them with dishes. Thanks for letting me vent. Now I'll go back to being best friends with my MIL. She isn't perfect, but neither am I and we love each other.

And they shouldn't be considered measures of intelligence. There are other tests for that. Think of the SAT and ACT as final exams for high school. They're supposed to show you've learned enough in high school to succeed in college. Which has nothing to do with the main topic of this thread, I know. Just had to respond to that comment.

For Josh, finishing his associate's degree. For me??? I'm not sure I even know who I am anymore besides a homeschooling mom.

Are you looking for curriculum or read-alongs? For curriculum we used The American Past by Joseph Conlin. It's a college textbook in 2 volumes. I like it because it is very balanced in presentation, not trying to push an agenda like so many high school curricula do. If you get the 8th edition, there are online quizzes and activities that go with it and save the teacher (you) a ton of work. Here's our read-along list: The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin I Was Born a Slave (3 volume anthology of slave narratives--read selections unless your ds loves them so much he wants to read them all) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benet His Brother's Keeper by Charles Sheldon That Printer of Udell's by Harold Bell Wright Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki

I know I've only been here sporadically the last few years. Too busy with high school, a part time job, and many church responsibilities. But I just wanted to share. WE MADE IT!! My youngest completed his last high school assignment yesterday! I never thought I'd live to see this day. 3 years ago he was over 1 year behind on his high school work and today he has completed enough work for a high school diploma. AND has taken 6 dual enrollment classes with a 4.0 GPA. I'm so proud of him. And the best part is his social development. He has completely conquered his temper problem, helps around the house, holds a part time job, and saves his money. So you'll probably hear from me even less than before now that I'm done homeschooling forever. (Unless my dream comes true and someday my children let me homeschool my grandchildren -- which I don't have yet.) But I'll still stop in once in a while just to see what's going on.

Realize that things can change, sometimes drastically, over the course of the 4 years of high school. My now 20 year old has changed his goals radically at least 4 times since 9th grade. He was going to be a an Air Force officer, then he was going to be a musician (he does have the ability if he wanted to do that), then he was going to be an engineer, then he just wanted to get college over quickly so he could join the Peace Corps, then he was going to teach linguistics at the college level, now he's majoring in computer science. I think he'll stick with that one because he's now a junior and paying for his own college, so he won't want to take the additional year that changing majors now would require. My point is that you might want to think about preparing her for something unexpected because you just never know.

We've used Glencoe textbooks for science for 3 years now. I have a college student tutor my son, and they are really comfortable with the Glencoe format. I buy older editions (not outdated, just not the latest editions) and I get the teacher's wrap-around editions for the tutor. I just make sure the teacher's edition and the student edition are from the same year. There are also lab manuals, manuals of extension activities, and things like that available. I have purchased all of these from Amazon.com, usually for under $30 per year.

No, without the geometry, he would only have 3 math credits.

I wouldn't recommend using this book as your only guide to Shakespeare. Leithart picks ONE and only one theme from each play he discusses and works it to death. He makes Shakespeare seem one-dimensional and misses all of the richness that can be found in his plays.

We're using a college textbook. The American Past by Joseph R. Conlin. My older ds took Am. hist. at the community college and that is the book they used. I looked through it at that time and thought it very balanced, so I decided to use it for the younger son at home. If you get the 8th edition, which is a little less expensive since it is not the newest, there are lots of quizzes and activities online for each chapter. Saves a lot of teacher prep time.

My son got me Gilead by Marilynne Robinson for my birthday. Though she's a living author, I'd definitely consider her a great literary writer. Gilead did win the Pulitzer Prize. Anyway, it's a wonderful uplifting novel about a dying pastor writing his memories down for his son. Very beautifully written. Try it. I think it'd be great for an American lit course.

Ds is a senior. We started to do geometry last fall (11th grade). We got through 5 chapters of the 13 chapter book. Then we decided to have him do algebra II at the community college last winter semester. Because he didn't want to do 2 maths at once, we put geometry on the back burner. My intention was to finish it over the summer. (We school year round). We did some review over the summer and got two additional chapters done. Then in the fall he took another math class at the community college and geometry was put on the back burner again. Now it's time to pick it up again and ds is putting up a strong resistance. He doesn't like learning math from me. I have to say, geometry is the one subject I've really struggled with teaching. I got an A in geometry in high school, but that was 35 years ago, so I've forgotten a lot and also the teaching of geometry has changed a lot since then, so he is learning things I never studied. We checked into the community college, but they don't offer geometry. I suggested video lectures, but he has never liked those either, and that didn't make him any less resistant. We live in Michigan, and homeschoolers in Michigan are not required to have any specific courses for graduation. It's all up to what the parents want. That said, I have been trying to follow the Michigan merit curriculum that public high school students have to have to graduate (not necessarily as to the same content, but the same number of classes in the same subjects, etc.) Not only that, but if he decides to go to college (not sure yet what he wants to do with his life), he'll need geometry to do well on the SAT or ACT. I also know that in a public high school, you don't necessarily get through the whole textbook in every course. Just last night my husband was making fun of my (lack of) knowledge of 20th century American history. My high school American history teacher moved kind of slowly, and we just barely got to World War I in that course. So here's my question. Is it worth the fight to get him to finish his geometry course? And if I give up and let him quit now, is just a little over half of the book enough to give him credit on his transcript for a geometry course? And is is likely to be good enough to get him an acceptable grade on his college entrance exams? What would you do?

We've used them, but I was expecting more from them. I honestly don't think one teaching company course is rigorous enough to deserve a credit as an entire high school level course. They are wonderful as supplements, but not on their own.

I started homeschooling thinking I could surely do a better job than the public schools. And I have...for my older son, because he is like me and we understand each other. But I worry about my younger son. He is academically gifted, but unmotivated and disorganized. It's a good thing we started high school level classes in 7th grade because we're just barely going to finish before he turned 18. He informed me that he will drop out if he does not finish by the time he is 18. And I think...what have I done? Maybe I should have swallowed my pride and admitted that I could not teach this child.

Yep, we do. Just me and the last ds, who will soon be a senior. Last year we read the Iliad, the Aeneid, and Pearl Maiden. This year we'll do The Song of Hiawatha, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, some slave narratives, His Brother's Keeper, The Grapes of Wrath, and Black Like Me. We've also done David Copperfield (took us almost 6 months), Pride and Prejudice (neither of us liked that one), A Tale of Two Cities, Pilgrm's Progress. And we do all our Shakespeare aloud. We take parts. We've done Henry V, The Tempest, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew. We're currently doing Romeo and Juliet and after that we'll do Hamlet and Othello. Reading aloud is a great way to expand their familiarity with great literature beyond what they have time to read on their own.

Working on planning my son's senior year when all of a sudden it hit me--if he's not prepared for life, I'm the one who's responsible. What on earth ever gave me the idea I could teach him everything he'd need to know to succeed in life? I'm feeling like suddenly this is all too much for me. How do I know if I'm on the right track? And what do I do if I'm not. It's a little late to be starting over at this point. Help!

We had a similar problem. We started Algebra in 7th grade. I thought ds was ready, but it didn't go well. We got through about 3 chapters. For 8th grade I tried ALEKS thinking it would give him a little more structure. It didn't. We went back to the textbook. We finally got through it after 1 1/2 years with a grade of C. But he just took algebra 2 at the community college and got an A, so I guess stretching Algebra 1 out over 3 1/2 years turned out o.k. And we had time to do it since we started so early.

She MUST learn to take notes well. She will not survive college without that skill.

One thing you learn when your children become adults is that they may go in a completely different direction than you expect. The week before my ds turned 18 he announced that he was moving out. He went "walkabout" and eventually ended up living downtown with friends. I always assumed he'd go to college right after high school, but he didn't. He didn't want to rack up the debt. So he is working at a grocery store deli and saving for college. We did a lot of dual enrollment when he was home, so he is only 9 credits away from an associate's degree, but not currently attending. He is also planning to get married in a couple of years and hopes to move to Russia with his (will be then) wife to teach English. I required him to take certain classes (math up to precalculus, 3 science classes, history of God's kingdom, American history, Latin). Beyond that, he followed his own interests. He took lots of English classes, sociology, psychology (2 classes), Russian (2 years), Chinese (2 years). I don't remember off the top of my head what else. My point is, you never know what your kids will end up doing, but if you let them follow their interests (within reason--colleges will expect certain things that your kids wouldn't take if left to their own choices), they will probably find their passion (languages for my son) and be well prepared to major in that in college. My other son's curriculum looks totally different. He is in 11th grade right now. I required all the same things from him as my older son (except he will take a more practical math class instead of precalc for his 4th math class), but he has taken (or will take) 2 years of photography, history of animation, photoshop, and more history classes than my older son took. He will probably be an artist, and I wouldn't be surprised if he never goes to college, beyond the community college classes he is doing dual enrollment. But, he might surprise me as much as the older one did.

How important is it to put the dates of classes on a transcript? The way we homeschool, the dates are going to look crazy. For example, right now we're doing 10th grade history, 11th grade science and English, 11th grade math (algebra II) but only partly completed 10th grade math (geometry) which we will go back and finish after algabra II is done. Algebra I took us 2 1/2 years to get through (we started in 8th grade), but it looks like ancient history will only take about 6 months. As soon as we finish one course, we go right into the next course in that content area. So when we finish ancient history next month, we will start American history the next day. We homeschool year round. We don't take scheduled breaks, though we do take procrastination breaks. I believe in letting my son learn at his own pace, which is much faster in some subjects than others. In short, if I put dates on the transcript, it will look really weird. I'd rather just put grade levels. What do you think?

Ancient Governments and their Influences on America The Roman Republic had its start in 509 BC when Lucius Junius Brutus overthrew the Tarquin monarchy. During this Republic, Rome was ruled by a group of elected magistrates, a senate and three assemblies. These offices were all held by at least two men who were of equal rank and any magistrate had the power to veto acts of other members who they were of equal or greater rank than. Most of these offices had one year terms with, with possibilities for re-election, although there are some exceptions to this rule.. Now before moving on, it is important to understand the Roman concept of imperium which is the supreme power held by certain magistrates to command military, judicial and civil affairs. At the top of the Republic were two consuls, who were the chief civil and military magistrates. They had imperium (which was considered greater than that of the Praetors) and were the main people in charge of initiating legislature. These consuls were as close to a king as the Romans had during the Republic, but they also had checks on their powers. For a start, a consul could not act with out the other consul in agreement. They could also veto any decisions made by their counterpart. Below the consuls were two to eight praetors, who were essentially the central generals of Rome. They had duties as military commanders but also administered civil law. Below them were quaestors who were financial officers and administrative assistants in charge of the state treasury. In times of war they served as both quartermasters and second-in-comands. Then there were the two censors who had the tasks of conducting the census and set their tax status. Since the censors were setting the tax rates they had much opportunity for corruption and therefor this office was only open to ex-consuls. The Senate was an assembly of former magistrates, normally numbering 300, that was the only governing body in Rome capable of developing long term policy. They were in charge of foreign policy, appointing officials to govern conquered provinces, and appropriating funds for projects and management of the Republics money. In time of emergency the senate had the authority to nominate a dictator, who would act as a single leader with ultimate imperium. They had knowledge of most all public matters and did not prepose legislation but rather approved and vetoed various laws. Legislation approved by the senate was then delivered to the citizen assemblies, who would further edit and either pass or veto it. The last of the three major Roman governmental institutions were the three citizen assemblies, which both held the real law making power, and prosecuted criminals. These assemblies were made up of all Roman citizens, but were organized in different ways so that the vote of a single citizen had a different weight in each assembly. The assemblies were all made up of units each with a single vote decided by the majority of voters in the unit, and laws were passed by a majority of units. The oldest of these assemblies was the assembly of the curia, which during the Republic quickly became obsolete as a legislative body but continued its religious functions. Next was the assembly of the centuries, which was the assembly of the Roman army. Their duties including electing censors, consuls and praetors, passing some legislation, and deceleration of war. This assembly was divided into 193 groups (called centuries), which were based on age and wealth. The last assembly was the assembly of the tribes, which was divided into the 31 Roman tribes. They passed most of the legislation and elected the lower magistrates. There are many similarities and differences in the Roman Republic and Athenian Democracy. Where the romans had their assemblies the greeks had the ecclesia, which held much of the same power as the roman assemblies. The ecclesia was formed from all greek citizens and took votes on important affairs, much as the Roman assemblies did. Even though there are many similarities between these two institutions, the ecclesia did not have the judicial power of the assemblies. Judicial power in Athenian Democracy was assigned to the dikasteria which was a group of 6,000 jurists assigned annually by a draw. Another comparison that can be made is between the Greek boule and the Roman senate, which both prepared work for their respective citizen bodies to vote on and governed foreign policy. The Greeks also had magistrates similar to the Romans, who were elected for one year terms with no limit on re-elections. Their duty was to of make sure sure the decisions of the boule and ecclesia were carried out. These magistrates were also the heads of the Athenian army and navy. Another difference between the Republic and the Democracy was the Greeks use of draws instead of votes to elect their magistrates and council members. Both the Athenian Democracy and the Roman Republic correspond roughly and have majorly influenced the American form of government. First off, the American legislative branch is almost a combination of the Roman senate and assemblies, but instead of the citizens having most of the real law making power it goes to the American form of the senate (in combination with the house) which is formed by regionally elected representatives. So the people have the power to chose who gets to make the decisions, but not make the decision themselves. Almost the same parallels can be made with the Athenian boule and ecclesia. Another influence was that of the Roman magistrates on the American executive branch, and more precisely that of the consul on the president. The consul was the highest position in the Roman Republic in the same way as the president is in America, although with slightly different powers. Where the consuls had the power to initiate legislature, where the president has the power to approve or veto legislature. This is so that this one (or two in the case of consuls) do not have to much sway in the legislation, but can still provide checks and balances in the system. Another thing America takes from these ancient governments is the use of juries to persecute criminals, although that is one of the few similarities in the way our judicial system works. The influences of these earlier governments on our own is plain to see, even though it is mixed and jumbled. While some of the parallels may not exactly fit, if we look at the systems as wholes we can see how many things we have taken from them, and some of the most important influences that we have taken have been not from the positions, offices, groups or assemblies, but the ideas behind them. We did not take the office of consul or the assemblies themselves but the idea of checks and balances in the government that makes it work. Sources 1. http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/RepGov.html 2. http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ROME/REPUBLIC.HTM 3. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/imperium 4. http://www.unrv.com/empire/the-senate.php 5. http://www.uah.edu/student_life/organizations/SAL/texts/misc/romancon.html#cthree 6. http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/ANCIENT/polybius6.html 7. ANCIENT HISTORY FROM THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS TO THE RENAISSANCE, J.M. ROBERTS, P. 307-309

Well, I'm from a state where homeschooling is completely unregulated, so I'm not sure I understand the ramifications of ISPs, but from what you've told me I can't see any reason not to. Sounds a lot like what our homeschool association does except that we aren't required to keep any records in our state.

I have a private tutor who teaches science to my son. I placed an ad in the student employment office of our local branch of the state university and got 5 wonderful candidates to choose from. The young man I chose has been teaching my son for 2 years now. I pay him $40 per week, for which I get 1 hour of face-to-face instruction for my son and all the lesson planning and grading done as well. I've been quite happy with the arrangement. I taught my son algebra I and geometry. I remembered the algebra quite well, and was easily able to teach it by refreshing my memory as we went. Geometry was more of a struggle for me. I didn't remember it as well, and the teaching of geometry has also change some since I was in high school more than 30 years ago. Now my son takes algebra II at the community college. I was pretty sure I couldn't teach that without a major investment of time.

Thanks, all for your help. The little Walker book looks like exactly what I want for Bible. We have been using This Morning with God. My older son loved it, but this one wants something more academic and less devotional. I think I will buy that one. Looks like MFW uses BJU for history. I detest BJU, so we won't go that route. Notgrass does seem like a possibility. I want something balanced, that neither glosses over our Christian heritage nor the ugly ungodly things that we have done as a nation. I know we have a wonderful heritage of faith, but I also want my kids to know that when revisionist historians say that not all of our founding fathers were Christian or even espoused Christianity, they are telling the truth. I don't want to give my kids half of the truth. I recently read a book called America's Prophet by Bruce Feiler. It is about the use of Moses as an icon in American history. I think it provided a very balanced view of religion in American history. But since the focus is only on the theme of Moses, it doesn't make a suitable textbook. But if Feiler ever wrote a history textbook, I would definitely buy it.