Try to keep track of specific things that are frustrating and specific things that went well and any suggestions you have that might help with the second year of the class. Send the feedback at the end of the year, if you don't want to say anything now. If it's a quality organization, with good administration and mostly effective instructors, they will be very open to receiving feedback. The online providers with whom we've taken courses have all been very responsive to suggestions. Are there any specific things the instructor could easily do now to better organize things? Is the problem with assignments being unclear? Or is it more an issue with the class lecture/discussion itself (live or async) being scattered and inefficient or ineffective? Does the instructor seem open to requests/suggestions? If there's anything specific that would be relatively easy for the instructor to implement now, I would try to suggest it to him/her. Your student has almost a whole semester to go, and it would help your student (and others!) as well as the instructor.

My boys did Omni I with B. Etter three years ago. He is a great instructor! I doubt that there will be enough writing to claim a full English comp/writing credit, esp. with a combination of 1 & 4. But, you could email him and ask him specifically how many essays, and of what length, there will be. The WHA instructors are very responsive and helpful. If I have my daughter take a GC course, I will have her write at least 1 essay/semester directly related to one/more of the texts read during the course. That might mean asking the instructor for a topic other than what's given in class, but I think the WHA instructors would be open to that. I'll run her essays through WriteGuide or one of the other services/tutors that provide feedback on a per paper basis. I would absolutely want her to come out of the course with a truly good, solid essay/paper to show for all the work she put into the course.

It's always impressive when a student wants to step things up! You must be so proud of him! I'd return or resell the MFW package and economize wherever possible to allow him to take as many classes online as he wants. (Well, actually, I guess I'd limit him to 4 if he hasn't taken any online classes before.)

Ask your charter contact! On months where I didn't have anything that I could have submitted, I found that I could just ask my charter contact person ("ES") for suggestions. She'd usually email me some worksheets related to what we were doing and I'd pick one and have my child fill it out. Samples are pretty easy to deal with up until high school.

She's just learning and math maybe isn't as intuitive for her or as interesting to her as some other things. It isn't laziness or not caring. I don't know anything about Algebra: A Fresh Approach, but if it's a solid algebra program, and if it's pretty mainstream, and if your husband finds that he can teach it, maybe all you can do is keep at it? We tend to want a more instant fix and assume there's some magic, perfect curriculum that will "work." Jumping to a different curriculum is something we can DO and do NOW, but it can introduce more confusion with different terms and different approaches and then we lose ground coming up to speed on something that may not be any better than the first curriculum. Sometimes it's better to keep plugging away at something difficult until things start to fall into place. My daughter tends to hit the same sort of walls as yours. I outsourced her algebra 1 this year. The combination of having someone else being the "heavy" and assigning the work, seeing that the whole class does the same assignments, it's not a matter of piling the work on her, and hearing the same material presented from a different perspective, seems to be doing the trick. She still gets frustrated with math. It isn't intuitive for her. She'd much rather be reading or writing. She still says, "I hate math." "I can't do this." "This is stupid." etc. She's just frustrated. But she's learning. It's work. I do sit with her and work through the assignment at the same time. She sees me write out every step, and she seems to have arrived at the conclusion that it helps. I correct her answers as she goes, so there's no chance of her making the same mistake over and over through multiple problems and having that mistake ingrained in her head and having to go back and correct umpteen problems when she thought she was done. On sections where she has trouble, we do every.single.problem. She's even ok w/ that, to my surprise. Beneath the frustration, she knows it's just a matter of practice. Last year, I put 4 or 5 review problems on a white board for her to do before starting her pre-algebra lesson each day. I'd have one problem of whatever she was having trouble remembering.... one fraction problem, one decimal problem, one LCD problem, one exponent problem.... whatever. That short, daily practice really helped with long term retention. Good luck. Try to be patient. Math can be hard work for some of us.

Saxon has a standalone geometry text. Looks like there's also a CD-ROM. If anyone has used this text, I'd be interested in hearing any feedback on it. Does anyone know how it compares to Jurgensen?

My oldest took WHA's Biology course last year, in 9th grade. We all thought it was worthwhile and well-done. I liked the fact that they used the Miller Levine text and that they used the QSL Bio lab kit & taught students to do lab write-ups. My daughter will also take it through WHA next year, unless I find a conceptual physics course for her to do first.

We got paper scores today, but there was nothing in there that wasn't on the online score report page.

There is an option for English 1 without much grammar-- the Journey Through Narnia class! One of the advantages of TPS English is that they offer two different English 1 and two different English 3 classes, one with more grammar and one with less. Placement is by exam. So, if the student already has a certain level of grammar knowledge/skills, s/he can take the English 1: Journey Through Narnia class instead of English 1 and English 3: Lit Survey instead of the grammar-heavy English 3: Foundations. There is only one English 2 option. I'm not sure how much grammar that includes. I really appreciate the ability to test out of grammar. I completely understand the need for a certain level of grammar knowledge, but we cover grammar extensively with Rod & Staff in the elementary grades 3-7. By 8th and definitely 9th grade, I really don't want to spend time on it in a literature & writing course. From talking to online English instructors, though, I've gathered that they get more than a handful of students with little to no grammar background. So, most online English courses for home schoolers that I've found include at least some grammar. TPS is the only online source I've found that has two tracks. I think TPS also offers a summer grammar course that would give the student the grammar foundation needed to test into a less grammar-intensive English course. Also, some instructors at other providers will let the student test out of the grammar requirement/strand of the course and that has also been helpful, though not ideal.

I found that the CB info was pretty useless, too. Have you tried private schools? Orange County seems to have a pretty extensive home schooling community. Have you tried posting to your local group to see if & where others have done it?

My boys read & liked Wizard of Oz at six. (It's not nearly as scary as the movie. I had it on the shelf for later, but they found it, read it, and didn't have the nightmares I thought they would. Swiss Family Robinson or Voyages of Dr. Dolittle might be other possibilities. Or the first couple of Little House on the Prairie books. We really like the "Illustrated Junior Library" editions. They are unabridged, so not dumbed down like the "Great Illustrated Classics." But they have three or four full color illustrations and several black and white illustrations scattered throughout the book. They're hard cover, with nice illustrations on the cover, and the paper is better quality than some editions.

I think TPS expects to post their schedule on Feb 22, so not too much longer.

Ooo! That's a good idea!

Straw into Gold was SO bad that I cannot resist adding it to this thread. Supposedly the author also wrote two Newbery Honor books, but I suspect it was ghost written by some 8 year old instead. Read it aloud when my kids were younger and my daughter had to read it for a class. I don't know if I've read a worse, supposedly "classic" book. My kids don't have as bad a memory of it because mostly they remember all my "Who would ever say that? .... Does he think his readers are complete idiots that he _always_ has to explain some pithy comment after he says it? .... I can't believe this is supposed to be a good book" comments. I guess the silver lining was seeing how NOT to write. ETA: Strike that. There was NO silver lining to this book. LOL

Rainbow Resource carries a 30-sheet pad of blank outline world maps and US maps. I liked the pads, too, but finally ended up just googling for black outline map US" or whatever, finding one I liked, and printing as needed. RR does have single pages of Europe, but I don't see a 50-sheet pad of them. You could buy a few and copy them, but they're probably pretty similar to what you could find free online.

duplicate post

Rod and Staff book 6 or 7. You could get just the Teacher's Manual, which includes all the student text w/ answers, and dictate or write out the sentences you want your student to do. The student text isn't that expensive, though. You could also just get the Manual & the workbook that has additional exercises to supplement the text and have your student do the relevant pages. Answers to the workbook are in the Teacher's Manual, so you'd also have R&S's explanation of the topic, for a different angle on difficult sections.

The Potter's School has a literature-based writing class called Journey to Narnia. "Journey Through Narnia is a fun and fast-paced introductory literature and writing course in which students will read the seven books that comprise C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. ... Class discussions will focus on the stories from literal, moral, and allegorical points of view. Weekly writing assignments will prepare students for the class discussions on topics such as recurring themes, literary allusions, and biblical allegory. The writing assignments will also be used to practice different essay styles, and will include both creative and analytical writing." TPS is a Christian provider. I don't really think the Narnia course, especially, would work for a family for whom Christian content and worldview is an issue. My daughter took the course last year, in 7th grade. She turned 12 in October of that year. We were both happy with the class. Each week, there was a homework assignment based on that week's reading. It included ..... 1) a list of 5-6 vocabulary words to define 2) 4-6 questions that are mostly to show reading comprehension, but they were much better than the usual, flat "reading comprehension" questions that can be answered in a few words, like who did this or that? Or what happened when...? Students have to answer in complete sentences. 3) a "Thinking Question" to be answered in 2-3 paragraphs. I really liked these. They usually required the student to start making that connection from specifics in the text to analysis of a theme or concept. 4) finding specific examples in the text of the themes in the book, as well as literary & Bibilical allusions. I think the "Thinking Question" alternated with a creative writing prompt. My daughter _loved_ the creative writing assignments. Students often shared their writing in class, which she also enjoyed. They also did one or two longer papers each semester. Over a period of a few weeks, the instructor walked them through each step of the process of writing those, starting with choosing a topic, writing a good thesis, etc. Unlike the Eng. 3 class, I don't think there was a checklist of specific things they had to include or avoid in their papers. It was a very good class for my daughter at the particular point she was at. It definitely helped her move toward close reading and literary analysis. She wrote a good amount every single week. She also wrote some longer essays/papers. She liked the Narnia books, though a couple of them not as much as the others. If I had it to do over, I'd have had my boys take the class in 7th grade, too.

It seems most lists of high school graduation/college admissions requirements list "Government." I had assumed that meant a US Gov class. But, if a student were more interested in a Comparative Gov class, could they do that instead? Does it matter?

Like the Preparation for Rhetoric Writing class that they have during the school year? Looks like it covers WWS1-3 in a year. I'd have had my daughter do a class like that last summer, if it had been available. Good idea!

:iagree: :iagree: Having something solid that works and is getting done is invaluable! Stick with it and add in some Singapore and see how it goes. My boys did Horizons 1-6 alongside Singapore Math 1-7A. They had no trouble at all doing both and they did very well with them. (If I had it to do over, I'd have skipped Horizons 6 and gone directly to Dolciani pre-algebra. After Singapore 1-6, Horizons 6 wasn't really necessary.) They have a facility with numbers that I wish I had had. I started out doing the same with my daughter, but it became too much for her. She's just not into math. She got through Singapore 3, and we dropped it and continued using just Horizons through Horizons 6. She's doing Algebra 1 this year in 8th and is doing fine. She doesn't love it, but her stamina when it comes to math is better and she's holding her own.

Debb S. - Is your dd doing additional preparation for the AP Lit exam, over & above what she's already done for the Lang & Comp exam? Or just reviewing and/or practice L&C exams?

Writing the Research Paper Logic

I wonder if a student takes AP Lit and earns a 5 on the exam (indicating that he actually mastered the material), would he really need to take a separate AP Lang & Comp course to do well on the AP L&C exam? It seems like the skills required for the lit exam would be a super set of the skills required for the lang & comp exam, no?

Wilson Hill Academy offered a "writing lab" supplement for two of their Great Conversations (Omni) courses this year. If they'd had one for GC1/Ancients, I'd have had my daughter take it. I'm not sure what they'll be doing for this coming year, 2016-17. So far, I don't see that option in their list of courses for next year. Maybe they incorporate more writing into their courses than the Omni online classes back when my boys took them. When my boys took Omni 1 & 2 online, they did write one essay/semester for the class, but the topics were pretty tangential to the actual texts. In Omni 2, one was researching and writing about your family's history... where your ancestors came from, etc. That's ok, I guess, and might be great for some students with a lot of interest in/information on their background. But for the time they put into the reading for the course, and for the time they're going to put into writing something, I really wanted them to be thinking about and synthesizing some idea/theme from the texts they were reading. The instructor was wonderful and very open to my request that the boys instead write about one of the texts they'd studied that year. I think one wrote on a theme from Macbeth and the other on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Those essays were definitely worth the time they put into them, and, when they had to submit a writing sample for some summer program, I was really glad we had something substantive to submit. I imagine that WHA would be open to a student choosing a topic. The other advantage to a writing supplement option is having an English instructor working with the student on the essay/paper. An Omni/GC instructor is going to have his hands full teaching the texts. I can see where he wouldn't have much time to put into helping a student with the writing process or giving significant feedback on it. I may be asking too much of Omni courses & instructors. There is writing incorporated into the Omni text, so you could add more of that in on your own and either provide feedback yourself or use one of the writing tutor services that do that, like WriteGuide. It's really hard to _add_ anything to the onine Omni/GC courses. The only thing we could do was request a topic that met our family's goals for writing instead of some other topic.