We recentlty started watching The Secrets of Mental Math from the Great Courses. We love it! The types of problems that you mentioned are covered right away. And there is a booklet with additional practice problems. This particular course is often available for deep discount, so if it is full price right now you could wait for it and get started with something else in the meanwhile.

How to you use this? It looks interesting, and cheap for me to get from Amazon.uk. I used to love reading Ask Marilyn in Parade magazine! Sparkly Unicorn, he is misspelling because he does not know how to spell the word. What is frustrating is that it is hard to discern any pattern to the not knowing. I had gone with SWB's lecture suggestion to keep spell check OFF. That is how I usually find out what he does not know how to spell. I make him copy misspelled words into his notebook and then study them, so he is not avoiding looking them up.

I am not 100% happy with my 7th grader's spelling ability. But he doesn't really need a spelling program either. Or does he? When we started homeschooling in 6th, I bought Spelling Workout. But it seemed like a lot of busywork, so I gave him pre-tests and then just had him learn the ones he had missed. We zipped through the book (I forget the Level, sorry) and I decided to try Rod and Staff Grade 7 Spelling. I really liked the exercises, but getting through the lessons was time consuming and he really wasn't learning how to spell very many new words. He was learning cool things about language and words, but we ended up dropping the book without finishing it. If we run through a typical list of 20 spelling words, he will get most of them right. As soon as he is taught how to spell a word, it sticks with him. I think that classifies him as a natural speller, right? Or no? The problem that i am having is that I am catching misspelled words in his writing that seem sort of easy. And random. And I worry that we should focus more on spelling than we have been. But a program seems like overkill. I would rather spend the English time elsewhere. I would be willing to buy a book if there were ONE book that I could buy. Something that takes you up through multiple levels? I don't want to have him do anything online. We do spelling bees and cold dictation sometimes, but not with great regularity. But he kind of enjoys doing those, so maybe I should just do those more often. Thoughts? Ideas?

Melissa B, Like txhomemom, we have swapped out and substituted extensively. That leaves me in a position to comment better on Kolbe as a whole rather than on individual courses. Our experience has been really positive, and I plan to continue. I am glad that we started this year, as it has been a good way to let me know if the high school would be a good match for us. Unfortunately, I can't really comment much on the Greek, Latin or History. We are using something different for Latin and History, and DS has been using Greek 123 to study Modern Greek. I did look into the New Missal Latin, but there was something that I really disliked about it. I can't remember with certainty, but I think it lacks macrons (?), and that bothered me. Although it is focused on the younger years, here is good blog about Kolbe Latin etc. edited for clarity

C_l_e_)..Q_c Thanks for your reply. I obviously got mixed up there for a moment, thinking that we would have to double up for more than one year. Maybe because I was also looking at the Summa Diploma, which does require 4 years of English and 4 years of Lit. Still, I find it interesting that the Summa Option is set up that way. What did you think of the English 9 Course? My 7th grader is currently enrolled in Kolbe Academy, BTW.

If my son ends up HSing for high school, we will use Kolbe Academy. The Magna Diploma requires 10 semesters of English and Literature. For 9th grade, we would likely do English Composition and Rhetoric 9 plus a Literature. I don't know yet whether 10th would be best served by English Composition and Rhetoric 10 or additional Literature. ETA: Oops! I was getting mixed up here. Too much time researching was muddling my mind, LOL. Obviously, 10 semesters would only require English + Lit for one year. I am not opposed to English + Lit. We are English lovers here. But I have read on this board several times that an English + Literature could be perceived as a padded transcript. Do you think that this type of transcript seem padded? Or decidedly not so, given that these are the diploma requirements?

I would just like to add that I know several successful engineers who did not start their degree until they were in their 20s.

Yes. I was diagnosed with breast cancer eight years ago and that singular event changed my core.

Well, that is a lot of math to get through in a limited amount of time. But that being said, I have an engineering degree and I pretty much taught my self three semesters of college calculus with a good textbook. My calculus courses were huge, auditorium-style classes and I really feel like I taught myself the math. So I do believe that math can be self-taught. Sure is not ideal, but oh well. What will you have to do prior to your application? Take placement exams?

Has anyone seen or used Write With The Best ? Would I be missing anything if I only bought Volume 2? Volume 1 is for 3rd through 12th grade. I can't quite wrap my head around that But I like what I see in Volume 2, in spite of the fact that I do NOT need another writing program!

I have a "forgetter." Someone else can speak about normalcy :) Most of the time we do 45 minutes on the main lesson (AOPS Prealgebra) and then 15 minutes of review/drill. But maybe it is genetic...LOL. When I was in high school, I did not take math my senior year (I had already taken everything that my school offered and dual enrollment was not an option)...and I was a mechanical engineering major. When I started my freshman year, I had some serious "forgetting" to get over - fast! Everything did come back quickly, but it was a painful lesson that has stayed with me. ETA: To be more accurate, I should have said that the review/drill really is not every day. More like two or three times per week, and the "math hour" stretches to about 70 minutes.

I am dipping into the world of Coursera, and I am confused about how one audits a class. I am thinking about having DS go through Bloomfield's How Things Work physics course, but I don't know yet if I want him to do the quizzes / assignments. To audit, do you just sign up and then not do the assignments? From reading the Coursera FAQs, it seems that the only "penalty" would be the lack of a completion certificate. I signed myself up for the course last night and the process asked how many assignments / quizzes I expected to do / take, but other than that there was no differentiation between certificate seeker and auditor. Am I missing something? I have only watched the beginning of the first session, so I am not far enough along yet to see / take the quiz and decide if that route would be good for him. I did take the preliminary assessment, and I am pretty sure that it would have freaked him out! But I know he would like the videos.

Which school is UA? Sorry... And congrats all around!

My DS is in 7th, but we haven't lived in the USA since he was in 4th grade. I have to work to keep US geography in the mix because he doesn't get the incidental exposure such as hearing people talking about the different states. Would it make you feel better to know that I just the other day realized that he never had the "memorize the capitals" phase of education? They do that in 5th grade back home. Oops. I would start with blank map quizzes of the United States. Have her fill in what she knows. Do it again the next week. And the next. It won't take long before she knows them all. We have moved on to the main bodies of water, mountain ranges and those pesky capitals :) I also randomly ask him if he knows which state ____ is in? Dallas, San Diego, Yosemite National Park... My DS likes geography workbooks. He is using this one from Walch. We really like it. It does cover the whole world, though. We also like the Maps, Charts and Graphs series. This one is for 8th grade and it is U.S. focused.

Actually, my middle had a very out-of-the-box high school experience. He was never homeschooled, but I hope you can find the story relevant anyway :) When the (unexpected) opportunity came along for our family to move overseas, he was a junior in high school. Can you imagine the endless discussions that occurred in our house?! After exploring many, many ideas, we worked out a plan for him to come to Europe for a semester as an exchange student at the local IB school. May I point out that this endeavor involved countless administrative hours on my part? Lol. After that, he was supposed to return to the U.S. for his final semester. He was going to stay with friends / family. This would be followed by a summer in Europe with us, then off to college. It seemed like a solid plan that would not disrupt his future / life. Well, after three months here...he decided not to go back!! He decided to stay and finish out the IB program. He took a very big risk. While I was thrilled that he would not spend the last segment of his high school life half a world away from us, I was really nervous. End result? Being willing to be out-of-the-box really opened him up to some exciting opportunities.

I live in a place where homeschooling is legal but oh-so-rare. Therefore, IRL I always feel like we are out of the box! Carry on...I am enjoying the thread :)

Garga, I have pondered a similar idea. If you have more details to share, I would love to hear about them. Hopefully, the OP will too...not trying to hijack the thread :)

Ok then... If your route is 95 south to 40 west toward Asheville, I have another easy on / easy off suggestion. The International Civil Rights museum in Greensboro is located in the Woolworth building where the sit-ins occurred. Parts of it are graphic, but they have a way to by-pass the most graphic portion. Or at least they did the last time I was there. Even better: See if the American History Smithsonian is still doing its short, live dramatization about the Greensboro sit-ins. You could see that first:) I can add some links later.

Will you be heading down I-95? The Museum of the Confederacy / Confederate White House in Richmond are mere moments off the Interstate. Very easy to hop off, tour, and hop back on. How far down the Carolina coast?

I haven't used this yet, but I bookmarked it after a board member mentioned it: Read Theory Free, adaptive and claims to top out at the GRE level.

We are not going to spend a whole year on any field of science during middle school. Typically, we are running two science threads at once- a primary and a secondary. Maybe earth science topics could be a running, low-key secondary thread for your middle years.

helena, I always love love love reading about the things that you are doing with your kids / homeschool. I have used many of your ideas to create our own artsy / creative Fridays. And we also use some things that might be considered "young" for 7th grade, but DS engages with those things at an age/grade appropriate level. Considering that people study children's literature and fairy tales in college, and high school teachers use picture books to illustrate a point - I think it is all good :) BTW, we are on our third Holling book (Tree in the Trail), I expect to go through everything that Ellen McHenry offers at some point.

DS is part of the 100+ now :) us4jones: As the course ramps up, any guesses for a reasonable weekly time allotment? Thanks!

Last year, we received the exam quite early. I was told that the overseas packets go out first. As for shipping it back, last year we happened to be back in the USA during the exam period. DS took the exam while we were at his grandmother's house and I was able to return it from the USA. I was a bit nervous that it wouldn't arrive in Denmark until we had already left for the USA, but everything ended up working out fine. I guess that this year I will just have to mail it back from here. I will have to do the same thing with the Iowas, unfortunately.

We don't watch them as often as many of you do. Sick days, super-tired days, several afternoons right before we broke for the holidays... We also like really long, old movies. Ben Hur was a huge hit. But day-to-day, DS prefers short videos like the Periodic Table of Videos.