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mims

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Everything posted by mims

  1. Plus is quite a bit better than the free. I think I would recommend diving in and getting over the learning curve on the plus rather than having two learning curves. In the long run, with three kids, I have found it very worth the price. I always have to comment on the learning curve at the front though. It doesn't seem intuitive in lay out but I was able to do a very professional transcript with little work the senior year because most of the work was done as they finished their assignments and I was able to reuse lots of the lesson plans for the next children. I really liked starting in the 8th grade so I had a year to stream line and figure out how I wanted it to work.
  2. I need a basic mapping curriculum for my 8th grade daughter. She has a great overview of geography from Sonlight and MOH - we have done a lot of coloring in maps and referring to maps as we've read and studied areas. But I'm realizing that she is missing or weak on some basic map skills. For instance she still mixes up East and West (not North and South), she doesn't fully grasp the hemispheres, she gets confused about latitude and longitude, and I noticed she was getting very frustrated when reading a map during her Iowa Basics (it had questions about shorter routes and gravel roads etc). A simple workbook that overviews these types of subjects would be great. She has been introduced to pretty much all of it but just needs to have it really sunk in her head.
  3. Need to turn in a notice of intent to the school superintendent by sometime in September. The superintendent can request an attendance chart. That is it . . . Some areas have good homeschool groups, some don't.
  4. Thank you all. We'll be doing some digging. Wapiti, thank you for that advise. I think that is what she is somewhat realizing - she wants to somehow gain a more jack-of-all trades approach rather than an American education degree with a tad bit of special ed tagged on! We're not sure totally what we are looking for so we'll keep poking around and try to figure out the best path.
  5. My daughter just got back form an 8 month internship at an orphanage in Africa. The kids there are required to attend a public school and she was horrified with how the special needs kids were treated. If there are 8 books in a class the 8 smartest get them. If a special needs kid doesn't do an assignment they are ignored or sent home for the day. She saw this all around not just in the school near the orphanage. Her desire is to go back and teach special needs kids. As we look at college degrees all we have seen are elementary ed degrees and if the student wants a special ed certification it is about 3 extra classes. It looks like to really focus on this she would have to get a master's degree which she is not really interested in. Any suggestions (in the North West if possible) of programs or schools where she could get a much more comprehensive education in special needs? Any other suggestions of how to reach this goal?
  6. I would love to hear advise too. I had my mathy son all lined out to do chalkdust all the way through except for Geometry. I had him do TT Geometry because I like it so well. Well, he now prefers the teaching from TT so much that he is doing TT precalc. My present plan is to have him do the chalkdust chapter tests from precalc when he is done and see if there are any areas he should spend more time on but would love to hear more advise.
  7. Thank you all! We have a few weeks so will have to figure it out.
  8. Thanks for the link. That was a great start.
  9. Thanks for the suggestions! Off to the search some of this.
  10. My daughter and niece will be in London (Heathrow Airport) from early in the morning until late in the afternoon. They would love to do a quick tour of some sort. They have both traveled a fair bit and are pretty self-sufficient. Any suggestions? Not too expensive of tours? Something so they get a chance to see it while they are there? I'm more nervous about them missing their flight than being safe on their own!
  11. Just for extra information . . . because of the changes in the new NIV, AWANA will be switching their books over to the ESV over the next few years. So AWANA now will offer KJV, NKJV, and ESV. My personal vote would be ESV. Probably too much background information to get into but many churches and curriculum providers are switching to it.
  12. Just a side note to parents of high schoolers. When considering financial aid it looks like our daughter's college might consider homeschool costs of the other kids. To establish how much it costs I had to round up receipts from the last year. I bought a lot used so couldn't come up with a complete number. So my lesson - keep track of your education expenses!
  13. One of my concerns has been that using TT for Pre-calc he might have too big of a jump or some gaps if he moves to chalkdust for calculus. Do you remember any gaps? Did they need help from you or somebody else?
  14. Looking for advise on my Sophomore son. A little background: He is a self teacher whenever possible. He will definitely be going into a math or science field. He takes science from an outside teacher and is finishing up Chemistry this year and will take the AP test. Next year he will take physics. He has done Chalkdust Alg I and II without the videos for the most part. He got stuck in one area where I needed to help him and otherwise has self taught himself. He is finishing up Teaching Textbooks Geometry. He far prefers TT (without the videos) so is requesting to do that for Precalc. My concern is they are not supposed to be quite as rigorous and do not go on to Calculus. The present plan is to have him start on TT precalc in a week and work through May. Then start Chalkdust precalc in the fall because I am a big believer on kids learning Math from different sources. He is dreading going back to chalkdust - he likes the lesson a day feel of Teaching Textbooks. As a teacher, I got my daughter through the middle of precalc without any problems and struggled my way through the end. So any advise on sticking with TT for now and moving on to Chalkdust or picking up another curriculum he could self teach and is quality and does a lesson a day type of approach? Money can of course be an issue becasue I would rather not sell the present curriculum in case it suits his younger sister. I'm willing to pay some though.
  15. My daughter set a goal to finish early so she could take a gap year during what would be her typical senior year. She is spending the year as a missionary intern at an orphanage in Africa. I am considering her 'still in school' and will graduate her this May. I don't mind saying that because she is doing a British Lit course still and since this is an internship it is certainly educational. She and I are working on college applications and scholarships this year. The internet is iffy so it has been a little bit of an hassle. I will second someone else's comment that most outside scholarships are for those that are current juniors or seniors. Of course the most money is from the institution itself and I haven't noticed at all that it matters what year you are when you apply as long as you will be an incoming freshman the next year. I guess the short answer is we haven't noticed any detriment to it but we are still calling her a senior.
  16. Some of the problem around here is increased regulations. They can't use ovens until 16 and deep fryers or meat cutting until 18. So the sub places, pizza places etc don't like to hire anybody under 18 because they always have to have someone on shift over 18 to use these things. It just messes up there scheduling and there are plenty of older people looking for jobs. I started working at 13 so it has been a big adjustment to me that I can't expect that of my kids. They have worked hard at finding jobs and my older 2 (now 16 and 18) have each had some part time ones. My son got one crazy one - he does tobacco compliance which means he goes into all the places in our county that sell cigarettes and tries to buy them and see if they ask for ID. It came about word of mouth. It feels a little unfair how those contacts work!
  17. I'm curious if homeschool moms are a little worse about doing everything for the kids on these types of projects. Several years ago my son was so irritated that quite a few of the kids that did better than him had not really done much of it themselves. It was so frustrating to him that he had worked hours and got beat by a bunch of mothers.
  18. There are a number of assignment for every chapter. We did it with a group and assigned at least two assignments a week and then had two major ones - a budget and a paper. We also did the quiz every week. With that I was comfortable giving it .5 for personal finances and I could see someone saying micro economics. There was a little in depth work on interest and figuring changes in down payments and just general loan and investment stuff. It did stretch our non-math kids but the amount was not enough for any credit in math.
  19. I have continually heard that ASL needs to be taught in real life to make any definitive progress. I know that most languages do better in real life but this seems especially true of ASL. A local homeschool group brought some teachers in for two years. It was very well received because a lot of kids were interested. You might check around to see if there could be someone interested in teaching a group to make it economical.
  20. College confidential people are saying 5 to 7 days I believe.
  21. My daughter did a chilli feed during our churches AWANA grand prix for her trip to Tanzania (she is serving as a missionary intern for 8 months). It was something we could prepare ahead of time and people really liked it. Because we bought supplies in bulk we really made a great profit. We also served brownies or cookies that others volunteered to make. Because they traditionally served hotdogs we did also and they could choose chilli dogs.
  22. My kids really liked Professor Teaches . . . Sonlight sold a pack of them and I assume they still do. Inexpensive and really did what they wanted.
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