I agree with others that there is plenty out there that isn't modern and dark. Really if you would mostly read works from before the 19th Century you'd mostly be okay. The Iliad and The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Song of Roland, maybe skip Dante, but Beowulf, The Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's sonnets and commedies, even his histories, Paradise Lost, so forth. Once you get to novels, you'll need to me a bit sharper, but Austen can be but a beginning. And let me suggest that you not avoid dark altogether. One of the darkest novels out there, Crime and Punishment, is also one of the most uplifting.

Crichton got caught up in a group high light. Presuming Jurassic Park, I changed him to red, never shelved with science fiction which is what I meant to do the first time. Stephenson I thought old but could be new.

I forgot to mention that! Presuming they are still available they did exist for NEM 1 and 2 but not for 3 and 4. We rarely used them, but for struggling they can help.

I have two takes. One on the size of the average debt: My opinion is that this is irrelevant in terms of personal decision making. Much smarter to not get too caught up in this. Your debt is what your debt is. My nephew is going to U Chicago this fall. They gave him about half of his full load, but that still means $30,000 to $35,000 per year. I don't think he is expecting to get any work study job. Nor do I expect my brother and his wife will kick in more than $10,000 per year and maybe as little as $0. Which means for him to graduate undergrad he will have a load of at least $100,000. I doubt he has any awareness of how that will hit him. On the overall problem: the thing to do to fix the whole college loan/ college cost problem is to remove the inability of students to have bankruptcy remove the student loan debt. This would put onus on loan givers to begin to vet programs in terms of ability to repay loans. For instance, we might find that some for profit programs will continue to get loans while some Ivy League programs will see their loans dry up because of student inability to repay. Student loans aren't special. The risk of a college loan needs to be evenly applied to everyone involved not just the student taking out the loan as it is with all other loans.

I think it really depends on the student and the circumstances. If you need to read something fast Lear is the pick but if you have more time the Odyssey and Lear both have points to both recommend them. Lear in my opinion is the most disturbing of Shakespeare's tragedies. Last year when my co-op had to take weeks off and the moms taught some Shakespeare, I rearranged the schedule so I would handle Lear for this reason. So with a younger student I might do the Odyssey now and come back to Shakespeare. On the other hand if the student will never read either in their four years of high school, pick Lear. You can safely read a synopsis of the Odyssey but a taste of Shakespeare is more required in my book. I am firmly convinced you can't understand Penelope until you have reached her age so waiting to read it as an adult is okay.

I am in the midst of using the NEM series with my second student. He did NEM 1 last year. First you got some good pointers: the Singapore math forums will generally get you an answer to a question within a day or two. One tip: if possible type out the problem on the forum don't just put the book and page and problem, sign up so you see all the forums and put your question in the proper forum. Next, I found the NEM series easier and more suited to my brain than the primary series. I do not consider my self a math person, but I was good at math. However, I do usually point new people to the DM series which includes more teacher help. I have also found the NEM series to be pretty close to self teaching in our house. With my oldest I didn't make this transition until NEM 3 when an outside project that year overwhelmed me. But younger did much of NEM 1 on his own. The classroom exercises function much as proofs do for the students, so they should prove a concept to themselves before NEM introduces it as a rule. However, I will also say that NEM 1 starts you out at about 200 MPH for the six or so chapters. It does slow down by the middle of the book and the sections where they apply the the algebra the student has learned to geometry were my favorites. A student using this series will never be able to ask when in their life they might use this math, they'll see its real world applications clearly.

Online classes: Physics with Derek Owens High School Composition with Laurel Tree Latin II with Lukeion Calculus using Art of Problem Solving text but not the online class The following falls under Tapestry of Grace which we do on our own. We do everything they have, all of it, wide open. Full credits are: 19th Century History 19th Century Literature Partial Credits (at the end of four years he'll get a full credit for these): Church History Art History Music History Government History and Development Philosophy

I agree with this advice. Move on!

One thought on her gap year. Instead of volunteering, see if she can complete a "certified nursing assistant" program which should take at most a couple of months and then work as a CNA. CNAs do the absolutely most menial work there is in a hospital setting, but she would get paid and she'd get some real work experience to add to her overall resume.

Send it, send it to the board of the college and to the local papers.

The only place where I would try to match exactly or close to exact is the high school student. For the younger students only books that last a long time would be on my list to buy. For the older student, look for a used package at the Tapestry website or locally or some other used curric. place.

They had to strip all the steampunk and relist it at 1.65 million because it didn't sell. Location, location, location.

I actually took a college level course in science fiction. The one thing I don't see on your list is any short stories. The golden age of science fiction was all short stories. I also see books that aren't ever categorized as science fiction even though they seem to be in the genre. I see a hodge podge of other works. To help you sort through books I've color coded them. The red ones are never shelved with science fiction, I'd remove them for a pure science fiction course. The green ones are the old classics that were written before the genre existed. Purple are from writers of that golden age. Most of the novel length books in this category began as short stories. Honestly, you might be better off returning to the short stories. The rest are a mixed bag of books that I either am not familiar with or are from later periods of science fiction. One thing that you might consider is you need a few more fill in from these later authors. Plus do you want to play around with fantasy at all? The proto fantasy works by folks like Andre Norton the CJ Cherryth might be of interest, but Norton had a long writing time so you might want to make sure you get an early work (the first Witch World for instance). Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Frankenstein Portrait of Dorian Gray The Invisible Man Farenheit 451 (?) Hitchhiker’s Guide Ender’s Game 1984 (?) Canticle for Leibowitz Anathem (Stephenson) I, Robot 2001, A Space Odyssey Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Slaughterhouse Five/Cat’s Cradle Tripod series Alas Babylon Childhood’s End Starship Troopers Dune Flowers for Algernon Foundation trilogy by Asimov Martian Chronicles by Bradbury The Island of Dr. Moreau House of Stairs On the Beach A Wrinkle in Time Flatland Enchantress from the Stars LeGuin titles - Eye of Heron and Lathe of Heaven Jules Verne HG Wells Crichton Stephenson Heinlein - Citizens of the Galaxy; Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

I did and they did. It wasn't perfect. They mostly didn't like Words of Delight but they loved almost everything else. And yes this year we burned through one Shakespeare play a week and as I've posted elsewhere did discussions that equaled what I did in survey courses in college. I will say that your attitude to this will set the tone. I set a positive, I love lit (and history, too!) tone with the students. I had one student whose mom always whined about the load, fortunately her dd took her tone from me and was one of my best students.

I'd keep some things more for him than the university. I doubt that any of that would ever come back. But final papers, exams, copies of transcripts or grade reports from outside sources. At some point he might be happy to have those. I remember one grandmother who gave her children's papers and art work to their children on the grandchild's same age birthday.

:D I have nothing else to add other than I would consider having another faculty member supervise this project if possible. If you have been having her take courses at your school, could you do the course under those conditions? I suspect that because this is her last semester of her senior year, it won't really affect her admission one way or the other, but it could get her more independent research wherever she ends up and having somebody who can write a recommendation about this in appropriate scientific terms to another professor would go far.

I think the other place to explore in terms of creating the list is the first works of steampunk and what the original authors had in mind when they began. Sometimes artistic jumping off points aren't as clear as you'd expect, so it would be nice to know what their thoughts were about. You might also add some exploration of artistic styles.

Some days I'd be inclined to agree with you. Today, for whatever reason, I'm not. I guess some of it is that it is a fine art credit. Playing music is fine art and requires quite a bit of study and work. Even without knowing the various technical aspects And while local high schools might not give credit for such craftsmanship, I think colleges do. In my area UNCG's music program is considered strong and awards BFAs. Here's what their music major guide book says: The guide is found here: http://performingarts.uncg.edu/_files/resources/undergraduate/music/ug-student-information-manual-2013-2014.pdf It appears that they are graded in part on a performance recital at the end of each semester. So improving skill is a valid assessment. Sure a music major would need both music theory and music history but for one measly high school credit, playing or singing counts in my book.

Regentrude!!! Surely you've done something similar with college students: do it the same way. I think mine was called "Independent Study." My professor made me do the practical work for and a paper for him that had more of a research bent to it but I was working in a social science area.

She may show up, she may have decided not to come (go to another school). If so two things will happen: your dd will get another roommate assigned or she'll have the room to herself. Personally, I don't think having the room to herself is such a horrible thing.

In the bigger and more expensive categories many of the whole books packages do this: Sonlight, MFW and Tapestry all cover whole books with varying degrees of hand holding.

This is so true, TOG doesn't try to read everything and college classes I had didn't either. It's a way of get a big assortment of works and especially filling in with some works that wouldn't be affordable as stand alones.

Ummm, TOG does NOT use any Norton Anthologies in the 19th century and if you go the DE route and stay up to date, they are removing the Nortons for all their year plans (which I think a shame because what you really get in a good, big anthology is the minor works that you might not cover at all, the big works come in as individual volumes but the little poets, disappear).

If she still is okay with playing music, I'd go that route and have her take music lessons of some sort and count that. But participating in drama would be another route that you have not mentioned.

Have you contacted Laurel Tree yet? She's already sent somethings out for the class and in the spring she talked about it filling up fast.