Candid
-
Posts
3,068 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by Candid
-
-
I've recently read City of God. I would not recommend it for a high school student. It is around 800 pages and is a combination of systematic theology and apologetics. I read old theology so I was comfortable with the overall trajectory of Augustine's theology, but the way he does it is not common or typical. If you want to read a classic systematic theology I would suggest the Larger Westminster Catechism with a commentary for reference; most protestant works of systematic theology follow its overall framework (for that matter even the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church uses the same sort of framework; Augustine's City of God is like Kafka's Metamorphosis in terms of overall comparison.
I would not read an abridgment because I'm not sure I trust abridgers with this particular work.
LIke Rosie I never got a great excitement over the confessions, but I always read the same excerpt in every source I ever encountered it in, so maybe reading the whole work would be better.
-
http://www.amazon.com/First-Choices-Experts-Strategies-Getting/dp/1932662391/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376944389&sr=8-1&keywords=8+first+choices gives a detailed method for comparing departments in different schools. While it won't necessarily give you "the best" it will give you a way to compare departments.
-
Since Tom Wolfe has already been suggested I would suggest I Am Charlotte Simmons. I will say it has fairly specific adult content, but it is both positive in the end about learning and knowledge and is a great cautionary tale for those heading off to college.
-
if you are aiming at a high end college or not aiming at a high end college i think makes a difference. I actually do not plan to put any grades on my transcripts at all - i attended a middle school and a college which did not do grades, and i think a lot of places put very little weight on mom-grades if they dont have outside classes to back them up. You could just call it an overview of biology, and give him a more advanced biology class in 12th grade to make it even out.
A lot depends on your personal circumstances, but I used to say this. I don't say it any more. If your child might possibly participate in sports OR be in the running for an academic scholarship, he or she will need grades.
-
This was suggested in another thread: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/How-To-Survive-College-Science-Labs-374925
I bought it from another source where it was $12 so my link will save you $2. I carped in that other thread about the fact that it was 30 pages, but I must say it is a simple practical approach to college science labs. I've put my copy in my Evernote, ready for my oldest the summer before he goes to college.
-
Two books that you must read as a set. They are amazingly good, but the first book has some really bad things happen which involved both violence and s*x. These things happen to well drawn, sympathetic characters so they are challenging. On its own this is an great novel, but coupled with its sequel it is amazing.
http://www.amazon.com/Children-God-Ballantine-Readers-Circle/dp/044900483X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y
Note: these may appear to be science fiction, they certainly work in that genre but the writer has gone way beyond genre fiction writing and I have never seen them shelved with science fiction because of the quality of her writing (this said by someone who reads science fiction). They also include religious themes but not in a proselytizing, everything's all right if you are an X sort of way (and as a Christian, I can even imagine some other folks being offended by how the themes are handled).
-
Go to the store associated with this forum: Peace Hill Press, find the high school writing talk that Susan gives and listen to it. Start from there. She give great generic prompts.
-
Earth Science question. Is she using a middle school text for this? If she is doing something more advanced I wouldn't call it Earth Science because that will likely get the same red pen that the pre-algebra does. With a more advanced text, you could call it geology.
-
My ds was quietly ignoring his dissection labs, so we had a dissection morning. Had it all done in time to have lunch at 1:00 PM.
-
Depending on how you formatted the typed out list in Word it is possible that you can reformat it so it could be changed into a table. If you used a specific character or word between the title and the author that isn't used elsewhere like a dash or "by" you could do a global find and replace and change that to a tab or comma which windows would then "see" as a new column.
-
Thanks. As suspected, it is like playing the lottery. If it turns out that my students' stellar academic performance is irrelevant, that the extracurriulars my student is passionate about are "not the right kind", and the family background puts my student in the wrong demographic - there is absolutely nothing I can do. So be it. With the hundreds of colleges in the country, there are many great options. Something will work out.
I am getting very cynical about the entire process. But I refuse to spend four years of my student's life grooming them to look good for admissions- especially since nobody can really define what makes them look good. They should pursue their passions and live their high school years, not spend them hunting after the elusive moving target of admission to a selective school.
Looks like even the people who decide about admissions don't really know how students get picked.
Call me Pollyanna, but I still think yours is going to be fine.
However, reading Rachel Tours fairly snarky inside admissions books is a good beginning for all new to high school home school moms. While the system itself may change the people (or type of people) in it probably are much less changeable.
-
I think even adults can and do take the SAT so they can go to college. The obvious down side to not taking it when you are in school is the loss of skill sets tested by the test. Math is the obvious one, but if you don't continue to read aggressively that skill can dwindle as well.
-
The comment in the article wasn't about transfer credit (though I'm not surprised that they don't accept the work for college credit). It was actually a comment that they rarely accepted students from community college. (It was in this article.)
In that context I suspect what they maybe trying to say is they rarely find community college students who can be accepted as junior transfers. Given their status this does not surprise me. I doubt Ivy League schools have many junior transfers from community colleges either. In context, I suspect the remark is about how good this one kid was.
-
I can't quite make out what you are asking. He does not need X many hours of each component but of a combination of those pieces AND I've posted before hour counting doesn't work well for home school students. We use Tapestry of Grace, covering a huge amount of literature last year, but if I went by hour counting (where teacher/student interface hours are what is counted) I'd half a credit at best.
As others have said a typical English credit includes a bunch of different things bound together. There maybe a reason not to count your credits this way. For instance in 9th grade we did a separate study of A Rulebook for Arguments which I counted as a half credit separate from his Ancient Lit credit.
-
I know zip about Omnibus or Cornerstone other than what is public, but this is also said about Tapestry of Grace which I use.In Tapestry's case I don't see it. Their discussions at the high school level are very Christian but distinctions in Armenian and Reformed in the discussions? No. That's because in Tapestry's case they are focused on history and lit and those distinctions rarely appear in those areas.
I don't even see it much in their choices of books to use in the worldview/church history area (I do see a mainly protestant bias in some choices, but not such a fine tuning as reformed).
In terms of eschatology reformed can be pretty open. Most I have seen will say they believe in covenant theology, but I have seen, right here on this board, someone who said they were reformed dispensational.
Also there are reformed Baptists and near as I can tell in reading church history most Baptists in the US spring from reformed sources not Anabaptist sources, but there is a pretty big tangle of denominations in early American history so that's difficult to tease out one way or the other.
Personally I wish every Christian had to read a good thorough Catechism that focused at least in part on ethics and Christians, I suspect we'd have less problems that way.
-
Thanks for answering. Did he read Dickens on his own or did you read it aloud to him? Is he reading independently or are you having a lot of discussions? I'm just wondering how much can be attributed to just simply reading large quantities and how much would be attributed to interaction with someone else (mom/teacher) over the literature/reading.
Again much of what regentrude has said is also true for us.First, he was not an early reader, did not teach himself. He really caught on after first grade year as he was about to turn 7. Scooby Doo chapter mysteries were what kicked him over the top.Prior to that we did do lots and lots of read alouds. We actually read to both our children when they were babies. Used to lay on the floor beside them and hold the books over us. When this one could sit up, he could identify books spread about him if I called them out. The summer between k and 1st I can remember reading almost all the Ralph Moody books to him (the last book or two deal with commodity futures markets I stopped reading those to him).However he also had a severe speech problem and at 5 although he could understand at the 95th percentile, but he could only be understood at the 5th percentile. This was all due to fine motor sort of issues involving oral communication. But it did exist for him.We did use Sonlight up through 5th grade and then Tapestry of Grace after that. So he did have some basic interaction questions for any books he read with Sonlight. For Tapestry we started at the D level with him and they have extensive Socratic discussions. But he read a bunch on his own. One reason I did switch was Sonlight was not going to keep up with him and they were not asking particularly deep questions in that last year, questions that he and I talked about from his books.But Dickens was his own discovery and I've never spent a lot of time discussing it with him. This coming year Tapestry will do Great Expectations so we will do a deep literary discussion or two with it.Since he resembles me in his voracious reading and I also took the SAT, let me report that this child is way beyond me at the same age. He challenges himself more, like old classics, and reads gobs of nonfiction. He's been reading academic papers this summer prepping for the debate topic this fall and winter. And at least his preliminary score reflects that difference between us by a bunch of points. So reading romance novels does not count!While he has read the classics on his own he has also read a bunch of lighter materials as well. Some of those light materials were adult oriented, like books and bios around baseball. -
I was just looking at The American Pageant (by Kennedy, Cohen, and Bailey) on Amazon! Wow! It is expensive! I didn't look too much at the used, but at a glance, they were high too. Is it amazing!
It's a real textbook they are usually much more expensive than books written by individuals. Why? I don't know.
-
Mine has not actually taken the SAT, but he did do the first test in their released test book and scored 800 so I expect he will score high. (We did no test prep to set a baseline and tried to administer it as it will be administered.)
And I will say the same thing regentrude says about massive reading. He once nearly gave a local librarian a heart attack when he told her at 14 that is favorite author was Dickens.
-
Where we live it's a combo of house size/age, neighborhood density and character (for example we have 5 community pools with low fees, a good library branch and lots of walking trails), schools, and commute. There are parts of the same good district with lower performing schools and smaller houses that are 50-100k more because of commuting time.
We had a swim meet in one gorgeous neighborhood with a lovely pool and big houses that cost less than in our neighborhood. But the commute was often 2 hours one way (4 hours per day commuting).
We don't have commute issues here. And you can definitely see that house size is also a factor as is "prestige." The really nice neighborhoods all have decent schools, but in the best school's surrounds there is a more of a mix hence I can see the actual price difference between its and the next over school's housing. I suspect since the two neighborhoods are both older that the one with cheaper prices is also more run down because of the lack of the good school.
-
She could teach herself. At some point some design classes might be helpful and if you had closer cc classes that might help. The plus of classes is they will get her student discounts on the big software programs designers use.
She might also try to locate some local folks doing what she would like to do and see if they would take her on as intern.
-
I agree with Candid, here, too. If that first SAT run-through turns up some specific weak areas, it might be worth using another resource to bolter those areas before just continuing with testing practice. I used Chalkdust SAT Math review with my oldest for certain math concepts. I used College Prep Genius with my next one for overall SAT strategy advice, and that helped a bit, but he didn't follow their recommended techniques to the letter. He did get some valuable insights on test-taking strategy, though.
I still think that nothing helped prepare him better than just working through the CB tests and carefully reviewing the answers. Doing this definitely helped him to start to see particular types of questions, especially in the Critical Reading & Writing sections.
HTH,
Brenda
We are doing kind of what Brenda suggests using a hodgepodge of resources. I picked ours up based on recommendations here. Some started from websites so you can get some free stuff from those. For instance, I picked up PWN the SAT's math book but there is a PWN website.
-
The housing prices for the two 9/10 districts and my 5/10 district are comparable overall. There are good and bad neighborhoods in each district, of course. The housing prices in this other teacher's 4/10 district is about 55% lower than than the other districts. Yes, she is in a lower income district with a lot of issues that come with that.
Interesting, where we are better schools get better prices. I can think of one set of side by side neighborhoods where the better district's homes that are similar in size get between 2 and 3 times as much.
-
I mostly agree with Brenda, but it does not include a lot of instruction so it is what you do with it that will count.
The general suggestion is to take the first test as the SAT is taken, morning, all in one gulp.
After that take one test section a day and go back and look up what you did wrong and figure out why your answer is wrong, why you got it, and how to get it right. At some point, take another all in one gulp test and see if you are improving.
-
That's the thing. This woman's school district (which is about 40 min. south of us) got a score of 4 out of 10.
Our school district gets a score of 5 out of 10. Better than hers but not by much.
But if we lived less than a mile west of our current location we would be in a district that gets a score of 9 out of 10. And if we lived less than a mile north of our current location we would be in another district that gets a score of 9 out of 10. Where you live makes a huge difference even though the neighborhoods and houses in each of these districts look pretty much the same.
Do they cost the same?
Schweikart and Tapestry of Grace
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
I"m probably a Kool Aid drinker on TOG, call it a perfect storm of my oldest and me. However, like Shannon, I am somewhat disgruntled about recent changes not so much that they are retooling, but because they've kind of left older print users high and dry on some things. Sigh.
I like Tapestry's resources and part of what I like is they use works that are more mainstream, especially for high school, this means if you have a child going off to secular college that you've encountered ideas you might not line up with already. Using Patriot's History means you won't do that or at least not as much.