My dd in 9th/10th is currently in Apologia Chemistry. She has completed Apol. Bio, Physical, and Gen Science. She loved all of those texts so much that I decided to start my younger kids in the Apologia texts developed by Jeanie Fullbright (sp?). My son (6th) has now completed Botany, Zoology-Land Animals of the Sixth Day, and is working his way through his third text- Anatomy/Physiology. My youngest (4th) is working through that text alongside him. If I had only known how wonderful these texts were when DD1 was their age, I would have started her in them also. They are easy to implement at home, and the "wordiness" referred to by some (and I acknowledge that this is true to some extent) is one of the things that makes the science accessible to my more linguistically-oriented family. I feel that they are thorough, colorful with excellent illustrations, and have easy-to-follow experiments with commonly available household items. We do vocabulary, What Do You Remember questions, experiments, and lab reports for all of our work. We have a test at the end of each unit. This provides a multi-sensory approach to the science as the kids see, touch, write, hear (when I read or they read aloud), and talk during discussion and oral review. I cannot say that this curriculum is the best of all curricula for science, because we are not using everything. I also do not believe that any curriculum is best for all people in any subject since all learners and teachers are different. I can say that it works well for our family and for its variety of learners. :001_smile: When DS enters 7th and 8th next year, we plan to continue in Apologia with General and Physical Sciences. HTH.

Thanks for all the food for thought, everyone. As I was reading these compelling posts, some of the same thoughts came to me that Garden Mom expressed. If a student has stayed in high school doing intensive, advanced academics, thoroughly learning an area of study, then why not take a CLEP test? Does she really need to repeat what she has already learned in a classroom with other CC or 1st/2nd year undergrads, if she has already thoroughly mastered the material? She could possibly even be in class with students below her level of understanding, if this is the case. That seems to place an artificial stricture on the student. We have every hope/intention of sending our kids through a traditional college, but I cannot understand why there would be any problem with putting behind oneself and getting credit for work already acheived. Not all students taking a CLEP test are just cramming for and a taking a test. They might be demonstrating mastery of a content area learned at home. For now, we are planning to choose this route and keep our kids learning at home and through virtual live classrooms online rather than accelerate them through CC with the view of taking AP and CLEP tests once done. I know that like many of you, I went through a traditional high school (with more than enough "social interaction"), took no CC courses, but entered my first year of college with 30 hours from tests required by my university for incoming freshmen. I don't think that I lost out on anything socially or academically by doing that. Those tests were just a reflection of what I'd learned in high school and didn't need to repeat in college. Why should entering homeschoolers need to do anything differently? Thanks for any input. I'm honestly still formulating my thoughts on this. I overheard (with permission) a conversation between a friend with kids going through a traditional public school route and a friend who is a university behavioral development expert saying that incoming students should have no more than about 6 hours of credit, because they aren't "socially" mature enough to handle more and need some time as underclassmen before they interact with upperclassmen. Interesting conversation to have overheard. The friend with the public school student's husband is also a university professor, and she claimed that he held similar beliefs. I'm mulling over it all, but I did tell them that I disagreed- depending, I supose, upon the student.:tongue_smilie:

wondering why i couldn't post a minute ago, so test, test, test. :)

Hi. For my DD, we met with a very small group of classical educators and studied Fallacy Detectives in 6th grade. Although she is an older child for her grade, at the beginning of the year, it was a little of a stretch for her. By mid-semester, it came much more naturally to her. She really loved the content. Knowing what I know now, I would recommend starting this no earlier than 7th grade for a typical student. In 7th grade, my DD worked with the same group and did Traditional Logic I. They used the DVD set, read and completed their assignments at home, discussed the material following week, and then took quizzes when they met. Although this is considered to be a one-semester course, our group took a year roughly following our co-op schedule. At the same time, they studied Paul E. Little's "Know Why You Believe". They worked on study questions for this apologetic and discussed it during class. This book had great influence over my daughter's reasoning and understanding of her faith. Next year, my DD will be in 8th grade and will be doing the Memoria Press Classical On-Line Academy for Traditional Logic II for one semester. She will follow that with Material Logic in the spring. We've been very pleased with the quality/content of the MP material. Hope that helps.

I'm so glad that you are Becoming (a) Jane (ite). Welcome to the club! This was an interesting movie....IMHO....but it really didn't have that much to do with Jane Austen. It seemed highly fictionalized (as is often the case with movies) to me. Even reading Becoming Jane didn't really convey all that the movie more than implied. Maybe I am too much of a stickler. I've read every JA biography that I am aware of having been written. So much of what was in that movie was conspicuously missing from those erudite tomes.:tongue_smilie: It was fun to watch, but it took many liberties, I thought. If you'd like to know more about JA, you could visit www.pemberley.com. (I hope we are allowed to post web-site links on here. This isn't an ad!) Also, I recommend a daily dose of reading her writing! Finally, try some of the fantastic movie adaptations of her works. Some of them are pretty faithful to the original works. Enjoy. That is one of summer's greatest pleasures for me....breaking from teaching, and reading Jane!

No wonder I use this and it usually works great, but I FRIED myself to a CRISP at the waterpark last year with repeated applications!:tongue_smilie:Arghhh!

As I'm discovering, you are correct. He's remembering the pictures and the facts, but it takes a while to call them up. On the other hand, before this program, he would have to skip count or add to COMPUTE the multiplication fact as he COULD NOT remember them from drilling! It DOES take a while, but at least now he has a tool to use in remembering them.:iagree:

This doesn't seem "screwy" to me....it seems like a grace message. Thanks for articulating your position so well.

To me, these suits are cute (especially on the littlest girls) while being modest, but....honestly, I think that they might draw my attention more than a more conventional, (yet still modest...ala Land's End swim shirt and shorts/skirts) would...and in that way...sort of in a reverse way....would be less modest, simply because it would "make me look".:glare:

Okay, this is a little bit of a rant that I mean kindly, and that I don't mean to be preachy....but I thought about it for a couple of days, and I couldn't resist saying it...and it is after all, just my opinion meant to be helpful...:tongue_smilie: We all blow it sometimes, but have grace/mercy over yourself. If you are too restrictive and legalistic about everything that you eat, you are really giving too much "power" to food, and you will find yourself defeated again and again just by the sheer amount of energy you give to thinking about food! So....IMHO...you do the best you can by eating the way you know is right...and if you blow it a little from time to time, then let it go and move on, and just do better in the future without self-recrimination. A little give in the daily plan (unless you have special medical reasons to severely restrict and/or perfect a certain kind of diet) gives you the freedom you need to breathe and LIVE a lifestyle of healthy eating rather than constantly being on a DIET. So, give yourself a break! :001_smile:

I just researched this, and frankly, I didn't find it cheaper anywhere else. I purchased a student text for each of the students in my little private "co-op" of 6 students, and purchased the teacher book for myself. While you COULD write everything out on paper, the stories that the students use are actually printed in the worktext for the students to read, and you do things to the stories such as mark with a green color the first words in each sentence, and mark with a red color the end punctuation. Additionally, the students have editting checklists, etc throughout the week along with daily assignments. Peacehill Press for SOTW allows copying of their activity guide within a family. You might ask Amy Olson (or is it Olsen?) what her copyright requirements are for use within a family for WT. If she does permit copying of the worktext, then you could write out the spelling and vocab very easily, for example, on paper, and just copy the pages you would NEED for each child. Hope that this info helps. Happy trails with Writing Tales. We LOVE it!:thumbup1:

First kiss at the wedding....You are sooooo cool! "That's it"...Anne Elliot replied, "They fell in love over poetry!"

Have a great day in sunny Texas!:001_tt2::001_tt2:

Count me in, Profmom. Hopefully, I will also be able to keep up with my other book club at the same time! And...there's the Pemberley group reading that I hoped to start....

Near Waco.