Now see this makes a lot of sense to me. It seems ridiculous to try to cram all of the AP Biology material into one year. But to do two years - Biology then Advanced Biology followed by the AP test, yeah. That could definitely work.

Seconding Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It has everything you described, and is a wonderfully complex coming of age story. I realize the protagonist is 11 at the beginning of the series, but it's definitely more of a teen/adult book. And it draws on a rich classic tradition - Paradise Lost, Blake's poetry,etc.

:iagree: I don't see this as a kid's book. Yeah, the characters are bunnies. But it's not a book about bunnies, it's a book about going on an epic quest, courage, leadership, self-sacrifice, freedom, and responsibility. Sometimes I see it paired with The Aneid, and I think that's about right - when a kid is ready to tackle that level of issues, it can be a great book. It's not something I'd read aloud to young kids. For my own kids, 8th and up.

No I used it with my 6th grader, quickly. We expanded the assignments. It still didn't take long. But it was really fun for her. I thought the outlining stories was a terrible idea, I'm with SWB on that. We skipped it.

:grouphug: is all I got, but you're welcome to it, there's more where it came from! :cheers2:

I had that idea for my dd two. I looked at three books: Napoleon's Buttons The Disappearing Spoon Uncle Tungsten: Memoirs of a Chemical Boyhood. As it turns out, we're not doing any of them. There were other memoirs I thought she'd prefer, Napoleon's Buttons was kind of boring (for me), and the Disappearing Spoon we ended up getting an audio version, and we might listen to it on car trips. But one of the three might work great for you. There is also a novel - Itch - about a 14 year old chemistry lover solving mysteries. I haven't read it yet but am about to.

Ooo, I never even heard of The Velvet Room, but it sounds lovely. Will have to add it to our read-aloud list!

I didn't like the Golden Compass movie. I don't actually remember how violent is was, but I watched it with the girls when they were fairly young and I didn't feel overly disturbed. What I didn't like about it was how it changed the ending - it ended before the big climax scene - Lord Asriel's betrayal of Lyra - and so it turned the story into something completely different. I'm sure at the time they were intending to make another movie, and decided more people would watch Movie #2 if the first one had a happy ending, but to me this is the worst sort of violation of a story in a story-to-movie transition - change the ending from tragic/disturbing to a rah-rah happy heroic thing? Ridiculous. Anyway, if he has already read the book and wants to watch the movie, I think it might be a good chance to talk about how stories are changed between books and movies.

Yes. You pick good ones!

I agree. And it was much less irreverent than Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28881.Lamb?from_search=true&search_version=service Re: Pullman - after finishing my re-read of His Dark Materials, I picked up this - Killing the Imposter God: Phillip Pullman's Spiritual Imagination in His Dark Materials - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36667.Killing_the_Imposter_God?from_search=true&search_version=service The authors spend a whole book developing the off-the-cuff idea i dropped last week, that Pullman's series certainly doesn't read like an atheist manifesto, despite his contentions about his own beliefs. Against organized religion, yes, but not against the notion of a creator (where did all the angels come from, anyway?) or a world with a whole lot of spirituality in it. This book is written from a liberation theology POV. I don't get liberation theology. I mean, I get what it is, but I don't get it. Anyway, it's interesting to read a well-developed argument for my nebulous idea. So far anyway.

There are some great resources on this site: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/waldron/ HHMI/Biointeractive also has good stuff, some of which is good for middle graders. Some of their genetics stuff is better for high school, but they have nice evolution resources that are good for a middle schooler. https://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/genetics

I'm getting increasingly worried by my workload. More new projects keep coming in, and after a lean spring and summer, it's hard to turn them away. But I feel like I'm starting to sink, and my 4th grader's schooling will suffer. I'm less worried about the 8th grader, she doesn't need me at elbow for anything, and if we don't get to discussions every day for a while it's not the end of the world (writing is currently outsourced via BW). But my 4th grader really needs me there for almost everything. She and everyone else at the moment, apparently. :toetap05:

Agreeing with the general consensus - if it were me, I'd thank dd for telling me about her preference, praise her growing self-awareness and understanding of her learning style, and explain that reading nonfiction is a different skill from reading fiction, and one that she will need to learn for high school and college, so now is the perfect time! And then I'd work with her on it - explicitly teach her to do it. We read a lot of nonfiction here. The more challenging stuff I read aloud and we discuss. I look for books that are very clear and well-written for dd to read on her own, and I make study guides for her. Right now she is reading Edward Dolnick's The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World. It's ideal, it has short, vividly written chapters. She reads ~3 chapters each day and answers, in writing, the questions in her study guide. This requires that she focus on the reading - she is reading with a purpose, to be able to answer the questions - and it ensures that she doesn't zone and miss things, because she is forced to go back over the chapter if she can't answer the questions at the end. This kind of reading takes a lot longer, so you will be able to do fewer books than if she was "just" reading them, but it's really valuable. And the writing - note-taking from a nonfiction book - is a really important skill too. I tell dd it's like the transition she went through with reading - learning to read vs. reading to learn - now applied to writing - she's been learning to write, now she's writing to learn. Don't give up on nonfiction! But don't expect the same skill set to work on nonfiction and fiction reading. It's a new skill and middle school is a great time to start honing it.

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=pe_170810_148423990_pe_button/?ie=UTF8&node=10646075011 I went a little nuts - lots of great stuff on sale today - foreign languages, science, history, and more. Enjoy!

Ugh - having recently survived a back-of-the-house-and-dog skunk spraying, all I can say is you're lucky it wasn't that bad! I have a whole new respect for the power of a skunk to foul its surroundings.

I just finished reading Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead. My dd recommended I read it, and I'm glad I did. I highly recommend it to 12 year olds and their moms! A lovely story about the meaning of life, love and friendship told from the POV of 7th graders.

I finished Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead. It was a wonderful book, one of the best I've read in a long time. Highly recommended. Shannon read it based on her reaction, I knew I had to read it. I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful book about the meaning of life, friendship and love as experience when you are in the 7th-9th grades. Yet still relevant for any age.

Well, that's interesting - of that list of modern challenged books, I've only read one of them, The Kite Runner. Which I didn't like. I'll have to check out some of the rest. Of the banned classics on the page you linked, I've read many but not all of them. Time for a new Goodreads to-read page! I already know what I want to read this year - dare I admit, Stacia, that I've never read Slaughterhouse-Five? :leaving: This week, I finished listening to The Hangman's Revolution, book 2 in the WARP series. It was just meh. I don't think I'll bother with the 3rd one which was just published. I also read The Cobra Event by Richard Preston. I had to read that one as soon as I heard about it, because I've been playing with a related story idea for awhile. Not much overlap, whew! It was a gripping page-turner, not unlike The Hot Zone if you like that kind of thing, which I do. The girls and I finished The Rumplestiltskin Problem, which we enjoyed very much, and Morgan and I listened to Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, Detectives Extraordinaire. Current reads are The Wild Trees by Richard Preston, How to Be a High School Superstar, Napoleon's Buttons, and Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead. I'll probably finish that today so I will post about it later. Books Read in August: 125. Goodbye Stranger - Rebecca Stead. 124. The Hangman's Revolution - Eoin Colfer 123. The Cobra Event - Richard Preston 122. The Rumpelstiltskin Problem - Vivian Vande Velde 121. Mr. & Mrs. Bunny - Polly Horvath 120. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman 119. Your Child's Strengths - Jennifer Fox 118. People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks 117. The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury 116. The Story of Science: Einstein Adds a New Dimension - Joy Hakim 115. The LIbrary at Mount Char - Scott Hawkins 114. The Iron King - Maurice Druon 113. The Magus - John Fowles 112. A History of God - Karen Armstrong 111. War of the Worlds: Fresh Persepctives on the HG Wells Masterpiece 110. March - Geraldine Brooks

I guess I don't really understand the distinction between YA and MG. I usually look at the age of the protagonist and if it's close to dd's age, it's more appropriate than if it is a much older character. That doesn't always work, but it's a good first pass guide. Most books with 12 year old protagonists don't have sex in them. A lot of books with 17 year old protagonists do. Not all, but a lot. Hunger Games and Harry Potter are exceptions, for sure. John Green's books are great, but definitely a little older, and with sex, often. A lot of "YA" books I've found to be so poorly written I wouldn't suggest them to dd for that reason alone, regardless of content. What is poorly written will differ for each reader, of course. So I have deleted my specific examples here. ;) Authors of age-appropriate books that my dd 12 has enjoyed: Rebecca Stead, Wendy Mass, Nancy Farmer, Rick Riordan, Brandon Sanderson, Shannon Hale, Gary Schmidt, Margaret Peterson Haddix, James Owen, Jeanne DuPre, Pseudonymus Bosch, Lemony Snicket, many of which were mentioned above. I think the first book that dd read and loved that I really considered YA in terms of content and maturity level was The Outsiders.

well, there you go! Good luck next week.

You know, I wasn't grabbed by People of the Book when I tried to read it, either, but I got the audio book and listened for a solid hour while I was driving, and then I was sold. I think - again- it had to do with the voices. The reader was Australian (I assume), the main character was Australian, at least, and the reader's voice sounded exactly the way her voice "should" sound. But then she did the accents - eastern European, medieval spanish, American, modern Israeli, and others so well - it really helped keep you track on who was speaking and what era you were in. The accents got a little distracting at times, but for the most part it was a very skillful use of voice and accent that really made the book come to life for me. It's funny, just by chance I realize that all 3 Brooks books I've "read" were audio books. I wonder if that has anything to do with my liking of them? I don't usually do all audios for a single author.

Me too! I had a boyfriend that loved it and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Then when I had a second boyfriend who loved Zen & the Art, I decided it must be something about me. ;) :D

Man, I'm so relieved I'm not the only one who found Sophie's World unreadable . . . it's been on a stack at my bedside for years.

Agreeing with EKS. My dd understands the math just fine, but she requires a lot of repetition, spaced out over time, to retain it. I don't mean 40 identical problems in a row, I mean circling back to the topic repeatedly. I'm so glad we planned to take 2 years to master Alg 1. I think she'll end up doing two textbooks worth of Algebra content before all is said and done. But I'm determined she'll have it down solidly before moving on. She also feels like she's forgotten everything after a math break, which we sort of unintentionally did this summer. But it's coming back quick, so I think it did get in there! Review, review, review.

It does vary in individual subjects, but my dd typically works independently all morning while I'm working with my younger. Right now she does her math, spanish, ongoing writing projects/BW assignment, Metacognition/study skills, independent history/science reading, and assigned lit reading. Then after lunch, we work together for usually a couple of hours - this is when we do read aloud, discussions and TC course watching together for science/history, discuss lit, do any English skill work and do rhetoric studies or talk about her essays/writing projects. She usually has an hour of wrap-up after that which she does independently. So I'd say about 2 hours a day right now? Could go up to 3.