Ok, I'll confess that my prejudice to Hunger Games has more to do with the fact that I think it's terribly written more than the intensity of the story . . . and I do think the 3rd book in the series is very dark, even by the series' standards, and not very satisfying. I know that's not on the list, but my dd always wants to finish series. She's asked me about Hunger Games and I tell her she can read it if she wants but I don't think it's that great, myself.

Agreeing with others. I aspire to be a relaxed homeschooler, but that in no way means we have low expectations or just do whatever . . . you can be relaxed (a function of your state of mind) and still be rigorous (a function of the materials you choose, your expectations, the output you require). It's a false dichotomy. Do a search for "relax vs rigor" and enjoy. There have been some great discussions about this over the years.

Well, if he found Deathly Hallows too intense, you might want to re-think Lord of the Flies and Hunger Games. I wouldn't do either of those with my dd12, and she has read all the HP books, multiple times. The Giver is pretty intense, too, but less so than the other two. What is your goal with those books? There may be some gentler choices that would meet your goals.

Hear hear. Older siblings can be a hard act to follow. Learning to teach a younger sibling who is different, in whatever way, can be a challenge.

I get this a lot, too. I even got questioned by dd9's 10 year old friend the other day. "You are going to send them to high school, right? You can't go to college without high school!" :001_rolleyes: In her case, I took a minute to explain that yes, you can go to college with out public school high school, and in fact, you can go to the JC instead of high school if you want to! I wonder what the dinner conversation was at her house that night! But for more mature questioners, I do usually say that of course it's up to the girls and we take it year by year, but that their are so many options for kids to take ownership of their own education these days, between online classes and dual enrollment, that I didn't feel at all daunted by "homeschooling" high school and that I was going to give my girls the option to make the choice that's right for them. If dd is around, I bring her into the conversation. Her eyes get really wide and she shakes her head vigorously when asked if she wants to go to ps. Nuff said.

I had to come back and comment on this post. I think this is so important, and it's the way that I try and think about dd's passions, too. She is so passionate about horses and theater, and the time that she spends on both of these passions is shaping who she is. It's also teaching her all kinds of "soft" skills - responsibility, following through on commitments, working hard for something you love, public speaking, memorizing, getting along with a diverse group of people, learning from other adult/coaches in a sustained way. The list could go on. These are all things that will serve her well no matter what she "does" with her life. And they could both end up being lifelong on the side interests. Or not. But that's not why we do them: we do them because they make her face light up, she loves them, and they are giving her something she needs now.

I'm trying to stay focused, and finish reading and making a study guide for Story of Science, with school starting Monday! I'm also working on Your Child's Strengths by Jennifer Fox. I'm liking it a lot and it's helping me think through the philosophical shift I'm trying to make in teaching (and parenting) my younger dd. For fiction, I'm reading The LIbrary on Mount Char and listening to People of the Book (thanks, Stacia!) Books Read in August: 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 None of which work for the spell your name challenge, unfortunately! But I'm looking forward to Remarkable Creatures as my next audio book, just waiting for it from the library.

I agree, this was a very well-written book that bothered me a lot. I know that man, I've met him many times in my life. I bet a lot of women have. It's interesting that he can only begin to become likable as his world falls apart. His daughter's story, and her choices, were incredibly disturbing. I don't pretend to understand what it must be like to be a South African, white or black. This book was just searing in its look at the relations between the two and the choices people make to try and create, recreate, or retain a sense that they belong in a place.

My basic plan with 4th and 8th graders: 7-9 - work, exercise, eat Start school at 9. 8th grader does independent work. Work with 4th grader on math, spelling and writing, read aloud, the rest of the time spent on the subject/project of her choice. She has me till noon. 12-1 break 1-3 Work with 8th grader. 4th grader has a short independent skills practice list then has free time 3-5. 8th grader finishes up indie work (Mon-Tues) or goes to extracurriculars (Wed-Fri). I work or schlep children to activities

My biggest worry is whether I'll be able to successfully juggle working and teaching - my work is super busy right now, usually a down/slow time. Also how doing significant home repairs will affect both school and work. I'm also . . . challenged? concerned? ok, worried - about how my efforts to shift my style with my younger dd to better match her needs and wants will work out. I'm really going to make a huge effort this year to give her the kind of school she needs, but it's going to feel unnatural at first, and I think I will worry that she's not "on track" particularly with writing. Writing instruction is going to look really different than it did with my previous 4th grader, and I'm trying to have faith in the outcome.

Ruth, this will be our first time using entire TC lecture courses. We have used selected lectures in the past (from Shakespeare courses) and we have done some Coursera or EdX lectures, or other online videos (Big History had lots, and we did Crash Course World History & ecology last year). But this will be the first time we work through entire TC courses, start to finish. And yes, part of the goal of using them is a skills goal, to practice note-taking. We'll watch, takes notes on, and discuss the Joy of Science and Science of Self lectures. Those will be done consecutively - JOS is 60 lectures and SoS is 24, so that will be 2-3 lectures per week. Those are part of her core science, she will also be reading independently and learning to take notes from texts, and then we'll do read-alouds. I do have that stuff all lined up with the lectures. On the days we aren't watching a lecture we'll be doing more read alouds. The TC courses we are using for Metacognition will probably just be watch together and discuss courses. How to Be a Superstar Student she will do on her own, but the others we will watch together. I don't know that we'll get through all of them this year, but I listed them in the order I want to go through them. Those will be consecutive, too, and we'll probably do a couple of lectures a week. I probably won't have us do two lectures in one day, so on the JOS days we won't do a Metacognition lecture. So there will be 1 lecture on most school days, but usually just one. Did I answer everything? If not tell me! We'll see how it all works, school starts Monday!

Yeah, that seems like a lot. We didn't do one lit analysis a week in 5th grade alongside WWS. We did a handful of books that year.

I guess in retrospect when my dd was doing WWS, I didn't have her doing addition summaries in science or history, but we did continue discussing books and I'd have her write about them. Not tons of books, and not every week, but several each year alongside the writing she was doing in WWS. But we didn't do this right away - when we started WWS, it felt like plenty of writing. Then as it became more familiar, we added in some other stuff.

Jousting Armadillos is PreAlgebra, and then the other two books, Crocodiles & Coconuts and Chuckles the Rocket Dog, are Algebra 1. JA is a complete preparation for Algebra 1, but it doesn't have everything that some PreA programs (including AoPS) contain. It starts with the assumption that the student has mastered all the basic operations, and introduces the use of variables in operations, and then single-variable equations. So you might need something else for review of operations - we used the old MM6 for this. JA doesn't cover Pre-Geometry and Pre-Statistics/probability, if that's important to you to include in your "PreA program" then you'd need something else for that. JA is a program that encourages thinking about the math you are doing, and understanding why things work the way they do. It has a gentle, guided discovery approach where a kid gets to a Eureka moment at the end of the lesson, after working through all the problems, each set of which uncovers another clue as to how the whole concept works. In that sense it is far more engaging than a program that gives some example problems in the lesson and then gives pages of practice problems. But it's not as extreme discovery as AoPS PreA is. With AoPS, you do some problems first and try and figure out the underlying concept, with JA you are led to discover it in a more step by step way. The styles of the programs are very different. They are both very wordy - a lot of reading required. But JA is very conversational. It is the author, Linus, with his quirky sense of humor, talking right to you. You feel like you get to know him. You giggle at his goofy jokes. You feel like you are part of a conversation. AoPS is not at all like that, IMO. I find the wordiness of AoPS difficult to stay engaged with, whereas with JA you feel like someone is right there talking to you. Consequently, my dd was able to do JA independently after the first couple of chapters, which do require discussion. She was being taught by Linus, through the text, and didn't need me to mediate the text for her. She wouldn't have been able to do that with AoPS, and we both enjoyed her ability to independently take ownership of her math learning. There are a lot of puzzles in JA. After JA, I had my dd start Jacobs Algebra. I thought it would have a similar tone and feel and would be a good fit. She did the first 7 chapters but then asked if she could use the two Arbor School Algebra books instead, she liked them so much. So I bought them and she's going to finish them up this year instead of finishing Jacobs. Could a student go into AoPS Algebra after JA? Sure, they could. If AoPS is a good fit for them, if it works with their learning style, etc. If AoPS doesn't work for them, I wouldn't assume it is JA's "fault" though. AoPS wouldn't be a good fit for my dd regardless of what she did for PreA. And I'm fine with that. My dd does use a lot of Alcumus and we both really like the challenging problem-solving aspect of that. But the textbook would have been totally overwhelming (I own both AoPS PreA and AoPS Algebra, and have worked on them some myself before concluding that they weren't going to work for dd). There are lots of other online classes, so I wouldn't feel like you have to use AoPS just because you want your ds to do online math classes. Only do AoPS if it is right for him, not because it's popular here or because they have online classes. It's fabulous for some kids, and its a disaster for others. Only you and your ds can figure out if it's right for him. HTH. ETA: I didn't realize we were on the Accelerated board, I just saw your thread title and I know I'm one of the few who has used JA so wanted to weigh in with our experience. The things I said about AoPS may not be relevant to you, though - my dd is a solid math student, but not wildly accelerated. She was ready for Algebra 1 in 7th, but we planned all along to take two years to do it. So she's on the normal college prep track, not the uber-accelerated math pathway that a lot of kids here are on. You'll get a different take on AoPS from a lot of the parents on this board. They have different math kids. If you have one of those, you should listen to them more than me!

I finished The Iron King by Maurice Druon. This is the first of a historical fiction series written in french in the 1950s which is getting a lot of hype currently because George RR Martin called it "the original Game of Thrones." It was enjoyable if you like historical fiction, but not un-put-downable or anything. The writing style was kind of meh but it's possible much was lost in translation. I'm not going to pick up the next book immediately, but it will be on my list in case of a lull. Solid 3 1/2 stars. The Library at Mount Char came in from the library yesterday. Another one of those I'm not sure why I put it on hold books, it must have been on a list somebody linked. Anybody read it? It's extremely strange so far, I can't decide if I like it or not.

This is really hard!! My dd was the same way. We can have this truly amazing discussion, where she has epiphanies of insight, but when she goes to write it down, she's got nothing. It just takes time, and practice. I think it's a good reason to have them do a lot of short papers, rather than trying to pull longer ones out of them. They need to read-discuss-write-discuss some more-revise over and over again. After awhile, some of the great discussion items do start to "stick" and make their way into the final written product. But I'm with both SWB and Julie Bogart on this one - learning the form of wriiting is the easy part. It's have something to write about that is the challenge! And it take maturity before they can learn to think analytically in the first place, then it take time again for the thinking to make its way onto the paper. It takes however long it takes, but I really think you can't skip the discussion - before writing, after a draft, before revising. That's where so much of the learning is actually taking place.

It's true, it probably gets defined differently. I just share my own interpretation! I have to realize that, as much as I hope they will, my girls may not decide to "do" science for their majors or careers. So, rather than focusing on preparing them to be scientists, which may involve a little too much pushing on my part, I am focusing on turning them into scientifically literate adults, who will have all the tools they need (math and basic core knowledge) if they do decide to major in a science, but who will be intelligent and well-educated citizens who can understand their world even if they decide not to be scientists themselves. If I had a kid who was absolutely and without a doubt heading for a scientific career, I might approach things differently. But at this point, that's just wishful thinking. :)

Those look really great, and my library has two of them! I just put them on hold.

Oh, no, they are all at least second drafts. But I can't remember off the top of my head how much editing went into each one. We tend to choose some pieces to really dig into and try to polish, and with others we do a basic edit job and then move on. It depends on how engaged she is in the piece, and also in how worn out she is after writing it! LOL. For the 5th grade pieces, she was still writing by hand, I probably typed these up for her after she was done. At some point in 6th grade she started composing on the computer, and that has made it a lot easier to do editing, of course - she's less physically tired after writing and so she has more energy for editing. Just more maturity for editing, and more of an ability to hear criticism, as well. What I critique for is totally different now, of course. Now, that 20,000 Leagues piece would get sent back for more fleshing out and analysis, but I was pretty darn happy with that as a first effort from a 5th grader! She was still 9 when she wrote that. Of course your expectations change based on what they are capable of. And they are different for each kid. My current 9 year old is "behind" where her sister was in terms of getting sentences down on paper, but OTOH I think she has deeper thoughts about what we read, compared to her sister at the same age. But I'm having to take a different approach to writing with her, because of her individual personality and strengths.

And here is one from 7th grade. It's nice (for me, at least!) to see some development in the thinking ability, and the ability to flesh out an idea/point with evidence from the story, that has developed over the last two years. By this point, I'm requiring that literary essays have a thesis. This was the new thing in 7th grade - don't just narrate or describe with a little analysis thrown in, but have an argument that you are supporting with evidence from the text. It's a start! Shane In most stories, the action is driven forward by the hero’s desires, or the hero is shaped by its events. At the end of the story he gets what he wants, or is changed by what has happened. In the story of Shane however, the hero finds that he cannot change even though he wants to, and at the end, he does not get what he wants. As soon as we meet Shane, we can tell he is the hero of the story. We see that he is a good man, and will be important later on. There are a few factors that tip us off that Shane is the hero. For one thing, he is polite and courteous. He asks permission to cross the Staretts’ land. He gets down off his horse to talk to Joe, instead of making Joe look up at him. He is also brave, but not hotheaded. When Chris confronts him in the bar the first time, Shane does not retaliate. The second time, he gives Chris a chance to back down and make things right. Only when Chris refuses his unspoken offer does Shane see fit to engage in a fight. Shane is not proud, and he is not a braggart. When asked by Joey if he could shoot, he replied, “A littleâ€, even though we find out later on that he is an expert shot. These qualities combined are what make Shane a hero. In the movie, the plot is about the fight between the homesteaders and Ryker. It is easy to see what they want. The homesteaders want to stay on their claims, and Ryker wants all the land for himself. But where does Shane fit into all this? What does he want? Shane wants a home. He wants a place where he can settle down and be part of a community. He wants to give up his old life as a gunfighter and be able to finally relax, instead of roaming from place to place, getting into scrapes and always having to be on the alert for danger. He wants rest. When he goes to live with the Staretts, he finally has a chance of a peaceful life. Sadly for Shane, the place where he has a chance of settling down is in the middle of a conflict, a conflict that he cannot help being sucked into. He feels the need to defend his friends, the people that have taken him in, and accepted him as family. And he does. He wins the gunfight, and kills Wilson and Ryker, creating a place where the homesteaders can thrive, as a real community. But it is a community he cannot be a part of himself. As he tells Joey, “A man is what he is, there’s no breaking the mold. I tried and I’ve lost.†You can’t run from who you are, and Shane sees this. “There’s no going back from killingâ€, he says, “Right or wrong, the brand sticks and there’s no going back.†And so, even though this new community wouldn’t have been created without his victory over Ryker, Shane is not a part of it. Shane must ride on, alone.

Here's one from 6th grade: Animal Farm Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is about a farm where the animals overthrow the farmer who owns them. Two pigs called Snowball and Napoleon take charge of the farm after the farmer is gone. Then Napoleon uses some vicious dogs he has raised to exile Snowball. He “finds†papers that show that Snowball has really been working with the farmer all along. Now that Snowball is gone Napoleon sets up a dictatorship with himself in charge, and after a while things are as difficult and unhappy for the animals as when they were owned by the farmer. This book is an allegory written to represent the Russian Revolution. The socialists, led by Lenin, got rid of the czar and took over Russia. When Lenin died, there was a struggle for power between Stalin and Trotsky. Eventually Stalin had Trotsky exiled and killed. He set up a dictatorship, and things were just as bad, if not worse, as when the czar was in charge. George Orwell wrote a “fairy story†about animals to make people think about the situation in Russia. He wrote a “fairy story†because that way he could deliver his message without the reader feeling like they were being lectured. He wanted readers to consider several questions while reading this book. He wants us to ask ourselves why the intellectuals of Russia, represented by Benjamin, the donkey, in the book, don’t speak out against Stalin. Had they told the working class, the majority of Russia’s population, what was going on, and provided a leader for the people, they would eventually have been able to overthrow Stalin. Orwell’s second major question that he doesn’t directly ask us, but gets us thinking to ourselves, was: would the people of Russia have been any better off if Trotsky had taken over instead of Stalin? Also would Trotsky have been any better a leader than the czar, because Stalin certainly wasn’t. Orwell doesn’t answer these questions but he does make us think about them. The last and most important question is: were the people of Russia better off being ruled by Stalin than the czar? Orwell shows us how much worse off the animals were when they were ruled by Napoleon than when they were owned by the farmer. When they were owned by the farmer they knew they were unhappy because they were slaves working for another’s benefit, but when they were ruled by Napoleon, they were worse off because they had been betrayed by someone they thought was on their side, someone they thought was using his leadership to help them. They had believed they were all working for a similar cause, their freedom. Napoleon had taken the idea of Animalism and used it as an excuse to make himself a powerful dictator, and that is exactly what Stalin did with Communism. This book was a good read by itself as a novel, and also a very powerful read when you dive deeper into it as I did in this essay. I admire the way that Orwell cleverly hides his message in the story so that the readers don’t feel like they are reading a lecture. Whether you are a fiction reader looking for a good book to read, or a historian studying the Russian Revolution, I would definitely recommend this book to you.

Here's one she did early in 5th grade - you can see that this one has much shorter, less developed paragraphs. This might have been one of the first books she wrote about where she tried to analyze characters. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea In Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, there are three main characters: Ned Land, Professor Arronax, and Captain Nemo. Ned Land is an impatient man of action with a very big appetite. Ned loves having dry land beneath his feet. He loves freedom, and is constantly planning escape from the Nautilus. Ned also has a very sharp temper. In the beginning the Professor is a calm patient man, and is happy to be on the Nautilus because he is a scientist, and this is a chance for him to greatly expand his studies. The Professor is afraid that if he leaves the Nautilus, Captain Nemo will be disappointed (or even hurt) by his actions. Thus we see the beginning of a father-son relationship between the Professor and the Captain. Captain Nemo is a completely impassive man with a strange and mysterious background. In the beginning he seems a calm and in control scientist, but his hatred of the British reveals a more Ned Land-like side of him. The Professor and Ned Land are complete opposites, but Nemo seems to be a cross between them. One way Land and Nemo are alike is they both risk their own lives for one another for the sake of honor. During the end of the story Nemo confronts a British ship, and becomes a monster of rage and hatred, and we get to see the Ned-like side of him. When Nemo goes so far as to sink a ship the Professor needs no persuasion from Ned, he knows it is time to leave. The Captain has made him part of the bloody revenge he never wished to witness. The events of the novel lead to a profound change in the character of the Professor. He changes from someone content to be an observer, to someone who is forced to act.

Ah, got it! That makes sense. I'll post a few that my dd has written over the past few years using the method SWB suggests: the kid reads the book, you discuss it, then they pick some aspect of something that arose in discussion (or one of the LA questions) and writes about it. Here's one my dd wrote in spring of 5th grade after we read and talked about Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn Huck is a boy growing up on the Mississippi River who wants people to stop trying to make him be something he doesn’t want to be. He solves his problem by running away. Jim is a slave who is about to be sold down river away from his family to work on a plantation. He also solves his problem by running away. When Huck and Jim run into each other on Jackson Island they decide to travel together to a free state. Even though Huck feels guilty for helping Jim run away their friendship becomes so strong that he decides it is the right thing to do, even if it means he will go to hell. On the way down river Huck and Jim pass the free states in the fog and find themselves deep in slave country. While in slave country Jim gets captured and Huck works hard to free him, only to find that both of them had been free all along: Jim’s mistress had died and freed him in her will, and Huck’s Pap had died. Of all the characters that Mark Twain introduces us to, Jim, the one who is most looked down upon, is really the most admirable. He is admirable in his friendship for Huck, which he shows in many ways. For example, he lets Huck sleep in when it is his turn on watch. He waits for Huck when they are separated, and when Huck plays tricks on him he talks to him and tells him that’s not what friends do. Another way he shows his admirable character is that he sacrifices himself for others, even if they have been unkind to him. For example, he allows himself to be recaptured in order to save Tom who has not been very nice to him at all. In fact, Jim is even more admirable than Huck, and he shows himself to be a better friend. Jim never plays tricks on Huck, and if Huck were captured, Jim would have rescued him right away, instead of playing a silly, unnecessary game that wasted time and kept Jim in prison longer than he needed to be. Mark Twain used irony and humor to show people that prejudice is wrong, instead of lecturing them, because people are more likely to listen to a funny story than a scolding lecture. Twain wanted his readers to judge people by who they are inside and by their actions. He wanted his readers to see people as individuals, not judge them by skin color, wealth, or class in society.

I mean a basic understanding of how the world works, and a basic grasp of the scientific and mathematical/statistical principles that allow you to be an informed and thoughtful citizen who can participate in your community. The kind of things covered in a book like Science Matters http://www.amazon.com/Science-Matters-Achieving-Scientific-Literacy/dp/0307454584/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439562227&sr=8-1&keywords=science+matters or at a deeper level, in this Joy of Science GC: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/joy-of-science.html The ability to read the newspaper or online articles that relate to scientific issues with intelligent understanding; the ability to engage with and form informed opinions about the ideas discussed.

I'm kind of confused, I guess. In SWB's middle grade lectures, students aren't writing essays. They are doing narration + outlining in the first years, plus talking and writing about books that they read. Then you add in rewriting from outlines in maybe 7th and 8th grades. But no essays till high school. If you are wanting to use SWB's approach with a high schooler, I guess you'd be wanting to focus on outlining and rewriting from outlines, plus basic "literary analysis" papers, right? And I'd listen to the high school writing lectures to have a good grasp of the kind of writing that is the goal, and move into that when your student has mastered the earlier stages. So I'm not sure what you'd like people to share? Narrations and outlines written by their 5th-8th graders? "Literary analysis" papers written by this age group, following, SWB's method? Or actual essays? But again, essays don't figure into SWB's writing suggestions until high school.