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Sarahtar

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  1. I'm trying to figure out what to do for Bio for next year. DS will be 9th, potentially college bound, but not science fields. Money is definitely a consideration. We already own a microscope and quite a few pre-prepared slides. We are looking for something with fun labs including dissection. He isn't what I would call a really science-motivated student. As much as I'd like to say, "oh, hey, I can cobble something together!" the reality is that I really just can't right now. (And by fall, we'll likely be providing care for my MIL in addition to my medical/special needs 6 year old, so I'll be even less able to at that point.) I have narrowed it down to: PAC looks appealing from a "not enthused about biology" standpoint, but it has no labs. How easy is it to add labs and, equally important, is there any blog or anything available where someone has said "we bought X for labs and here is how they line up with the units in PAC" because that is the level of handholding I require.) Apologia I was initially wanting to move away from Apologia as I've read such mixed reviews, but he hasn't minded Apologia up to this point. Pros: readily available used and integrates labs. Lab kit isn't too expensive. Friendly looks awesome but my concern is that the labs don't look very rigorous (no microscope and using common kitchen ingredients). I'm sure we could integrate dissection on our own, but are the labs going to be... lab-y enough? Science Shepherd looks good except by the time you add on labs you're looking at several hundred dollars. Am I misreading that? I plan to assign some of the living books from Guest Hollow's list as we go, as well. (though their curriculum isn't "open the book and do the assignments" enough for my current needs.) Thoughts or feedback on any of the above options? I also want to definitely add a decent evolution discussion - we're Christian so I want something that isn't going to disparage the idea of God, but ideally something that isn't TOO much reading but discusses all relevant viewpoints and their scientific backing or lack thereof. Ideas? Like, is there a short book on "evolution, all viewpoints, discussed without bias." Thanks so much!
  2. Thanks for the feedback, everyone. We'll wait until a bit further into the year to decide, but if there were major drawbacks I wasn't thinking of, that would obviously have changed our thinking significantly. My hatred of geometry has probably biased him a little, but I think he's actually also digging Algebra + recently realized he really likes sticking with something.
  3. I'm honestly not sure where he'll go after Alg 1/2 and Geo are finished. I doubt pre-calc, unless his goals change. He isn't thinking college at this point, but then doesn't really know what ELSE he would do. He is a lot like me - good at math, but doesn't like it one itoa. Unless he falls in love or changes plans, I'm thinking we'll move to something less rigorous for 11th and 12th to make room for more rigorous other things.
  4. Is there any reason not to do Alg 1, Alg 2, Geo? DS is in 8th and doing Alg 1 (Lial's) this year. He's really wanting to do Alg 2 next year and put Geo off until 10th. I've noticed a few online Alg 2 courses have Geometry as a prereq, so that would be one drawback, but not insurmountable.
  5. Well.... I've had a blog post from the IEW guy bouncing around in my head for a while about love of learning.... And though I have some trepidation here, we decided that we're going to sit down and together generate a list of science topics, cross out the ones he is not at all interested in, and try to put the others in some sort of order by relative interest. For science next year, he is going to pick a topic, generate a "What I know, What I want to learn" sheet, then spend as much time as he wants learning. He'll need to generate some evidence of learning every week and some sort of end product when he's ready to wrap up the topic. Then he'll go on to the next topic. He will have a set amount of TIME to spend on science weekly, but no set content goals. But the time will need to be focused. We'll see. He's struggled with being able to be responsible this year. It's part the age, I'm sure, and part the ADHD. So we'll do a lot of supervision but hopefully he'll make progress in more than science.
  6. Except that our local coop does require algebra to be completed before taking biology so doing biology next year would mean removing the co-op class from the picture. (which obviously you can't read my mind there, sorry. I'm Interneting While Distracted today.)
  7. He is ambivalent. He chose General in 6th and was enthusiastic about Physical in 7th. He asked to do Botany again, but I don't think it's out of a strong desire to learn about how plants work - rather, that he still remembers a lot of the botany he learned in 5th and thinks it would be easy. (I think that because he gave me his lopsided I'm totally lying to you half grin when saying that he'd love to repeat botany and when denying that it was because he wanted something he already knew, lol.) That said, he is ready for something a bit easier. This school year has been challenging for him, not in academics so much as in both his ADHD and his TS have gotten amplified, so it's been trying to keep learning while also dealing with an increased difficulty in staying on task, focusing, studying, and particularly reading and following instructions. Combined with a lot of early teen ennui. The only thing he knows for SURE is that he wants to do block scheduling - not a little in many subject every day. I would prefer something ready-made, but I'm comfortable making our own, as well. Yeah, I'm going to have a tough time swinging a lot of the ready-made stuff with complicated labs, but I shop used.
  8. OK. For whatever reason, we got a year "ahead" in Apologia. It's been fine. DS did General Science in 6th and he's doing Physical Science this year. Now I don't know where to go next year. I don't think that he can tackle biology next year. Plus he hasn't done Algebra yet. There's really nowhere else to go with Apologia, but we were wanting to maybe move away from Apologia anyway. I'm looking at BJU, but can't figure out where we'd go. Earth Science? Then Bio in 9th, and continue on in a more or less regular progression from there? What else is out there that is both interesting for the student and sufficiently rigorous for a kid who doesn't really have any career ideas at this point? And Holy Cow Big Kid Science Is Expensive.
  9. I feel like this is entirely too much: Math. Lials Algebra Science: Apologia Biology History: NotGrass America the Beautiful His Request. Latin: Second Form Latin Logic: Continue Art of Argument from 7th, then The Argument Builder Foreign Language: I don't know. He's doing DuoLinguo Irish this year. He wants to continue Irish, but I'm not sure he's really actually learning anything with DuoLinguo. I want to say I feel this is expendible, but then I feel like an ugly American. But he really wants to learn Irish even though I can't think of any situation where he would use it. He has no desire to travel. And he doesn't really talk to people. Maybe he wants to game online with Irish people? Writing: He wants to do creative writing plus obviously I want him to continue working on reports. We don't have this very well fleshed out. Literature: I don't know. I'm not concerned about this subject area. I love literature and he's a willing reader/discusser. I'll probably try to coordinate with history somewhat, and I know we want to do a Shakespeare this year. Grammar: We'll either work through a grammar reference book I have that's kind of fun, or I'll think about using IEW's grammar. He just still needs a bit more work here. But I don't see this being like a full subject for this year. Religion: I don't know. He and sister (will be 3rd) have been doing Apologia Who Is God this year. Maybe we'll go on to their next book, but nobody's been enthusiastic about this, so I don't know. Health: I don't know? I should work this in at some point. Art: He and sister and younger brother (will be K but SN) will do Artistic Pursuits as he and sister are doing this year. We will do some casual artist and musician study, too, but uber casual. Vocab: We do vocabulary on a casual basis. We're doing Word Within The Word this year, and may continue if he wants to, otherwise we just do some fun games and work through an SAT book at dinner. It's actually fun, not just "oh, more school at dinner."
  10. We started in 5th, actually. The 6th grade year (year 2) was pretty brutal, though. He/we got through it, but there was some level of "ok, good enough." I don't think that was his age so much as I just honestly started feeling like we were both sick to death of diagramming sentences. If I did it again with my daughter, I actually might think about doing season 1, then season 3, then season 2... I don't know.
  11. I know this is old old old, but we just hit lesson #14 in WWW1, and there's this list of sentences. What the heck am I meant to do with those?
  12. IT's possible that what I want doesn't exist. I ended up chatting at Rainbow Resource, and she said she didn't know of anything, lol. I've never stumped Rainbow Resource before.
  13. In our experience, gathering labels has been only positive. When I finally sat DS down and said, "here's what asperger's syndrome is (we didn't get into DSM semantics with him), what do you think," he all but said, "I have found my people." It was a good day for him. We later talked about how it isn't asperger's any more, it's called autism spectrum disorder, and there is a WHOLE spectrum and what that looks like, and he's on the very high end of the spectrum... We discussed pursuing a formal label, and he wanted to do that, so we did. (Which we then ended up a Tourette Syndrome diagnosis instead... the place we went said he didn't qualify for an ASD diagnosis because we homeschool - so he wasn't disruptive to a classroom environment, and now we're on a wait list for a better place, lol.) His ADHD label helps his self-esteem, as it puts him into problem-solving mode instead of self-blame mode. "I know my ADHD makes it hard to stay focused, so I know I need to...." instead of "I'm a terrible person, why can't I get my work done?" My youngest has many issues, and we find that assigning labels to those issues only helps. It doesn't hurt. The labels open doors that might otherwise be closed. The labels help explain. The labels help narrow down what we need to work on. (For him, even just ruling out labels helps. Well, we know it's probably not X.) The labels help US, his parents. "Ugh, that's really annoying but it's a result of his <insert label here> and (he can't help it/I need to.../he needs...)" is a more helpful internal conversation than "OMG every other 5 year old can do X, why can't he?!?" Speaking for myself, getting the labels "gifted" and "highly intelligent" helped me understand myself and, again, resulted in more positive self-talk. "Oh! I struggle with this because of the way my mind works."
  14. DS has requested doing creative writing next year (8th). I'm terrible at creative writing. We've had success with IEW for report writing and whatnot - I noticed they have a creative writing program of sorts - is that good? Or what else would you recommend?
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