TOG Primer is a kindergarten or first grade intro to history program. It also helps new homeschool parents prepare for teaching their child(ren). If you have older children this is not for them. This program is to be used before beginning the four year cycle TOG produces.

If your son will be going to community college in 11th and 12th he won't need AP science because he could take the college level in college. AP classes are meant to exempt out of freshman level college courses. Taking two years of college classes will allow him to be a junior or close to junior level in college when he graduates high school at 18. He could then potentially graduate college at 20 depending on his choice of major.

Biblioplan

My recent find was Exploring Creation through Physical Science by Jay Wile for $2.49!!!

My suggestion would be to pick through the booklists for Sonlight Cores D and E, HOD's Beyond and Bigger, and MFW's Adventures. I always start there for lists of books because they already pared down the list of possible choices for you. I check out what they have and then if I don't find what I'm looking for I go to my local library and ask a librarian for suggestions. HTH Crystal

My dh and I were watching it on YouTube tonight. We feel Ken Ham won the debate after their first 30 minute arguments because Ken actually addressed all of Bill's questions. He continued doing this throughout the rebuttal and question/answer sections. We particularly loved Ken's comments "Bill actually there is a book that tells us..." Too funny.

Konos for a full curriculum or www.childtrainingbible.com and www.virtuetrainingbible.com for strictly biblical character training.

http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/

If I recall correctly or if I remember correctly

www.rainbowresource.com has just about everything you can think of.

I think it would be impossible to match up SOTW 1 with any level of Ambleside because Ambleside does not cover ancient history like SOTW. Also Year 3 in Ambleside covers 1400-1600. I believe the only time ancient history is covered in Ambleside is the second half of Year 6.

My dh and I just watched these last night. Then we watched a Glenn Beck video and it really is scary what is going on. The standards being set are absolutely horrendous. Such as eliminating classic literature from curriculum and replacing it with reading restaurant menus or manuals. The people creating the common core believe children and teens will relate more to menus and manuals than classic lit because the lit is so old. Math standards are dropping and they're implementing an untested geometry program. My fear is that even homeschoolers won't be able to escape this common core because they're not only changing the curriculum but the standardized tests as well. The SAT is being changed to align with common core. The common core isn't about equaling standards across the board. It's about creating mindless drones who aren't taught to think for themselves.

That page is my go-to page! I tutor some teenagers and it helps so much. I used it all of the time throughout college too.

WTM 3rd edition lays this exact plan out in rhetoric stage. History, literature, art, music, even speech are all integrated.

Sonlight Core 300 is 20th Century History and Lit

You could start with the Usborne Internet-Linked Science Encyclopedia and choose the different topics you want to teach and use the library for extra reading and experiment books, and add nature walks for biology or earth science hands-on experience. Keep a journal/notebook of everything learned by written narration for the oldest and you write narration for youngest. Draw pictures of their observations and experiments. Take pictures of experiments as well for memory keepsake.

What about doing Anatomy and Physiology or Marine Biology?

Heart of Dakota www.heartofdakota.com You literally do exactly what it says in each box of the teacher's manual. I think this is more scripted than MFW or Sonlight because they expect the parents to lead discussion with some questions and prompts. But HOD has way more hand holding than that. Check out some of their samples here. Little Hearts for His Glory (5-7 y/o) http://heartofdakota.com/pdf/little-hearts-first-week.pdf Bigger Hearts for His Glory (7-9 y/o with optional extensions for 10/11) http://heartofdakota.com/pdf/BHFHG-first-week.pdf Creation to Christ (9-11 y/o with optional extensions for 12/13) http://heartofdakota.com/pdf/CTC-First-Week.pdf

Winston Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" series will cover this. Volume 3 titled, "The Age of Revolution" covers the American Revolution.

In WTM, SWB does say that you don't HAVE to follow the order she has if it doesn't fit your family/needs. (That's the beauty of homeschool). If you want to do the animals, plants, and human anatomy study for 4th and 1st you can, then do Earth science the following year for 5th and 2nd, then skip chemistry since you're doing that now and move on to physics for 6th and 3rd. After that you can go back to the order SWB lays out with Bio (7th and 4th), Earth science (8th and 5th), Chemistry (9th and 6th), then physics (10th and 7th). Any order you choose to do the work is up to you because any choice you make to fit your family is what is best for your family. I also realized you mentioned history in your original post. SWB does mention folding in younger siblings as you move through the cycles she laid out. You just start the younger sibling with the year the oldest is doing and keep the requirements grade specific for each child. The most important part is keeping the history storyline chronological. Starting the youngest in year 3 or 4 is fine as long as when you move on to another time period you move forward or circle around to the beginning. I hope this makes sense.

Which year of science would you be starting with? If you are just starting the 4th grader in WTM recommendations you would start with Biology (animals, plants, and human anatomy) which is easy to combine because the resources SWB recommends are perfect for 1st graders. If you are in the fourth year of WTM cycle you would be doing physics. This might be a little more tricky but still doable with some of the most basic Usborne science books and simpler physics experiment kits.

I would contact your local library to see if they have any books that they recommend for teaching an adult how to read. Once you get her to a decent reading level, you can use just about any math curriculum to teach basic math skills and work your way up. The library should have some basic math books as well until you get into higher levels such as Algebra and such. Even then, they may have some older textbooks donated by the local school district. Science and history should be the last skills focused on because they aren't "needed" unless she plans to continue on into college. If so, basic Biology would be sufficient to start college. The main things to focus on would be reading, writing, and math. If she wants to get her GED and continue on through college, they will have her take the needed courses in a GED course that will be needed to move on.

When I was in college I did took a Pop Culture course called Reading Harry Potter. We were required to read all of the books that had been published so far and watch the films. Our assignments were based on how Harry Potter impacted popular culture. We did some literary analysis on the characters, plot, and other elements. My final paper for the course was relating Harry Potter to the Book of Revelation. It took a lot of studying out Revelation and making connections to Harry Potter being a representation of Jesus. I might be wrong but does LOTR have a religious undertone that you can use? I just did a quick skim of Tolkien's Wikipedia page and it looks like there is a lot of info out there written by him and others on how to view the books. Write a research paper of 10-20 pages and that could be the major aspect of the course after reading all of the books, watching the films, and doing a little literary analysis. Tolkien wrote about Beowulf which may or may not have impacted his writing of LOTR. Check it out and see. He was a contemporary of C.S. Lewis which could also be interesting to see connections. Call the course Reading LOTR with a course description explaining what you did for a full credit towards Literature in Popular Culture.

Encyclopedia Britannica is only on DVD now and they have one that has three different reading levels on the disc. It's the Ultimate Reference Suite for $29.95. Introductory level (ages 6-10), intermediate level (ages 10-14), and advanced (older students and adults). It has everything you would get in a print set and more because it has internet links and videos that you obviously can't get in a book. Also, if a student is doing research, they can take notes and save info in the program to help organize their work before they write. There are so many amazing features. Just check it out online at http://www.britannica.com/store/reference-software.html

Notgrass is the text used in WHL so if you really want to use MFW but can't afford the whole program, at least you would be using one of the main sources they use. Also, if you can't afford the whole package you can look at piecing it together with what you can afford and utilize your local library for the parts you can't.