It is certainly more challenging and rigorous than Apologia Chemistry which I did with my oldest. There seems to be a lot more equations and math, and there are definitely better experiments and more of them. It has pushed my very science minded kids which I find a good thing. It does have some online helps, videos and lectures which we have used to explain some of the concepts.

My ds had a horrible Comp Sci prof last semester (who was just fired as he was so bad) and that really affected his semester. He also had a fantastic Astronomy prof and between the two experiences, he decided he would rather be inconvenienced than take a class from a bad instructor. He did a lot more research on instructors this time around.

My ds taught Scratch and programming to younger kids both irl and over the Internet. He also was heavily involved in the Scratch community which led him to some amazing opportunities.

I do a morning time but it's generally mid morning. We pray, talk through the day, read poetry, have history discussions, and then we are reading SWB's, "Story of Western Science". We usually have a hot drink, a treat or a snack while we are doing it.

Have you looked at Sonlght? It has many of the things you are looking for.

This! My ds followed his passions for Comp Sci and Scratch and was invited to speak at the Scratch conference in Barcelona in 2013, at MIT in 2014, and in Amsterdam in 2015. He also had awesome recommendations because of his work with Scratch and the programming team. We also found that having him spend time teaching under privileged kids about Comp Sci was a huge door opener. These paid out in huge scholarships and acceptances to elite programs. For our twins, we have them taking outside classes earlier than our oldest did. We are having them be purposeful in following their passions and realizing that some monetary expenditures now can really pay off in scholarships.

I use MFW and use WWS. My twins are in 9th and my oldest just graduated. MFW does not have writing lessons every week so I plug in WWS. There are also writing assignments in MFW that I just skip and choose to use WWS instead. My twins did WWS1 in 6th and 7th, WWS 2 in 8th and 9th and WWS 3 in 10th and 11th.

Sleeping, eating, watched Star Wars, playing board games with siblings and grandparents and refurbished a computer for his siblings. He only has 3 weeks off so we are just going to play!

We were only expected to get an inch of snow but overnight it snowed 10 inches so it was really hard to get around. I don't think the plows had time to get the streets cleared before rush hour so they cancelled everything. My ds lives on campus and I had to laugh because he was so excited that he might have a snow day now that he wasn't homeschooled and the day the campus closed was the only day he didn't have a final. No snow day for him! He would have been fine to have most of his cancelled, he was concerned that finals could only hurt his grades but he did fine.

I would look at SWB's Writing With Skill 2. It has some great lessons on Literary Analysis.

I have one graduated and in college and have two in high school. My STEM major college student gets complimented on his writing ability, although he struggles with using enough words. He is an engineer, so doesn't use many words as it is. What he does write is well crafted and grammatical correct with good word choice. The difference between he and his peers is that they use too many words, they don't know grammar rules and can't edit for themselves. What we are seeing is that the public school may write more, but they don't write it well. Structure, grammar, quality of word choices, and clarity of thought are often lacking. WWE/WWS are excellent tools and SWB knows her stuff. Remember that SWB taught writing in college so she knows exactly what is needed. I know it can be hard in the early stages, but comparing what your child is doing to what the ps is doing is fairly pointless. WTM is a completely different philosophy of education. It will never line up, thank goodness. You are taking a different path and the view is going to be different.

It would make my ds more stressed. Animals are not his thing.

Woohoo! I found my stress level drastically dropped when we received the first acceptance.

I just had this talk with my 14 year old 9th grader. He is now computer free until all of his math assignments are caught up. He has spent 8-4 doing math for two days. He actually seems much relieved that I put my foot down and is fairly happy working away. I did make him a check off list (he loves lists) and I have to see the work done before he moves on. His twin sister, who used to be the unorganized child, is baffled because he used to never get into trouble and she always did. Ahhh, puberty. As a side note, I do say, "We need to have a come to Jesus mtg" and mine all know what that means. It's where the rubber meets the road and embodies the phrase, "If Mom ain't happy, ain't no one happy".

We are using it. It is a step up from Apologia.

Homeschool Spanish Academy is accredited

I did an advent care pkg so there is something little to open each day. Some food things to snack on, vitamin c drops, a Starbucks card, a Dr. Who madlib, Star Wars socks, his favorite candy and chia seed peanut butter because we tease that chia seeds give you super brain power.

My kids are doing the Intermediate Music Theory class from WTMA and are enjoying it. I am a vocalist, as well, so I made them have 8+ years of piano to make up for my lack of theory. It's amazing what I didn't know, all I had to do was sing it.

The trivium as a religion? I think my kids might have believed that at certain points in their education. Did they actually say that the word wasn't in their spell check? Try a dictionary.

My twins for 9th grade- ds - Thinkwell and LOF Alg II dd -Thinkwell and finishing AOPS Algebra Both MFW AHL - (Bible, History and English) we did sub Notgrass (so not our favorite) with SWB's Ancient History Writing With Skill 2 - second half of book filling in when there are not writing assignments in AHL Intermediate Music Theory through WTMA Spanish 1 through Homeschool Spanish Academy Chemistry Critical Thinking and Logic Extra Curricular First Robotics Karate Bible Bowl

We had our ds home for a week but he's only 15 min from home so it wasn't as big as if it was his first time home. He had Calc homework and a paper on how his family (up to 3 generations) have shaped and affected his views and lifestyle. I thought it was a very thought provoking paper but it required both his dad and I to spend a couple of hours each, talking through family trees and telling stories. It felt like last year when we were working on his college applications and essays. He has finals in three weeks so he had to stay on top of some things. The twins were so glad to have him home and he spent time with both of them talking through some of the things he has learned and he made it a priority to introduce them to the addiction that is BBC's Sherlock. I think they all missed each other.

We are using History of the Ancient World as a spine and my 9th graders do two or three chapters a week. In the study guide they do all the Vocab, we do the questions out loud but they do all the mapping and atleast one to two paragraphs in the Critical Thinking. It has been fairly doable but they are very strong readers and we basically replaced the Notgrass spine in MFW's AHL.

I agree with Nan that you have to be strong in academics and be interesting. We chose to lighten History and some Enhlish Lit. We chose to spend more time on Math and Science but mine still scored a really high ACT, took SAT and SAT Subject tests and several APs. We spent time in Logic and Philosophy but I didn't require papers as we did more discussion based courses in things that were not our top priority.

We focused on math and comp Sci AP's in which our oldest got very high scores and had him take but didn't really focus on the Science and English AP's and he did really fine but not great. In hindsight focusing on AP Chem, AP Biology, AP English Lit., AP Psychology, AP English would have been better. Like I mentioned, AP Calc BC, AP Comp Sci and AP Physics got him a pat on the head but didn't really take things off his plate as the college wanted those to be taken anyway. It's his humanities, electives and extra science courses that would have been handy to have off his plate. To Nan's point about interesting, I think being interesting is what got our oldest in the Engineering Honors Residential Academic Program, as well as being a Finalist for a very prestigious state scholarship. Even being a finalist basically paid for his tuition from the school. He was unique in that he had a passion for Comp Sci, specifically Scratch and Snap and got involved in the Scratch community which brought him to the attention of Mitch Resnick from MIT, Brian Harvey from Berkley, and they had him speak in Barcelona, at MIT and last summer in Amsterdam. He is also credited as being a developer for Snap and was the first to develop Scratch extensions for MIT. Someone on here encouraged us to read, "How to be a High School Superstar" and we redesigned his high school experience to follow his passions and interests while still being academic and it worked very well for him. He is not a cookie cutter kid and it has made him stand out even now in college. Don't be afraid for your kids to not look the PS kids. He gets a lot of opportunities because he is different and interesting.

As a Mom who just graduated a son who is now a freshman in college and went through applying for tippy top schools and scholarships, Nan's advice is right on. I still have twin high freshman at home, and I have started much earlier with outside classes (WTM Academy and Homeschool Spanish Academy) for some outside recommendations and experience. We also found a top notch robotics program for First Robotics and encouraged them to get into leadership opportunities early. We are pushing service opportunities especially those that require them to be in leadership or are teaching younger kids new skills. We also have a better plan for AP's. More humanities and science AP's as the ones in my oldest field may have helped him be prepared for college courses but the top notch Engineering schools basically patted him on the head and said, "Good job, but you are still taking all of OUR courses in your field." More science and humanities AP courses would have gotten those off his plate in college.