One other thing for those following.....I spoke to the FLVS lead teacher for AP US Gov and she told me that they are totally revamping the class. The new class will be available Summer 2018. We've decided to wait for the new one.

No my kids don't take AP Music Theory. I'm teaching a music appreciation class using The Great Courses Listening to and Understanding Great Music course. I pulled it together myself with that and other resources.

Thank you for that. Sounds like busy work to me? I'll run it past my dd. I have a recommendation for a teacher. I'm going to try to reach out to him. I'll let you all know what I find out.

Thank you Tampamommy. And thank you sebastiancat for the link. Hopefully more will chime in. Usually we register for the class and tinker with it for a bit to see if it works but you can't register for APs right now on the website so I'm flying blind. If this doesn't work out, I'll use Pennsylvania Homeschoolers and I don't want to miss their deadlines. Thanks for the input.

DD has taken AP Psychology and loved it. We're looking at APUSH, US Govnt and AP Lang next year. Does anyone have any experience with these classes using FLVS? Teacher recommendations?

Is this how you'll credit it or is this how you'll chronologically study it? In other words, are you pulling US history out of the cycle for a dedicated year in 12th grade? Or are you sticking to the 4 year model with US embedded within it and just listing the credits the way you've outlined above? Thanks for your help.

Looking for some BTDT experience.... How do you assign credits for the 4 year cycle of history? The typical high school graduation requirement is: 1 year American History 1 year World History 1/2 Government 1/2 Economics On your transcript, do you list each classical four year title? Or do you list the conventional titles knowing you've covered the material in totality over four years? Or do you do it some other way? Has anyone had problems with college admissions due to unconventional course listings?

And thank you also for the theater resources. She's going to love those!!

Karen, that helps a lot....exploratory vs long term. This is our first year of high school and that is the exact kind of guideline that will help us make these decisions going forward. You're right, music is long term. Theater is a budding interest. Writing is long term, screenwriting and film is a budding interest. With this guideline, each item on my list seems to fall neatly into place. I also need to remind myself to be flexible. Like you said, something that starts on one list may well move over to another as time goes on. Thank you so much.

Thank you for all of these responses. This was intended to be an easier elective credit that could tie in things we were already doing but after reading this thread with her last night, we're headed down a really cool rabbit trail. She loves the idea of the Intro to Fine and Performing Arts. Can you all weigh in on this? She's an advanced modern piano and classical guitar player and plays in two local bands. In addition to the four recitals (two piano and two guitar), she plays/sings once a week somewhere with the bands. She's part of a local musical theater group that practices a small show each semester and then takes it to nursing homes and hospitals in the area. She's an avid movie maker as a hobby and is also taking an online Screenwriting class just for fun. We weren't going to "count" a lot of these activities because we thought they were just fun things (maybe ECs with leadership highlights) but now we're reconsidering. Here's a list of things she is doing and we have available to us to construct a credit in Intro to Fine and Performing Arts: Piano with lessons, practice and two recitals Guitar with lessons, practice and two recitals Weekly musical theater rehearsals with two performances per year Weekly band performances Online self paced Screenwriting class Access to world music perfomances of all kinds (we looked this up last night and were happy to find Taiko drums, Indian lute, Moroccan dancing, Scottish bagpipes and Irish Dancing locally this year) Access to a great performing arts center, symphony and local opera house (just found this too) We have three Fine and Performing Arts Great Courses: Elements of Jazz - http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/elements-of-jazz-from-cakewalks-to-fusion.html How to Listen and Understand Music - http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/how-to-listen-to-and-understand-great-music-3rd-edition.html?pfm=UpsellSlider&pos=1&recloc=pdp Fundamentals of Photography - http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/fundamentals-of-photography.html We also have this course in Film: Introduction to Screenwriting - through the NY Film Academy So I guess my questions would be, what would be best for credit and what would be best left as outside ECs? Also, any creative ideas of how to build a Fine & Performing Arts multi year plan out of this? She leans more performing arts but is very interested in photography and film.

I forgot to mention that. I've built in four papers as part of a comparative analysis of the different genres of music. Music is a passion so we're using it as a topic for her writing (which is also a passion :)) Are four papers over the course of a year enough for an elective credit? She'll also be answering the questions in the guidebook for the course. Edited to fix horrible grammar :scared:

Great idea. We're near NYC for part of the year so I can definitely make that happen. We also have terrific local venues for music performances of other eras. Our Symphony has themed events that include classical and jazz so there's that. A lot to think about. Thanks.

Ahhh, I hadn't thought of that. So if I list instruments as ECs, then maybe 1/2 credit for the course and Symphony?

Would you give one Music credit for this? 1 hour piano lesson per week with 1/2 hour of practice per day. 1 hour guitar lesson with 1/2 hour practice every day. Great Courses How to Understand and Appreciate Great Music - 2 lectures per week Attending the Symphony twice per semester Is it too much or little?

Thanks Debbie. Your posts have been so helpful in my planning process. When I'm "done" planning, I plan to follow your example and pay it forward. Thank you so much for what you do. ETA: Fixed tired eye spelling :crying:

Dd is our first high schooler so please weigh in. She's a self described singer/songwriter, writer (novels, screenplays, scripts), filmmaker so even though she thoroughly enjoys math and science, I don't think we're headed STEM. Math - Chalkdust Geometry Science - Biology w/ Science Shepheard and Landry Academy Lab Intensive History - Tapestry of Grace Year 1 Rhetoric level with Great Courses woven in English - TOG Ancients Rhetoric list, LTOW 2 writing class with TOG list as source material, Magic Lens III for grammar and Word Within the Word II for vocab Logic - Discovery of Deduction and Argument Builder (she loves this but it may need to go given her other work in speech and debate) Spanish 2 - BJU Health - homemade course with Great Courses and CPR class Fine Arts - Great Courses How to Listen and Understand Great Music - multi year I. High school for 1 credit PE - running, tennis and golf Extracurricular - theater/film group (we're still deciding), guitar lessons, competitive speech and debate team

I see what you mean Julie. I just thought it would help if she wasn't jumping around too much and unfortunately, I don't have the expertise to know when/if she's jumping into something without the right level of prerequisite skill. I'll take another look at Chapter 5.

Dina...I think our girls were in Renee's class together and they've formed a sweet friendship. I second the recommendation on Renee....terrific teacher!! Dd will be doing LTOW2 with Camille next year. We're dovetailing that with our TOG Year 1 reading list. We're also doing WttW this summer and over the next year. To the OP, I would do LTOW first as the invention tools will help tremendously with the WttW writing assignments.

Just wanted to update this old thread. We've decided to go with Chalkdust geometry as our main text and use AoPS for enrichment. We got through chapter 4 in AoPS but dd wasn't enjoying it. She loves AoPS but not this book. We looked at Wilson Academy for Jurgensen but dd doesn't want another online class. Then, this past weekend, we had the pleasure of meeting Dana Mosley (Chalkdust) at a conference. His style and approach just clicked. He's also available by phone and email should we get stuck. We're happy and dd feels confident again. Now I just have to line up AoPS with Chalkdust so she can pull from AoPS when she'd like a change. Thanks to all who offered to help and tutor but I think this plan best matches dd.

That's exactly how I explained it to dd...through the grammar analogy. We went to a conference this past weekend and I had the pleasure of talking with Dana Mosley from Chalkdust. He confirmed what most have said here, that nomenclature is interesting and helpful but by no means necessary to succeed in algebra. Understanding and being able to clearly explain the concepts, however, is critical. I think with a proper algebra review this summer, we'll have both.....I hope.

Sorry to get back here so late...we took a much needed break before our summer studies begin. Creekland, I like your approach. I do expect a lot from my kids, probably much more than they'll ever "need," but I love to teach and they love to learn so onward we go. This kid loves to teach so I had her write out all the properties on notecards, teach them to her younger brother and sister and create a match game to play when we're in the car. The properties are rather simple to understand so this has been fun for all and my 10 year old loves telling people that he knows algebra! I am a little surprised at some of the other things she didn't remember/learn in AoPS though. She blanked on radicals yesterday. Yikes! I thought this would be a quick and easy review. We're definitely going to slow down and work each chapter this summer. Geometry won't start right away.

Thank you all. What I'm getting here is as long as she's solving correctly and can tell/show me what she did, we're good. And along the way, it will help to ask now and again, "Do you remember what that's called?" She's a quick study so pointing things out to her in context won't be a problem. Forester's pile of terminology definitely threw us for a loop today. I like Gil's idea of trivia games. That would work. I could get the other two in on it too. Gil, could you explain what you did? Thanks everyone for chiming in. It helps to hear from those with experience. I just truly didn't know. Foerster's is a respected text and frankly, I thought it would be a breezy review after AoPS. I'm finding the different perspective/emphasis to be both interesting and frustrating. Expect me to be back with more questions. We're only in Chapter 4 now. Makes me wonder, is there a better way to review/check retention after AoPS? Are these methodologies just that different? SHE was worried that she didn't remember as much as she needed to. This seemed like a good plan to run a check. Now I'm wondering......hmmmm.

Forester's doesn't focus on just the big five. In Chapter 3 alone.....Commutative for Addition, Commutative for Multiplication, Associative for Addition, Associative for Multiplication, Distributive over Addition and Subtraction, Additive Identity, Multiplicative Identity, Additive Inverse, Multiplicative Inverse, Reflexive, Transitive and Symmetrical. I taught her that Commutative, Distributive and Associative were properties. Forester's calls them axioms. I thought those were two different things? I was always taught axioms are assumed to be correct, no proof needed. Properties can be proven for each operation. He's almost using the terms interchangeably and all this new vocabulary is confusing her. After AoPS, I thought her core understanding was basically solid but now I feel like we're totally out of sync. What am I missing? How do I simplify this and what does she really NEED to memorize....just the big 5: Reflexive, Symmetric, Transitive, Additive and Multiplicative?

If dd can solve an equation by writing out each step of her work properly and gets the right answer, does she also need to know which property was used where? We are using Foerster's Algebra 1 as an algebra review over the summer after having done most of the AoPS Intro book (we'll finish it in the next couple of months.) In Chapter 3, Foresters has very basic equations that are completely solved in the text but next to each step of the solution, they have a blank alphabetical list asking the student to list each axiom that was used in each step. When I wrote down the equation on the white board, dd solved it correctly (without looking in the textbook.) But when I asked her which "axiom" she used for each step....deer in headlights. Should I be worried?

I am so thankful for the wisdom on this board. High school seems possible, in large part, because of what I learn here. Thank you, thank you.