If you don't get any replies, I would join the Yahoo group for WVWW1. They have a 2-year plan in their files and there are a few experienced folks who usually answer questions. HTH, Julie

I thought the mapping in WHL was easily 0.25 credit and I left it as that on my son's transcript. We didn't get to the other 0.25 in year 4, although I would have liked to. My son doesn't know every single thing about the world, but I didn't even know 1% of what he knows about the world when I was his age (I had to get out a map when I went to Georgia, for goodness sakes!). The map book that is used in WHL takes a historical approach to geography, so there are maps of continents at different points in history (pre- and post-colonies, wars, etc.). There is also a reading that applies to each map. Students might easily skim past the reading but with parent supervision it can add some important info, I think. (Well, students who skim things would apply to my lackadaisical son more than Crystal's more logical daughter). I also created some questions to go with the reading near the end of the year, when my son felt the mapping had gone over-the-top but I still wanted him to study the information in the map book, and I think I posted those over in the Yahoo group files. I have a geography textbook that I pulled out on occasion (Geography, Realms Regions and Concepts, 8th ed. by Blij & Muller). For instance, when my son was reading Cry, The Beloved Country, I wanted to show him maps of where the story took place, how huge the city was, and the extent of the mining that "everyone" in the small towns was drawn to (it was easier to believe when you saw it). For kids who have done MFW for years, with its constant attention to geography, an entire geography textbook might be overkill. For those who didn't use MFW elementary, I still think a geography text would be better as a reference book than a whole course because the mapping that is scheduled in WHL ties into the other learning so it might be cemented better than a completely separate course, but of course you'd know your student's weaknesses in the area of geography. Just remember that WHL is 3.25 credits already, as written. Julie

For a reader like her, I think a lot of the traditional literature studies mentioned will be too easy or too tedious (LLATL, PP). Stobaugh likes kids to read classics, but she's already doing that, and I'm not sure he'll add a lot. I love that she's doing a WEM notebook. To add to that, I think maybe: 1. Have some discussion at her level (rather than the level of most other high schoolers ala Teaching the Classics live classes), probably with you, to at least add some of your life experience, historical background, even themes from Sparknotes or other lit guide that you like. If you really can't envision doing that, then maybe assign her to do at least a couple of projects you find in different lit guides, maybe on the novel of her choice or on one you think needs special attention. What does she know of the world in which Dickens wrote, for instance, or how are his stories affected by working for magazines? Or maybe do an author study and compare his works or compare his work to his contemporaries. Why did Melville dedicate Moby Dick to Hawthorne? What are the points Animal Farm is making about communism? 2. Some exposure to formal analysis (maybe just read through some of the books about literature that have been mentioned without dragging them out, or watch a few Teaching Company professors). 3. And finally learning to verbalize her own thoughts about lit by writing a few essays where she takes a stand and defends it or uses a quote from literature as an example in an essay on a different subject. Like others have mentioned, I love a reader. I was a reader, but I know I could have used some adult input regarding what I'd read. What a great opportunity for homeschooled students to get that. Julie

Yes, 1/4 college would equal 1/2 high school for me. The content issue is always difficult for me, though. On the one hand, I want to have high standards, but on the other I don't want my students to be at a disadvantage simply because I take education more seriously than some teachers that other students may have had at the local public schools. I always felt like I was on a see-saw when committing credits to transcripts :(

I agree. I almost think an engineering college would think it strange to have Algebra I on a high school transcript, not sure. I'm not sure I agree with some of the other posts about credits, though. A 4- credit, 1-semester college course to me seems fairly equivalent to a 1-credit, 1-year high school course, not just because of the content but also because college students normally only take 3-4 courses per semester (which like high school ends up as 6-8 courses per year). Therefore, even though a college course is typically credited as a semester, it ends up as 1/6 or so of the year's credit, just like one high school course. Julie

MFW high school doesn't have all the activities of earlier MFW levels, because there just isn't time. However, to me it felt like there was a transition to some degree. In AHL, there is learning the Greek alphabet, writing your own Psalms, doing a Proverbs project, and plenty of mapping and timeline-ing. It felt like there was less of that sort of thing as my student got closer to graduation, unless you want to count things like science labs and interviews for his research papers. HTH, Julie

I agree with SkateLeft, start whenever a student is ready. "Pre-algebra" isn't a prerequiesite for Math Relief, but being solid on math facts and comfortable working with fractions seems important in terms of readiness, in order to free the mind to focus on math "unknowns" and manipulating equations with dexterity. For a kid on a math track, Algebra I is often taken in 8th grade. My ds finished Math Relief Algebra 2 in 10th and did college algebra 3 and precalc in 11th through dual enrollment. For my dd who couldn't handle public high school, I brought her home in 10th and eventually we found Math Relief in mid-10th grade. It's all good. Julie

My 27yodd is like this. She is the reason I started homeschooling - when teachers stopped allowing her as much time as she needed, she fell apart and stopped doing anything. She did well in the special needs tests because they always gave her as much time as she needed. She failed all the regular tests because "not enough answers to give a score." I knew nothing of homeschooling at the time and made a LOT of mistakes. Here are a few things that I think did help. 1. Drop everything that a perfectionist is already good at. My dd needed no grammar, no spelling, etc. 2. For math, which has a clearly defined scope that cannot be truthfully changed, make the daily assignments clear and give credit when it is done, however long that takes. The grade will likely be an A, and you can take it down a bit for the lengthy time period, or not. I lean towards not, since my dd retains the material forever, and did not memorize-and-forget, however helpful that is to most students cramming for the grade quickly. Also, if your student is very concrete, then be sure to use something clear, a teacher who says "Learn this" rather than "Can you see where I'm going here?" (I'm a Math Relief fan, but I'm sure there are other good programs.) 3. For foreign language, which again has a clearly defined scope, just have the student work on something every day. To be honest, I don't think it matters what it is, my dd used a lot of library things like Pimsleur, just do it daily and because these kids are the type who insure they understand everything before proceeding. I had my kids evaluated by a language teacher at the end of years 2 and up, and they were doing well (this particular dd went back to the high school for French 3 & 4 and fit in well, but would have gotten more done in her other home courses by staying at her own pace at home in French (less busywork). 4. For science, I have mixed feelings. I think if dd had been leaning towards a science career, she would have been good at it, but I clearly knew she wouldn't (can hardly stand to read even about germs that sound icky to her), so I mixed in junior high reading and high school labs. If she had been sciency, I would have used a high school level text for at least 2 years before college, to prepare her for the reality of in-depth science (terminology in biology, math in chemistry & physics). 5. For social studies, really I've seen the lamest courses in public schools, it hasn't changed since the early 70s. I chose my personal goals (ancient-and-Biblical side-by-side, and thorough American history), and spent most of our time on those, doing a notebooking method with the former and more of a junior high American (Hakim with Sonlight's never-ending questions and Oxford's tests). At age 27, she retains more history than anyone in the family except her dad. 6. For electives, stick to what the student is already doing. Yes, it's lovely to have fine arts and health and logic and every great elective, but for our slower students everything just isn't going to happen. Foreign language and music were easy for my dd, so we did those, but even foreign language doesn't have to be a part of every student's high school experience - many college students either won't need it or will have to retake it in college anyways. (I'd try for foreign language before anything else, but it's not a hill I'd die on.) 7. For English, I'm biased but I spend way more time on that for all my students. Building up reading muscles and learning to write what you meant to say are never-ending. I go for quality and editing and making sure reading is understood. Our local public schools read approximately 2-3 books per year for average students, and some of the books are easy reads. For my perfectionist dd, getting her to own her own point of view (rather than regurgitating from memory what she'd read in a book or researched in an encyclopedia) was painful but whatever time we spent on it was well spent, both in evaluating what she'd read and especially in writing. I also tried a speed-reading course in a group and it was pointless for her, she wasn't just going to do it the teacher's way, and there was no one-on-one, the teacher was just annoyed at her. At home, we did a speed-reading book that tried to convince her (by comparison testing) that she would retain more when reading more quickly, and it was worth pointing out but it wasn't worth spending forever on in our case. Hope something in there is helpful to you, Julie

Also, if the back of his textbook or his class handouts include a list of theorums and postulates and such, I'd start now going through them and making sure your son understands each one and how it differs from the others. And, if they weren't provided for the test, he could start committing as many to memory as possible.

MFW is My Father's World, their Rosetta guide here, if you click on the underlined portion you should get a sample page: http://www.mfwbooks.com/products/M50/100/0/0/1#plans I used the elementary Divertida program and liked it. It was well thought out, with the vowels first, and grammar in year 3. However, none of my kids chose Spanish for high school. I've heard several posts on this board about how well it went, though. He uses a textbook but seems to have his same enthusiasm, knowledge, and good relation with the kids. Try searching the board for "Gamache" - for instance, this post: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/512426-spanish-at-home-vs-in-a-class/?hl=%2Bgamache&do=findComment&comment=5698293 HTH, Julie

If you choose Rosetta, I'd look into the guide that MFW publishes for making it a credit. If my kids had been willing to continue Spanish, I would have used the online high school class by the teacher who does La Clase Divertida: http://www.funclase.com/High-School-Spanish-p/hs.htm

Life of Fred has a statistics course that's far heftier than their other courses http://lifeoffredmath.com/lof-statistics.php

Math Relief has all the problems already written out on the worksheets (and the answers show the same worksheets with everything fully written out). He will still do plenty of writing even if he doesn't have to out copy the problems. I wouldn't worry about that one piece making or breaking him. We've also done some math on the marker board when ds was having a meltdown. Sometimes there is the ideal... and then there is the reality. Julie

My son used Math Relief and did very well on the math testing, I think his percentile was in the 90s, I'll edit if I get a chance to check. (see below) I think the key is that your son expected to see "Algebra problems on that section that resembled" his school problems. These tests are not designed to look just like a high school assignment. Using Math Relief, the student should be able to manipulate an algebra problem, that is the key. A problem might involve moving everything but the unknown to one side of the problem, perhaps create a simple problem using an unknown out of a question, but the student should be able to keep track of an algebra problem. One thing that helped my son with testing was to participate in a little "math team" and the coach said the most important thing was to realize and get used to answering questions that didn't come straight out of a textbook assignment. He was speaking to lots of Saxon users and even public school students, and apparently this is a transition for all of them. I'm not certain, but I'd guess the ACT is designed to look different than the textbook? The coach said things like knowing which problems were too hard and needed a guess and move on, which problems could be done quickly with guess-and-check, and which you know how to solve easily are skills as important as the math skills. I guess you could say it's got a logic component in there. Did you use the ACT test prep booklet, or the ACT test prep questions from their website? There are also test prep books at libraries that give cues to look for, and even free videos and math competition questions online. But the key to having got a lot out of Math Relief is whether he feels comfortable using algebra, rather than recognizing specific types of problems. HTH, Julie ETA: He got a 31 in 11th grade, which said it was 96th percentile. (Note that he got a worse score of 29 in 12th grade - maybe because it was further away from his Math Relief course LOL but he also just had a generally bad 12th grade year - so anyways, we deleted that score, but it still said the 93rd percentile.)

I'm chiming in a bit late, sorry, but I was thinking about this thread. I think the thing that I wasn't able to put into words is that it isnt so much that everything's integrated, but that each year of MFW high school focuses on different skillls, and in AHL, to me the focus is on apologetics. It's on students approaching their view of learning, especially their faith, at a rhetoric level. They read the entire Bible for themselves, not with mommy, and compare it to other literature written at the same time to see whether it is indeed all the same or very different. Literary analysis is not really a goal in AHL. That is more a goal in WHL, in studying world literature. Although to be honest, in-depth analysis of an author's skill in using a particular literary technique and such is not a major focus in MFW high school. As far as I know, that kind of analysis is only done in college literature courses, and not in other majors or careers. It has some extended value in terms of logical thinking and evaluating what you read and such, but MFW accomplishes those skills in other ways, beginning with the apologetics in AHL. Writing to me is huge, though, and won't budge on that during high school. Communicating effectively seems essential to me in any field. I liked that AHL had only about 6 major English essays during the year, so we could really focus on them and not just move on to the next assignment. My preference is always that parents dedicate the time to really reading their student's writing and hashing it out to make it better, rather than putting that time into researching programs. Ninth grade is a tough climb up to high school level communication, in my experience. And I guess when I started homeschooling, my number one goal was to have my high schoolers read the entire Bible for themselves, so they wouldn't be mislead by different snippets from different people. That might just be my personal issue, but if you do at all have a goal of reading the entire Bible with your teens, then it will get hard if you start filling up AHL with other things, since AHL has a lot of ground to cover in the whole OT, some of which is done during English class. It is possible to add/sub in other years, though, as Crystal mentioned. I used some of the videos from Teaching the Classics during WHL and even during US1. I've used other things here and there as well, whether Teaching Company or Michael Clay Thompson. I'm big on literature, myself. However, I didn't feel the need to spend whole years with any of those things. Again, I tried to spend the majority of my time just reading my son's writing and working with him to clarify what exactly he was trying to say, helping him to say it clearly (including specific examples). He took some college courses during 11th and 12th grade, and I didn't feel his professors wanted any more than that. When he did lose points, it had more to do with his not including enough of the instructor's content or specifications, rather than zeroing in on a particular technique. Well, that was wandering, but i hope it contributes to your thinking about if or when you might focus on literary analysis. I think lots of moms get excited about all the literature they never studied in depth in high school and over-plan. That's probably at the root of my wandering thoughts. P.S. Notgrass is a very minor part of AHL, basically the chapters on the Hebrews, Egypt, and Greece, something like 1/4 of the World History set, and there were a few sections I just summarized that year. Julie

I did: Fitness/Sports-Recreatn (this involved a wider range of activities) Fitness/Conditioning (this involved a YMCA trainer and other research on adding different aspects to his fitness program) Fitness/Weightlifting (this involved, well, serious weightlifting, though not as part of a group) I was also going to give him a credit for Fitness/Instructing Others, but most of the others gave up too soon LOL. Not the same PE area, but hopefully gives you some ideas. Julie

Thank you for outlining all that, but I'm not sure why a YEC can't deduce that there must be a long-nosed moth somewhere.

Erin, I thought I'd just explain your question that I underlined above -- you may have said it rhetorically, but in case it's a question you have for YEC... The problem between the Bible and OEC is not a simple problem of "literal" interpretation of the word "day." It's also not a problem of placing all of science into several chapters of Genesis - for instance, I've mentioned that micro-evolution is a part of every YEC theory that I'm aware of, and so is the extinction of species over time - there is plenty that's been discovered that isn't explained in the Bible. The issue is bigger than that -- at least for me. The whole picture of what Jesus is restoring is in that first part of Genesis, and evolutionary theory would affect its foundations. For example, we couldn't exactly have been created in God's image. And if we evolved, then there must've been death whilst God said, "It is very good." And there was death before God's warning about death. There was death before sin. And we'd need to add what seems to me a significant event of "dropping in" our human spirit somewhere along the evolutionary tree. And so on. I don't think evolution is the most essential issue, but It is not an issue of one small detail. What flabbergasts me is the common prejudice today that one cannot study science without being OE. Every testable scientific concept works whether YE or OE, and theoretical concepts can be just as fun for YE as OE. Julie

Thanks for appreciating my question, Carol, but I still think you are making errors in logic. The cleft palate is not explained much differently by evolution than by creation. Nor is the coral snake, nor nipples that have never evolved out of men. In either case, the theories are basically the same -- there is an advantage to that creation, or we will later realize the "unnecessary" feature actually has a function (e.g. tonsils), or there was a genetic error at birth, or etc. Also, I would assume you realize this but thought I should check -- micro-evolution is understood by YEC. It is possible God created only one snake, and all the other snakes branched off of that snake over time. But they are all snakes. "Exactly the way it is" is not a stand taken by YEC science that I know of. Of course, DNA could have evolved or been created, it makes no difference as far as studying DNA -- or as far as using close observation, as well. It's good to educate our kids about the latest theory of evolution, but evolution is everywhere in my area -- every plaque at every museum, every nature center program, every comment on the news, every random thought from a field trip docent. That's why I liked to read at least some of Apologia. I don't remember the every-page thing in his high school texts, but Biology would probably be the one where God and creation would come up the most. Here is a list of some Christian thinkers, some of which have been YEC and some evolution/Christians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science#2001.E2.80.93today_.2821st_century.29 For obvious reasons, today some YEC scientists do not broadcast their faith. Julie

In terms of asking hows and whys, I don't understand the difference between asking "why did God's world evolve like this" and "why did God design this particular thing in this particular way." Both are asked with the assumption that there is more that we can learn, more than we yet understand. Anyways, I think you are making a mistaken correlation. In all groups (YEC, OEC, Secular), there may be those who want to investigate these things and those who just let them be. Julie

One option is to find a lab partner and share the costs.

Yes, it was common when I was a teen, too - took it at public school. (I passed my license at 16 but shouldn't have been passed. I "learned" to drive in my 20s.) However, I wanted to mention that driver's ed isn't always well worth the money. My oldest son's classroom portion consisted of a lot of kids sleeping through scary crash videos. The behind-the-wheel is usually good, although my youngest thought it was funny that each instructor had a totally different style. Also, each state will differ. In MN, both classroom and behind-the-wheel are required for a minor but not for an adult. Classroom can be homeschooled if you jump through the hoops (which I did, wanting to take this more seriously than I saw being done). However, doing part at home doesn't necessarily save money since the behind-the-wheel is almost the same as the whole package. Julie

Yes, my sons keep moving to Colorado. And that may be one of the draws :) But still, even if a kid doesn't ski/board, there are things that cost a lot, whether it's the newest cell phone or computer or whatever.

Regen, So, say the German kid want something expensive and their allowance doesn't cover it. Is the child okay with that, because all his friends probably have a similar allowance and a similar inability to have things past a certain price point? Or do parents just give/spend a lot more than I imagine? I mean, I LOVE the idea of kids not having jobs, but this generation is so consumer-driven that it isn't like my youth, at least here in the urban area we live. We saved up birthday money for one big-ticket item dreamed of all year (like a $25 record player LOL). It isn't even like my 27 & 29 year olds' youth, when I gave my daughter cell phone service for Christmas by wrapping up 12 sheets of paper saying "January, February, etc." Back then, her actual phone was free I think, whereas now they are big bucks and every kid I see has one. Not only that, but they get new ones because they break or get lost or just want the newest one. My son thinks he's done well when his lasts 6 months (my cell phones never wear out or get lost, but that's a different story). Even sports like snowboarding can cost many hundreds of dollars for a season pass, a new board, boots and bindings, a special jacket, even if I paid for good gloves and gave him the helmet and goggles for Christmas. I mean, some things last but growing, active boys mean size changes and wearing out. Just curious, Julie

My daughter was an adult when she got her license. My brother ended up helping her succeed. Even if she doesn't have someone available now, maybe a time will come when someone can help. Anyways, I was going to suggest that even if she doesn't drive, you still get her a state photo ID card. It became a big issue with my daughter that she didn't have ID for various things, and unfortunately we couldn't find her Social Security card either, and each of those agencies required the other one as ID to get a new card, so it was an impossible cycle. My point is that it becomes harder as an adult to get these kind of things. When they are a minor child, the parent can provide ID, but as an adult, it no longer mattered that I had her birth certificate and my ID to prove I was the mother who gave birth to her. Julie