My views have changed drastically over the years on this topic, largely due to a teenage daughter who sees the inequity of how rules are applied to boys and girls. This has prompted discussions with dh over the years as well, and I have seen a shift in his thinking as well. I'm going to change some details for privacy sake, but a few months ago a boy showed up to a homeschool event that my daughter attended in an outfit that was extremely form fitting. He was doing it for laughs, but it made the girls very uncomfortable because it didn't leave much to the imagination. Plus, they recognized that had they arrived to the event in something similar they would have been immediately told to change or leave the event. The boys hanging around my daughter and her friends just kept telling them to look away if it bothered them so much. My daughter went to an adult in charge to see if they would deal with the dress code violation, and she was told that they didn't want to ruin the boys night. What. The. Heck! She wasn't trying to police what the boy was wearing, but to deal with the hypocrisy of the dress code. I think she was radicalized in that moment. 😂 They would not have hesitated to ruin a girl's night if she had shown up in the same outfit, and girls are constantly told that if a boy can't look away then it is their problem. No, no, no. She learned that night that a boy's feelings and comfort level often trumps a girl's feelings, and that the any dress code violation, even when the boy breaks the rules, is the girl's fault. So now we communicate that we should dress for the occasion, abide by dress code if you want to be a part of an event or organization, and know you aren't responsible for other people's judgement or thoughts about you.

This is what my dd just did with a recent invite to prom from someone she doesn't know well. Thankfully he didn't ask publicly, but he did ask her to a prior event publicly that she had to decline because of previous plans. She was very embarrassed, but in his defense, I think he didn't know how to get her alone to ask and probably mustered up the courage and went for it. After the prom invite, she told him that she really needed to get to know him better before she felt comfortable going to prom with him. He agreed, and they have been hanging out both online and with friends. She has had a lot of fun with him and has agreed to go with him. It probably won't end the way he wants (in a romantic relationship) but I hope she gains a new friend out of this experience, and I think they will end up having fun. I am so, so glad that he didn't ask her publicly. She has struggled to find her place socially in the homeschool group that we are a part of, and this really threw her for a loop.

I'll chime in with our experience with both tests. My oldest has taken the ACT 3 times and the SAT once a few weeks ago. Granted, I've only done this with one kid so far so ymmv. My kid found the time constraints for the ACT to be brutal and really struggled to get the tests done in time. He is a strong math student and a slow reader. I had read that the SAT can be good for that type of kid, so we tried a practice test. We found that the reading/grammar portions of the tests were much easier for him, but he was still struggling to get the math sections done in time. We practiced the math pretty relentlessly this past month to get him enough practice to finish it in time. I think it has paid off, because he feels that he could have gotten a perfect score on the math. We will find out soon. 🙂 We worked on the other sections as well, but not as much since he was scoring fairly well on those in practice. What I learned through this process is that he had really been struggling with test anxiety on test days which kept him from being able to finish in time, plus he was getting burned out on testing in general. We started about a month in advance this time and just did a portion of the test almost every school day, and tried several full practice tests over that time under testing conditions. I think if we had done more than that, he would have revolted. I think with all of the practice that he did, he gained confidence and felt really good about his last test. Hopefully it will be the last time he has to take it! One more thing: there is no substitute for not truly knowing the math, but we found the Scalar Learning Channel on youtube to be hugely beneficial for SAT math.

We are in the same boat, but I am trying to convince my Baptist-from-birth husband to try something else. He is coming around. We have a young, single woman in our lives who is also tied professionally to an SBC entity, and the news of Beth Moore leaving and the response she is seeing on social media from local pastor's and other leaders is really discouraging her. She is asking hard questions and trying to find where she fits in ministry. This makes her wonder if she has a place in a SBC church.

Agreeing with the above poster that it isn't all churches and all people. We are currently visiting an SBC church that seems strangely disconnected from the SBC political squabbles which is so nice. It does seem to have a Christian nationalist bent, at least as I have encountered among some of the people that attend, but I think that is becoming harder and harder to avoid, especially in the south. I think that I am ultra cognizant of what goes on in the greater SBC world because of our family's professional connection to it. I post so infrequently so I don't know how to quote, but someone mentioned the Evangelical Industrial Complex piggybacking off of the Military Industrial Complex. Du Mez's book talks specifically about this connection and lays the historical timeline in how it came to be.

Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Du Mez is a must read for those who are struggling with evangelicalism. It helped me make sense of so much that has bothered me over the last decade of my struggle with the church. As someone who has deep ties with the SBC through various institutions at the state and national levels, I have seen my fair share of the power struggles and toxicity behind the scenes. I know they exist in other denominations but this is the one that I have experience with, and I'm over it and so tired. I'm amazed that Beth Moore stuck it out for as long as she has. She has been a lightning rod for the SBC, bringing out the ugliest of behavior from those who should be calling out the abuse, racism, and misogyny in their own ranks.

I went to one of the top high schools in my state and was in the top 10% of my class, and I had NO idea that you could actually study and prepare for ACT and SAT. Like previous posters, I assumed that these test scores couldn't really be improved, at least not by enough to really matter. I took the first scholarship that came my way and assumed that was as good as it was going to get. I also had parents who placed a huge value on my studies and had a lot of expectations about where I was going to go to school and what I was going to study. Nobody counseled or advised me to keep pushing to see what else was out there, even my parents. And it kills me, because knowing what I know now, I was so, so close to getting more scholarships and admission to more selective schools. I have often wondered, "What if?" After reading everyone's posts, it is strangely comforting that I am not the only one out there who just didn't know.

I have made a decent supplemental income teaching science classes for homeschoolers. I have given some thought to going back to the classroom if I ever quit homeschooling (I was a teacher in my former life), but I don't want to deal with the red tape and the apathy. Honestly, I have experienced apathetic homeschoolers in my classes as well, but I don't have to see them everyday. :001_smile:

I highly recommend the Tapestry series by Henry Neff. It is YA fantasy. Just don't judge the series on the first book as it's much too like Harry Potter. Book 2 is better, but books 3-5 are fantastic in my opinion.

We loved MEP. It was enjoyable for my kids, it goes very deep, and is a very tight spiral, if that makes any sense. It can be very teacher intensive, though for Year 2 I did not use the lesson plans too much. I felt that I needed the lesson plans a lot more for Year 3, which is why we stopped using it. Otherwise, it's wonderful.

I feel your pain. When we lived there I would dream about all the things that I couldn't have shipped to me or couldn't afford to buy there. As soon as we moved back to the US, I got an Amazon Prime membership and reveled in 2 day shipping. :001_smile: On the other hand, I spent a good part of yesterday dreaming of another vacation in Fethiye... I am going to ask a couple of my friends who are still there if they know of any possibilities. If I find something I will get back to you.

This is interesting. I just read through many of the comments on the Goodreads site...looks like a lot of their regular users are unhappy. I love Goodreads and use it regularly but have no idea what the effects will be.

I figured I would post in this thread since this is the one about the c-rods! Another idea for the short term until the summer would be to use the number strips from MEP. http://www.cimt.plym...ary/y1acm_1.pdf Scroll down several pages and you will see the template for them. You could color them the same colors as the rods. ETA: I see that you have already considered paper templates...sorry!

Just saw your last post...sorry! That stinks!

Hmm...my friends in Istanbul never had problems receiving items from Amazon (that I know of), but I remember in Ankara there were frequently issues picking up packages from the big post office/customs.

Part of me really wishes that my son would have been able to continue just a little longer in a Turkish school (not only for language) but for the handwriting! He still writes his numbers like a Turk.

Yeah, I guessed that was where you lived. :001_smile: We lived in Ankara and Istanbul. I was looking at your other thread about the c-rods...have you ever checked the UK Amazon site? I have no idea how much the shipping would be, probably more than you would want to pay, but it's worth a shot. I have had many friends buy from them. Also, I know there are a lot of expat homeschoolers throughout the country, and I am sure there are some in Izmir, do you have any connections with any homeschoolers? They might have c-rods or even a way to get you some with visitors coming in. Just a thought.

My 2 cents since we lived in Turkey for many years and my son spent a couple of years in a devlet school is that I would continue to allow her to write like a Turk. I have friends that have started their kids in the Turkish school system and later homeschooled them and their kids have beautiful handwriting because of their years in Turkish school. One of my friends even told me that she was so glad that they did learn handwriting while in Turkish school because of how well her kids write. Especially if you are planning on her continuing in the Turkish school system...and I agree, they don't know how to handle individuality.

We use 1 and 2 as well, and the amount of problems on level 1 have been just right for my daughter who struggles with math. Many more and I think that she would start to shut down! The number of problems in level 2 seem to be increasing as we go along. And it is spiral so they will get lots of practice throughout. FWIW deciding to use MEP has been one of the best decisions I have made in homeschooling. I love it and I wish that I had been taught math the way it teaches it.

My students receive a grade on the review questions and practice problems so I like for them to be fairly confident and proficient in the math before they get to those. So in that case, only doing the OYO problems are not enough IMO. But otherwise, yes, I do think there are plenty of problems to work with. I can't speak to the Biology curriculum, but to encourage the OP, the Chemistry textbook really is very good. My degree is in Chemistry and I was a high school science teacher in a former life, so the tone of the book and the order in which things are taught have taken some getting used to. And again, we do not have time in class to talk about YE/OE issues...I am too busy making sure the kids are conducting the labs safely and that they understand stoichiometry. :001_smile:

I don't know how helpful this will be for you as I have not used level 3, but I have used levels 1 and 2. For the most part (from what I remember) level 2 is review of level 1, covering much of the same material, just with a little more practice. Looking back at my kids books, Level 2 does start to go over possessive nouns, pronouns and possessive pronouns, which I think is not covered in level 1, and the student is expected to label those in the practice sentences. They also label prepositional phrases and sentence types. As far as the writing assignments go, level 2 spends most of the year doing 2-point expository paragraphs, much like level 1. It does add towards the end of the book a few descriptive paragraph assignments as well as a narrative paragraph assignment. Hope that helps!

I teach our local homeschool Chemistry class using the Apologia text. There are several discussions throughout the book that are clearly from a YEC point of view. Module 12 when it talks about extrapolation and Darwin, and in Module 13 when talking about entropy and evolution. Those are just a couple of examples that come to mind. I don't go over these things in class as we just don't have the time . However, if it is covered in the module, there is usually a question on the test about it (on the Module 12 test the students are asked to explain how Darwin made a mistake in evolutionary theory). I do think the author does a good job of explaining the concepts, especially if a student is going through the text on their own. My biggest concern about the book (aside from its YEC point of view) from a teacher's perspective is that 1) it doesn't give enough practice, so I have to create a lot of my own practice problems, and 2) some of the concepts are taught in a confusing order IMO. For example, the students learn how to name compounds early on but don't learn how to write formulas from names until much later.

I am new to this forum, and also started CC this year, so you can take my comments with a grain of salt! :001_smile: We kinda stumbled into CC this year, and I am so glad that we did. We don't structure any of our curriculum around the memory work in CC. If we happen to hit one of the history sentences or a fact from the timeline in our history studies (we use SOTW), or talking about prepositions when doing grammar, then the kids are able to make an instant connection to what we are learning, and the get excited and feel more confident in their studies. For my ds8, it has been AMAZING the number of connections he has made with the timeline and some of the history sentences, in his independent reading and in our study of history, and even in watching TV. And not just history, but really in all of the memory work areas. For my dd6, I really think it has helped her to feel more successful in her schooling. The friendly competition in class has encouraged to come out of her shell and show what she knows. It has also made history her favorite subject. And honestly, they just love the group and they really love doing the memory work. It is really fun to them, and for me, that is when the light came on: they are really thriving on memorization and learning facts! We also use CC as our primary geography curriculum right now. I have found that they are getting half of the job done in just memorizing the vocabulary, and then they can really focus on finding the places on the map. Don't know if that makes sense, but I am simply amazed at what they can find on the map (we work on it a few times a week). And I agree with the above poster about the presentations. My kids went from absolutely terrified to get up in front of others, to kind of maybe actually enjoying it just a little. :001_smile: So, right now it is really working for us. I do plan on at this point in time, continuing through Foundations. I know that it isn't for everyone. For this point in time in our homeschooling journey, it is just right for us.

I too used to think that educating classically meant doing the history in a 4 year cycle! Ha! Not that I have a full understanding of what it means now, but I try to look at it in the three stages of the trivium--the grammar stage, the logic stage, and the rhetoric stage. It helps me to realize what my kids are actually capable of as they are all in the grammar stage. It was freeing to realize that it was okay to focus on the learning of facts and memorization. Don't know if that makes sense or not, but it has helped me to look at everything we are doing and what my goals are in that framework. Keep in mind that it may take a lot of time before you feel like you have hit your groove in homeschooling. I have heard many homeschooling parents say that it can take several years to feel that way, and after 3 years of homeschooling, I finally am starting to feel a little more confident in what we are doing. And of course, I am sure that as soon as I feel like I have it all down, I will get thrown a curve ball and everything will come unglued! I too am a "completionist" to use your word.:001_smile: I hate leaving things undone, and we are on a tight budget, making switches from one curriculum to the next difficult. I agree with the poster above that said to give a new curriculum several weeks before making a judgement as to whether or not it works. And I am pretty sure Sonlight (and I am sure others) have very lenient return policies, if you find that it just isn't working for you. I hope that you can find a mentor, or at least another homeschooling family to come alongside. And this forum has been a wellspring of information for me!

Hi! First time posting here, though I lurk quite a bit. Just wanted to add my 2 cents. :001_smile: I don't know if it was stated above, but Horizons math seems to be above level a grade. My 1st grader is still working on the K books, and my 3rd grader is in the middle of the 2nd grade books. So it is quite possible that it is a little too advanced. While the 3rd grader has done really well with Horizons, I am noticing that my 1st grader is starting to struggle some and just isn't getting it. After reading many math related threads here on this forum, I am adding Miquon to the mix to see if it helps her. My 1st grader also really struggles with handwriting (didn't have the same struggles with big brother!) and I finally eased up and relaxed. For so long I just thought it was her being stubborn as all I had to compare her to was her brother. I finally realized that she just doesn't have the fine motor skills to do more than a sentence or two a day. I just make sure that she does it well and then we move on. :001_smile: