DS was accepted at Brigham Young University! He had already received acceptances at University of Utah and BYU-Idaho (I posted that earlier, but it didn't make it on the list), but was waiting to hear from BYU. He didn't want to get his hopes up because so many of the homeschool kids around here haven't made it in the last couple of years. Luckily, this year was a better one for homeschoolers. We know several that made it in this year. He is EXTREMELY excited to go to BYU this fall!

He could look into the GEOINT field. There seems to be a wide range of possibilities in this field. It certainly isn't limited to government intelligence or more mundane business applications. My son's interest in this field came from seeing how geospatial tech is used in augmented reality for video games. Also, it doesn't require as much upper-level math as something like computer science.

In my area it runs $250 to $300 a semester for a small high school level math class that meets twice a week.

My DS, 18, has been accepted into BYU Idaho and University of Utah. He still has about a month to wait to hear back from BYU Provo. And, it will still be awhile before he hears about scholarships. He's especially excited about UofU because of the Geographic Information Science five year BS/MGIS combined degree, which he would like to combine with a Geoint Certificate. I'm not positive if doing both is possible, but he's excited about the prospect.

I've homeschooled four, with two graduated from high school and one from college; I used WTM with my olders before there was WWE/WWS, but have been able to use WWS with my youngers. I also teach WWS to a group of 20+ kids at a local co-op. From my experience I truly would not worry about comparisons to public school writing. In public school the teachers are required to cover a curriculum a mile wide and an inch deep. It looks good on the reports. But, lucky for you, you don't have to. You are exposing them to good writing. You are teaching them to think before writing. This is foundational for strong writing skill later. How I wish that my co-op students had a year or two of WWE before WWS! You might not see the results right away, but you will. It is a long term process that works well. I'll also throw in that WWS has the added benefit of being helpful with the ACT. I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but my kids told me that for the sections with the long passages they were glad to have had practice finding the main idea quickly, and give credit to their constant outlining with WWS for helping boost their scores in both the English and Science sections.

WWS is a great program for a ninth grader. You can spend anywhere from a year to three years covering all three levels, and you'll still have time to spend on argumentative writing. She should be working on her academic writing every year. This curriculum would be the writing part of a complete Language Arts class (what we used to call English).

We highly recommend the Old Western Culture videos along with the live classes offered through Schola Tutorials. My son is in his fourth year with Mr. Callihan, and my daughter in her second year. They love Mr. C and say he's "Awesome!" (Yes, that was a quote. I just asked my daughter.) Do be prepared with your own writing assignments or use Writing Assessment Services. Our only problem has been trying to combine the live classes with the DVD schedule has been a little wacky. We prefer the old schedule on Schola Tutorials which was much less confusing. Other than that, we can't recommend this enough.

I accidentally posted this in the College Forum earlier today. I'm wondering if anyone else has experience with this? A question for those homeschooling in California - Do you list any of your classes as a-g, either classes at home or from a charter school? Who certifies that they are a-g? Is it only an accredited school that can list a-g courses? Do those of you who R4 not have this option or are you just not interested? Our particular charter school will not list a class as a-g unless it is taken at their site, even if the student is using the same books, doing the same labs, etc... I'm really curious if anyone has tried to have their own classes a-g certified similar to an AP course?

A question for those homeschooling in California - Do you list any of your classes as a-g, either classes at home or from a charter school? Who certifies that they are a-g? Our particular charter school will not list a class as a-g unless it is taken at their site, even if the student is using the same books, doing the same labs, etc... I'm really curious if anyone has tried to have their own classes a-g certified similar to an AP course? We are teetering on the brink of going private because our charter school is becoming so hard to work with, but if anyone has any information about this it might help. Thanks! edit: I put CSF in the title because I was going to mention how the a-g affects the CSF qualifications, but decided against trying to cover too much in one post.

A History of the American People by Paul Johnson is one recommendation I've heard in classical homeschooling circles that we're adding to my DS's US History reading list this year.

The only change that I know of is the writing portion of the ACT starting in September of this year. Here's the link regarding that: http://www.actstudent.org/writing/enhancements/ You can pay for a test prep course or use some of the books available which you might already own. We found the big red Real ACT test book to be good for practice tests, but not so much for test taking tips. For tips they got the most out of Kaplan Premier (mostly for math) and Perfect 36 (mostly for language arts). They also watched the Kaplan's test prep videos. My kids were grateful for all the practice they've had from Writing with Skill because they had to find the main point of a paragraph so many times! They actually said this was one of their biggest helps in the science section. A lot of the test is just about speed, so these tips and tricks can really help. It's also good to take the real test a few times to get used to the pacing. And, this probably won't go over well with a lot of moms, but....my kids also found that a caffeinated drink at break time was helpful during the test.

You could purchase the three Writing with Skill books, which thoroughly cover expository writing, and have him do those in one year without a class. Or, if he prefers a class The Well Trained Mind Academy offers it online. You can find a sample syllabus on The Well Trained Mind Academy where they call it "Preparation for Rhetoric Writing: A OneYear Catch-Up Course." Either way, it's more than a six week class, if that's what you're looking for. Maybe you can get some feedback comparing BW and WTMA classes from those who've taken them. I've heard good things about both. I teach expository writing locally and the kids really like the WWS books, but I wouldn't hesitate to sign up with BW if my kids needed it simply because of all the good feedback I've heard about it.

My kids also prefer physical textbooks whenever possible. We've used the college bookstores for rentals and purchases, used online stores like Amazon and Chegg, and occasionally we've made money by selling a good online deal to the college bookstore when doing returns. And, as others have said, math is where you normally have to have the online code, so that's where you have usually buy new.

Engrade is popular around here: https://www.engrade.com/ But, Google Docs is also popular and might be easier to use.

I tried asking this on the pinned Physics thread, but no response, so I thought I'll try here. :) I'm looking for input regarding the difference between Conceptual Physics high school and college level textbooks. Has anyone seen both texts and been able to compare? Should I assume that the Conceptual Physics on the pinned Physics thread is the high school version of CP? Usually when I see CP discussed online I don't see which text is specified, so when it is put in the catagory of "easy Physics" I'm wondering is that because it's a different textbook? From what I can tell it is the college level Conceptual Physics that is usually used by homeschoolers in 11th/12th grade and is Trig based math. Input anyone? Thanks!

You don't actually have to understand the problems to help her with speed strategies. Do you have a Roku? You can access Kaplan's test prep videos for free with the Roku. I think the Kaplan Youtube site has the same videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/KaplanSATACT These have nothing to do with understanding higher math, but with knowing how to find the answer faster.

My thought was that not everybody who reads TWTM is necessarily sold on classical education. I would assume that many there are people new to homeschooling who will read a variety of books to understand how to homeschool, and wouldn't it be nice to have a solid of defense of not only why you shouldn't be afraid to read all of these books, but why it's a really, really good thing? If the reader had encountered the opposite argument somewhere else, maybe someone at church, a website, or a different homeschool guide, then maybe TWTM might be the place where she encounters some common sense. *edited for spelling

Being an old homeschooler, I only own the first edition, and it was my main guide for many years. Here are some of my failures, successes, and general experiences: Science in a Nutshell - probably children's favorite hands on activity Focus on Science - gave them exposure to science vocab, a beginning place to talk about evolution, and easy paperwork to turn into our charter school. Saxon math - this seemed overwhelming to me as a new homeschool mom, but later I used it with great success. Math-U-See and Singapore I used together for K-2 and that worked very well for us. Art of Problem Solving - I know this is suppose to be only for 'advanced students' but I have to say that all students can benefit from exposure to this program, even if they take it later and/or slower than they are 'suppose to.' Just watching the videos can give them a different way of thinking about math, which can be helpful. Spelling Workout - Overall my kids national test scores were in the 95+ percentile, but their spelling scores went down after using this :( IEW TWSS and A,B,C - the dvds were a godsend Writing Strands - Did not work for us, at all. Writing with Skill - Love it! It would've solved our outlining problems that we had trying to outline the Kingfisher Encyclopedia back in the day. But, as you already know, for the younger grades it really has to be taught and it's much better starting at seventh grade. If you come out with another edition, please include bullet point instructions. Rod and Staff - we loved this but First Language Lessons were better for us because of the consumable workbook with the easing into diagramming. We own a million different Latin curriculum, but Latin for Children is my favorite. The older kids loved Cambridge Latin, but I wouldn't attempt to teach it without some grammar based Latin first. That's some curriculum i can think of off the cuff, but I think its much more important to have the "how to homeschool" stuff in TWTM. I think it would be very helpful to have a list of the different types of essays students should be able to write by high school, and maybe you have this now. When my kids started Great Books (we first used Escondido Tutorials Services but now use Schola Tutorials) they didn't know the difference between a narration, compare and contrast, etc... They had only had IEW and my old Lively Art of Writing and Strunk and White, which were all great, but didn't give them a grasp on the different expository essay forms. I remember you warning us in a conference I attended about co-ops. But, personally as a parent, I wouldn't have stayed homeschooling if I didn't have the connection of a local group, especially when everyone at church thinks your crazy, probably watching tv all day while eating bonbons, or thinks your kid must be some academic superstar and you are judging them for sending their kids to public school (like I care!). I needed that as a mom and my kids needed to know other homeschool kids. Yes, it did eat up a lot of time, but it was worth it for us. On the downside of groups, some of them tend to have a money-making, kind of pyramid-scheme facet to them, not just pay for the class your child is taking. I know that the Thomas Jefferson Education group we were involved with had that, and from what I've read Classical Conversations might be the same type of situation. So, even though I feel that it was essential for us to have our group time, how to schedule co-ops and homeschool learning centers are one of the biggest issues that needs to be addressed to the new homeschooler. I'm sure it is not this way everywhere, but where homeschooling is popular the problem isn't finding classes, the problem is the kids are signed up for classes all day every day. They have no time at home to do homework or reading. They simply go from class to class to class. The current generation of homeschool moms I work with have no idea of how to schedule or teach at home. 'The Fear of Missing Out' rules their lives. So, I would highly recommend a section on scheduling and how over scheduling is detrimental to a child's education. Speaking of scheduling, a simple, inexpensive 4 or 8 subject school planner was essential to our success before they hit high school. It was the only way I could keep track of everything. We had one for each child and it was the only way I kept organized when I had all the kids homeschooling at once. One issue I've experienced lately as a teacher is the growing fundamentalist worldview in homeschooling. I guess it was about fifteen years ago when TWTM and Story of the World came out and it seemed that very few homeschoolers objected to the broad reading lists that included fairy tales, fables, fantasy, science fiction, pagan authors of the past, etc.... But, now in my classes I can't even use something as basic as a fairy tale because someone's parent objects. Younger parents have objected to fairy tales, Aesop's fables, Shakespeare, Narnia, anything Tolkien, etc.... Luckily I don't have this problem with the older classes, but it is something that's happening in the homeschool community that could definitely be addressed. *edited because I realized I put down Spelling Power when I meant Spelling Workout.

I also have a couple of slow readers. I have found that the sentence chunking practice in Sentence Composing for Middle School: A Worktext on Sentence Variety and Maturity by Don Killgallon to be very helpful. When I was trying to figure out how to help DS with his speed for the ACT I had him read aloud for me, which I hadn't done in quite awhile. I noticed that as he read there were no breaks or inflection. This is a boy who has done lots of drama, speech, and debate! But, somehow when it came to "regular reading" he had slipped into a bad reading habit of just trying to get through it. I had to preface this book with, "A lot of adults found this difficult also...." so he wasn't insulted by the "middle school" label on the book. It didn't take a lot of practice in sentence chunking to help him increase his speed and comprehension. *edited because spacing came out weird....

Nvm

Patterns for College Writing, A Rhetorical Reader and Guide by Laurie Kiszner covers much of the same material as WWS Levels 1-3, plus includes argumentative essays, without the step-by-step. I love some of the sample essays. There are a variety of questions at the end of each chapter that you could pull from, setting the amount of work and the pace at the appropriate level. I would take at least a year to cover the material.

I also appreciated the helpful comments on this thread. My DS had a difficult school year with surgery and a long recovery and struggled to keep up in his classes. As a result his time for test prep was limited, but he did raise his score by six points from the year before, so we were happy. We used the 'Real ACT' tests, did about one a week and went over each question as Kendall had recommended which was a great help. There were a couple of books that were inexpensive but helpful. Kaplan's ACT Prep book for overall strategy, 'Barron's ACT 36' was helpful for especially for the English sections, and Kaplan's ACT prep videos for math.

I don't know if this helps, but oldest DD was able to take herself through Book 2 of Cambridge Latin without any help. She got bogged down in Book 3, but I don't think we had the online resources at the time.

My kids enjoy the Art Reed videos, but are quite annoyed by the Saxon Teacher videos. I've found that Saxon Teacher is just to help them work through specific questions if they're stuck.

I have a few grammar books I like: Our Mother Tongue by Nancy Wilson, Blue Book of Grammar by Jane Straus, and Painless Grammar by Rebecca Elliot. Even with having those, I still prefer to do a quick google search! Out of those three I recommend Painless Grammar. It's written for the younger crowd, so it has fun examples and is easy to access the information quickly.