"Switching to a menstrual cup will change your life," the Hive said. The Hive was right!

I saw that this morning! Fascinating stuff!

When my kids took an online course I still labeled it under "Texts". For instance, this one my oldest did with MIT Open Course Ware: Texts: 6.01SC Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science I, Spring 2011 by Leslie Kaelbling, Jacob White, Harold Abelson, Dennis Freeman, Tomas Lozano-Perez, and Isaac Chuang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Course Ware) It's not as cool as it sounds ... every 1 year course is 2 credits, every semester course is 1 credit, and they are used to seeing students graduate with 48 credits. So it's really just like everyone else's credit, except doubled 🙂 And it gets kind of confusing when you're trying to compare apples to apples!

This is what we used as a course description for VT Geometry. We did some of the Trig unit, but not enough of it to count it as a credit. We did a different precalc course afterwards too, and I figured it would be obvious that trig was included in that. Geometry A year-long high school level course meeting 5 times per week. Covered measurement, fundamental terms and postulates and theorems, triangles, other polygons, and circles. Formal geometric proofs were required for each lesson. Assessed by daily exercises, lesson quizzes, unit tests, and comprehensive exam. Texts: Geometry: A Complete Course by Video Text Interactive Course Grade: A Credit: 2.0* *In Indiana a standard one year course is 2 credits. We're weird that way 😉

I don't know what website you were looking at, but I found this on Rainbow Resource: https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/015773/Wordsmith---Janie-B.-Cheaney-3rd-Ed..html? It seems very similar in content to Wordsmith Creative Writing which I used years ago. Probably just updated a bit and a slightly different title?

Yes, Video Text. The transition worked great for this particular DS because he is very mathy and flew through VT and because AoPS is just a wonderful fit for him. I wish I'd found it sooner for him, but I didn't hear about AoPS until after he was already doing Algebra and Geometry with VT. Switching to a discovery method for my other kids after VT would not have been a great decision - they shudder just looking at the AoPS books lol! So the other 2 I've graduated so far have done Chalkdust for PreCalc. I think AoPS in general is exceptionally great for a very certain type of student who really truly loves math and enjoys spending hours thinking about it and working on it. Lots of very bright kids who are good at math but don't love math will not like AoPS or thrive with it, imo and ime.

I know Lu La Roe is/was a scam, and I'm sorry for people who get caught up in it. But seriously, I've never found any other leggings I like as well when it comes to comfort and softness. If anyone has any others that are equal or better, I'd love to hear about them!

Echoing other advice: if his pre-calc is strong, there's no real reason not to do calc and at least a couple good reasons it would be helpful. My oldest just finished a CS degree from Purude, and his sequence going in to college was VT Alg 1 & 2 (8th), VT Geometry (9th), AoPS C&P and NT (10th), AoPS PreCalc (11th), and AoPS Calc with a self study BC AP exam (12th). He began uni at Calc 3 and it really opened up a lot of upper level coursework for him that he was excited about and might not have had time for if he'd had to do the traditional calc sequence. CS is such a competitive major these days that I'd be nervous about an application that didn't have Calc on it somewhere, even though knowing you on these boards I'm sure he'd be a stellar applicant. They really expect to see Calc.

I'm not sure how, since Martha was also a woman. It's just substituting a different woman in place of Mary Magdalene (which isn't even completely verified either, if I'm reading it correctly).

I read the transcript of the sermon. Very interesting scholarship and research! Kudos to her for looking at scripture with fresh eyes. That's always awesome! I don't think it's mindblowing though. How exactly might the gospel message be different if this Mary was in fact Mary Magdalene? It's not at all clear to me that it would be. Not even a little bit, let alone mind blowingly so. She's still proclaiming Jesus as the Christ. And it was still a woman proclaiming Jeus as the Christ when we thought it was Martha. I agree I like the word picture of Mary The Tower, but it doesn't change anything about the awesomeness of the gospel message if it's brought by a woman or a man. And Peter is still the rock the church was built on even if Mary was the tower. I just don't think it changes much honestly, it's just a little more accurate, that's all. There was absolutely zero evidence presented of anybody doing anything for nefarious/misogynistic/patriarchical purposes. I think it's a huge stretch to imagine that there was. After just looking at a meme on the jokes thread referencing the dangers of looking at ancient texts through a modern lens, I think it's worth a caution here as well.

These are both what I was going to say too.

K12's Human Odyssey is surprisingly readable for a textbook. Maybe you could read that aloud as a spine and they could jump off from there on their own?

Fallacy Detective is what we use in about 6th grade, followed by Art of Argument in 8th. For lit, I second @Lori D.'s suggestions of Figuratively Speaking. That's all the lit analysis we do until high school. Other than that we just read and discuss.

My high schoolers use Visual Link independently and it has proven very effective. But I'm not sure it would work well for younger kids and hold their attention. Perhaps ULAT? I haven't used it personally but I know many here have.

My 3 oldest kids have done computer Science/computer engineering, small business entrepreneurship, statistics, psychology, logic, personal finance, extra math courses, filmmaking, marketing, government and politics, business, journalism, creative writing, architecture/drafting, child development, and sociology.

I was going to say Ender's Game as well.

My DD paid to watch one of the episodes for a module in Physics she was struggling with and she said it helped her a lot. I don't know if I would say she enjoyed it exactly 😉 but it did help.

I like W&R very very much, but it would be hard to jump in in the middle, especially for a not strong writer. I know many on these boards dis IEW but it's a really great program and it really helps kids learn to write more confidently. I've used it successfully with a couple of my kids. If you're just jumping in, the IEW website used to have a graphic somewhere that showed you where to start with different ages of kids. I don't know if they have that anymore but I imagine they would. I don't have any experience with WWS.

We read the whole series piecemeal as part of our morning meeting time when my oldest was in high school and the others were in middle school and elementary school. I skipped the parts that were overly heavy on the child evangelism side, of which there were many. But it did spark a lot of good conversations for us as a group.

I can personally attest that maple cream filled doughnuts with bacon are a.m.a.z.i.n.g. and one of the best things I've ever put into my mouth, even though I was skeptical at first.

I live in Indiana and know several well qualifed kids in state that didn't get into Purdue engineering. My oldest DS got into Purdue CS 4 years ago but got no scholarship money at all. He got in to several other less competitive programs also but for the less competitive schools he got quite a bit of scholarship money thrown at him. I know 25-30% isn't highly selective or in the Ivy League realm of stats, but it does still mean that lots of qualified kids get rejected. A less well known school for engineering or CS might be different.

When my DD was in 9th, she did a world geography/religions/cultures course that was really great. I just had her read National Geographic's Peoples of the World and DK World Religions as the spines. Then she read a fiction or biography book for each area of the world - Kon Tiki for Oceania, Queen of Water for South America, Cry the Beloved Country for Africa, I Am Malala for the Middle East, Mao's Last Dancer and Kim for Asia, and Between Shades of Grey for Europe. Then I told her to write about something interesting she learned for each area. She played Seterra games once a week for geography practice. She says that was one of her best high school courses and it was very easy and hands off for me and she learned a ton.

Agree with Slache. Also - this is not a bad way for him to be! It's actually pretty typical I think. My DH vividly remembers it being physically painful to sit in school and not be up and doing something "real and useful." He is now a very successful engineer who would shudder at being behind a desk all day every day and thrives on the variety he gets by going to job sites and overseeing projects and getting his hands dirty from time to time.

The school bus thing cracks me up. My kids were in 8th, 6th, and 4th when we started hs'ing and let me tell you - NOT having to get up at 6 to get on the bus at 7 and riding it for 45 min in the dark at the crack of dawn and then NOT having to ride it for another hour at the end of the day and not getting home til 4:15 was a major advantage of hs'ing for them 😂

Sometimes it has taken several emails. Last time I almost gave up and bought another program because they hadn't got back to me at all, and then out of nowhere they did 🤷‍♀️