I haven't used it yet, but plan to next year with 9th and 5th. We will not use it anywhere close to as written 😬 We will use it as part of our morning basket - daily small bites all dine orally. It might get too deep for them at their ages, but we've done a fair bit of poetry appreciation and I think this is the next logical step.

My CS guy really enjoyed the C&P and Number Theory books. He did those before PreCalc. But I don't think they were necessary.

I haven't read all the responses, just a few. I think if she's really and truly interested and ready she will research and think about these issues herself. I have been very supportive of my teens researching it on their own and have encouraged them to do it and to talk to me about what they find out because it's so interesting and thought provoking. I tell them it's great to dig down deep to figure out on your own what you believe and/or don't believe because I can't give them my faith, I can only encourage them to find their own, and that Truth is capable of standing up to serious scrutiny and study. IME, teens as young as 13 are usually not as ready for critical thinking about these issues as they think they are and as their parents sometimes think they are. They are usually just testing the waters to see what you think about them questioning *your* faith, not actually ready to embark on a deep voyage of self discovery of *their* faith. Again, IME. YMMV. HOWEVER - I would be very, very, very leery of finding resources myself and giving my kid books about faith that disagreed with my worldview. If they're really ready for that type of soul searching, they'll find the resources themselves naturally. My dad thought he was treating me like an adult by discussing philosophy/theology with me and ended up making me think he believed something and endorsed something completely opposite. It took me literally years to figure out what I believed for myself and I still sometimes have doubts related to what he discussed with me. I've never told him this because I know he would be devastated to realize that he (unintentionally and with the best of motives) led me in a direction that caused me so much pain and anguish. Kids attach a BIG importance to what their parents tell them might be true, whether they are teens or little kids and whether they admit it or not. I certainly would never have admitted it at the time that my dad's opinions held so much sway over me, but they did.

I think it's a healthy thing to think about the fact of our own mortality. I even read somewhere that one of the most important things we can teach kids, right up there with "you are loved" and "you are special and unique" is "someday you will die". We don't do anybody any favors - including ourselves - by pretending it isn't true 🤷‍♀️

I am not strong in math, and I learned so much doing Math Mammoth with my kids. I only learned algorithms with nothing about the concepts and going through MM I finally figured out the "why" and suddenly math made so much more sense. Each lesson is so incremental and builds on itself so well that it's really not hard to teach at all, even for someone like me who's not strong in math and even without a teacher's guide.

This. Especially the not saying another word about it part.

Congrats Mom! Seems like you've thought of everything 🙂

I don't know where she's at with her math progression, and my experience may not apply to yours at all. But fwiw, my 2nd son really struggled with pre-A when we brought him home from ps to hs and he cried over every math curriculum I tried. So what I finally did was give him a break from "hard" math for an entire year and he did only Life of Fred and reviewed fractions and decimals and percents and I stayed the heck away from it and let him do it on his own. Which I could do because the content was easy and a review of stuff he already knew. Then when he was good and de-traumatized we just started on Alg 1 and went from there the following year and after that we had no problems. I am *not* someone who would ever recommend LoF as a full curriculum. But for us, for a season, for a specific purpose, doing something easy and fun took the negativity away from the situation.

MM5 Continue AAS Fix It 2 W&R - she's in the middle of book 3 now, so we'll just keep going Homegrown science - ecosystems, ecology, paleontology, and chemistry finish up Song School Spanish and move onto The Fun Spanish Evan Moor Daily Skills Geography Human Odyssey volume 1 + reading list Building Thinking SKills & Mind Benders puzzles Vocabu-Lit workbook Artistic Pursuits Once a week PE class at the local private school Speech club Maybe drama troupe? haven't decided about this for her or not yet Piano lessons

Alcumus is their practice problem program. It's good practice, but there's no real instruction, from my understanding, so it wouldn't be a real "program" and he would probably need something additional. However, anything else AoPS, whether it's self paced or synchronous or self taught with the books, is enough by itself and then some, imo.

These are titles that all 4 of my middle schoolers so far have read and enjoyed: Black Ships Before Troy & Wanderings of Odysseus The Bronze Bow I Am the Great Horse 1001 Arabian Nights Call It Courage Horatio Hornblower Caddie Woodlawn Johnny Tremain Carry On Mr Bowditch The Captain's Dog Across Five Aprils The Yearling Tom Sawyer Call of the Wild Anne Frank The Hiding Place The Outsiders The Giver The Hobbit Harry Potter series Narnia series

Yep. But they chose that one. And we really don't know why, even if we think we have some good guesses. FTR, I wasn't aiming my comments just at you, Quill. Lots of people in this thread are deciding these people are full on Duggar, with all the baggage that entails, just because of one incident. I just found that a little ironic 😉 I'm glad you decided not to intervene, but I'm sure your son appreciates his mama bear! 🙂

I know it hurts that your son is hurting. I do think taking control of a teenagers phone is probably an overreaction on their part. And *if* you're right about the whole church thing I can understand that being annoying. BUT ... you really only have suspicions and assumptions. There are a million and one reasons why they might have acted the way they did and the one you're upset about is only one of those possibilities. We have no idea what has happened in this girl's life prior to this incident that might have made them act the way they did. Seems like there's a whole lot of assuming going on in this thread from just one incident. Kind of like assuming a kid is bad news based solely on him cussing a little 🤔

Yes! 😊 Colleges typically don't care when they earn the credit, just that they have it.

DD found out she got accepted at Purdue back in January but wasn't sure if she'd go there or the CC because of finances. Yesterday she got an email that she received a $4000 per year scholarship from Purdue, which combined with living at home makes it approx the same amount as CC. So that made her decision for her! 😊

Writing with a Thesis

I'm wondering if the income will do as much as you hope it will? If I'm reading it correctly, you hope to take some of the pressure off your husband and his multiple jobs. So that will be an exchange in who's earning the income, not an increase, at least for a portion of it. And you might need to hire math tutors to help your boys continute their momentum in math. And you might need to outsource some of the home stuff. And you want it to pay for college. And you want to save for retirement. That's kind of a lot to expect from a teaching job income, at least the ones around here 😉 And in exchange you get two stressed out parents instead of one, a 5 year old who's adjusting to being away from mom all day long, and two kids with special needs adjusting to ps. I hope you are able to come to a decision that you're all at peace with, regardless of what it is!

Work. Volunteer for a week at a children's home. She needs to earn money for college!

I used to use EIL and enjoyed it. The context resources for sure were valuable and worthwhile. But there isn't a unit for all the good books I wanted my kids to read 😉 and it definitely assumes they already know how to write a literary analysis essay. I found it frustrating to expect my kids to write something they hadn't been explicitly taught yet. Windows to the World explicitly teaches this and is a great resource! But my kids weren't ready for it til later in high school after learning how to write a good basic essay first. So eventually I ditched the "literature" curriculum and we just read and discuss good books and keep our writing instruction and our reading lists entirely separate. Just an idea ...

I agree with royspeed. Most native speakers won't struggle as much with verb tenses as non-native speakers do. Analytical Grammar covers some common verb tense usage errors, but not explicit instruction on the formation of all verb tenses, because most kids don't need it.

My 4th high schooler: Algebra II - continue Video Text Spanish I- still deciding whether to use Visual Link like my older 3 used or switch it up and try ULAT English I - she needs to pick about 10 books from a list I have to read and discuss - she'll also do EE and an AG review book once a week and a Vocabulit lesson once a week Biology I - she's doing an online class with Berean Builders - this will be her first online class and I've only used one once with my older kids, so definitely a new experience for us! History - the first of a 4 year history cycle - using a mix of Great Courses and K12 texts and iCitizen all coordinated together - on M-Th she'll either watch and take notes and answer guide book questions or read and add to a timeline notebook, depending on which resource we're currently using - on F she'll write a summary of the week's information Health (half credit) - Apologia - this is a box checking class for us Half credit elective - TBD - she's considering creative writing, cooking/baking, or sketching PE - personal fitness daily ECs - speech and debate club, drama troupe

My daughter used IEW through middle school and in high school used their Elegant Essay and Windows to the World and Writing the Research Paper. She aced a CC course this year, graduates this May, and is well prepared for college.

The Christian themes in Narnia are sooooo obvious that I can't imagine anyone reasonably informed about Christainity not being able to figure it out! 🙂 I think I even saw a meme somewhere about it, I'll see if I can find it.

I talk about my faith as a natural part of who I am. I'm not trying to figure out what everyone else is or trying to evangelize, but I'm not going to self censor my natural form of communication and thinking either. I mention my faith because it's a part of who I am, not because I assume everyone else is that way too. And I'm quite sure that my awkward out loud expressions of my faith don't really capture the theological reality of what I truly believe when I take the time to think it through and type it all out, so I tend to cut people some slack that when they're in casual conversation they might be saying what they think kind of awkwardly too 😉