Yes, I've since been advised by people on this board that DS should still take pre-calc to solidify all this and that is our plan. :) But I do feel Video Text gives very good conceptual coverage of Alg I & II & Geometry.

I just love it when my hubby helps out with homeschooling :) He's always supportive and helpful with big picture goals and stuff, but rarely does he do nuts and bolts. However, when I asked him about this question he immediately recommended DS read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and sent me a list of podcasts for DS to listen to and then discuss with DH. :hurray: I would still welcome any additional suggestions any of you have though!

DS is taking a .5 credit elective using SOS Small Business Entrepreneurship. The idea was to have him go through this software course using his beekeeping/honey selling business as the practical application of the course. But it's waaaaaay too easy and doesn't really give him much guidance for the practical side of his business. Any good book recs for him to beef up the course and benefit his business? Thanks in advance! ETA: In case it matters, this is not his intended career, this is a side business that he hopes will help him pay for college. But we would like it to be a worthwhile use of his time. Thanks! :)

My kids both started it in 8th grade, so they'd had pre-algebra already but I kind of liked that the first module was very simple and basic and easy so they "eased into" high school level work a bit. They pretty much flew through the first module with no problems. I'd maybe consider having your DD watch all the videos to make sure all the concepts were clear and there are no holes in her conceptual understanding, but maybe just do the unit tests as far as problems to do to figure out exactly where to place her. The videos are mostly short. In Geometry I think there were a few 15-18 minute ones, but in Algebra they're usually under 15 minutes, some of the early ones are even shorter than 10 minutes each. HTH!

My current 2nd grader is a pretty good reader, I'd say slightly beyond MTH level. She does: HWOT - 1 page/day mostly independently Copywork - 2 sentences/day mostly independently (every other week alternating with copywork) MOH with the rest of us - she colors the page while I read, then once a week she narrates to me what we she learned that week and I write it down - she does the maps with my help MM2 - 2 pages/day - every once in a while I'll let her loose with doing a few of the boxes on her own after we've done an example or two together, but usually I'm right there with her the whole time Easy Grammar 2 - one page a day, semi-independently Writing Strands 2 - completely done with me (every other week alternating with copywork) Reading to herself 20 min a day - independently Reading to me out loud a chapter or two a day - completely done with me Xtramath - 10 min/day - independently Spelling - AAS - completely done with me except on Fridays she types the words &/or sentences into Word mostly independently Science - variety of Magic School bus videos, kits, reading, narrating - kits and narrating are done with me - watching the videos and reading are independent (Ms. Frizzle gets on my nerves lol) Music - 150 Rhythm Activies book - completely done with me Art - Artistic Pursuits - I go over the lesson with her and show her what to do, but then she creates the art herself independently In free time if screens are not an option she will play American Girls dolls or dollhouse or jump on the trampoline or play with the dog or build with Legos or draw with markers. She has several siblings around to play with most of the time too ... I have no idea what they're all doing most of the time when schoolwork is done. :)

We've used both the Algebra and Geometry programs over the last 2 years with my oldest DS and are continuing with my 2nd DS starting Algebra this year. 2nd DS (average math student) will likely take 3 years to complete all of what older DS (motivated and accelerated student who loves math) did in 2 years. We love this program! I plan to use it for all my kids at this point and I highly recommend it! Pros: Tom Clark is an awesome teacher and very good at getting the concepts behind the math across to the students. After being through the program with them I feel like *I* finally understand math, not just "plug and chug" in a formulaic response like I did all the way through calculus. :) Geometry is proof-heavy and I think it really developed my oldest DS's logical reasoning skills. Not tons of practice problems every lesson. Some might consider this a con, but for us it's a pro. I have them do the odds for every assignment. If they get less than a B, we review the lesson and they have to do the evens the next day. If they get an A or a B, we move on to the next lesson. Same thing for the periodic quizzes and the unit tests. If they pass the Quiz/Test A with an A or B, we move on. If they get less than a B they review and do Quiz/Test B the next day. It works out to be plenty of practice for us without overwhelming them with a ton of problems to do each day. Cons: I was counting on Geometry to fulfill our trig/pre-calc needs but those modules still aren't done and so now we have to pick a new pre-calc for oldest DS. Tom Clark did make some of the partially finished trig videos available to me when I asked, but the text he recommends to use along with them until Video Text is complete was not acceptable to me. (He recommended Trig for Dummies :( He said it's an unfortunate title but actually pretty good problem sets. Whatever ... there's no way I'm putting that in a course description.) If you choose to use Video Text Geometry, just be aware of that and don't count on it for anything beyond a 1 year Geometry course.If you have any other specific questions, I'd be glad to help. :)

I don't have any advice per se since I'm not from CA and I don't know anything about the NCAA. There are others on this board who are waaaaaay more qualified than me to do that. :) Hopefully one of them will chime in. But I just wanted to encourage you that I'm sure you could pull it off. You can read The Well Trained Mind and follow it to the letter or you can follow it loosely and add and/or subtract as you see fit (that's what I do). You could even not read it at all and still give your child a great education, but don't tell anyone here I said so. ;) And you have several months yet to research and figure things out before high school. For some of us, planning it is half the fun! LOL But if planning and tweaking is not your thing, there are several great college prep options out there that do most of the planning for you. You definitely can do it if you want to! Good luck!

My DS is currently in 8th grade and doing Alg I also. He too makes lots of mistakes with negatives and not distributing to the whole expression and whatnot. We watch his math video (using Video Text which is excellent at explaining the conceptual reasons behind the rules) and then go over his assignment with him. He does 2 problems and then checks the answer key to correct any mistakes/misconceptions before doing the rest of the problems. He does the odds one day and if he gets a B or better we move on the next day. I do give him partial credit if his reasoning/understanding was correct but he gets the answer wrong because of careless errors. Slowly but surely he is getting better at catching the careless errors. If he gets a C or below then we review the video and figure out where he went wrong and do the evens the next day. One thing that really helps him is instead of subtracting a number to indicate it's a negative, he writes it as an addition of a negative number. for example 4x + -7 instead of 4x - 7 I think it has something to do with reminding him that the negative actually means "opposite" but whatever the reason it has really helped him not make so many careless errors. My older DS blew right through Algebra I and II and Geometry because he just "gets" math and he loves it, but this DS has a totally different brain. He doesn't hate math but it's definitely not something he's going to spend the rest of his life doing. If he doesn't get to calculus before college, I'm really ok with that and he'll be in good company with a lot of other students whose gifts lie outside the math realm. :)

I messaged Dr. Wile on FB about this over the summer and he said that the labs in the DDC book were better and he switched things around to put atoms first. He said obviously he'd like me to buy his new book and he thinks it's an improvement over the 2nd ed :) but if I already had the 2nd ed on hand there was really no reason content-wise to switch to DDC. He absolutely could not/would not recommend the 3rd ed from Apologia because of errors and extraneous unrelated religious content, so from that I infer that DDC is similar in religious content to the 2nd ed. HTH!

I found this one whose website claims "light therapy without the risk of eye damage" http://www.sunnexbiotech.com/ ... but it's $400. :eek: Anyone have any experience with this one?

Thank you for this. I had not read about that yet. I will look into it before I make a decision.

I was wanting to see if a light therapy box/lamp would help me have more energy and not feel so blah during the fall/winter months. I have not been officially diagnosed with SAD, but am self-medicating. ;) Anyone have any recommendations for me? Features I need to look for, brands that are good, etc? I'm heading out the door but will check back later for any replies. Thanks in advance!

http://online.seterra.net/en/ It has a downloadable version too. My DS uses it about once a week to keep sharp on different countries and capitals.

We do MOH similarly to kirstenhill. We do history 4x/week. We almost never do the activities. Year 1 - Vol I & 1st quarter of Vol II Year 2 - rest of Vol II and Vol III through Jamestown Year 3 - rest of Vol III and Vol IV through Civil War - this is the year in our 4 year cycle that election year will hit so we will also do a unit on elections and government for the younger kids as well as some state history while the high schooler does US Government Year 4 - rest of Vol IV - the youngers will do some US geography and states and capitals stuff while the high schooler does Economics 2nd & 6th graders use the MOH coloring pages while we read and discuss the lesson and also the timeline figures from Homeschool in the Woods on a wall timeline. 2nd 6th & 8th graders all do the MOH maps. Supplements: 6th & 8th graders read Human Odyssey and History of US. 10th grader uses World History Detective and Critical Thinking in US History as his graded output for high school. All of them read various literature selections to go along with the lessons.

This is what our goal is too. We all sing a hymn together first, then I put things in the rotation that don't fit neatly into any other of the "subjects" we do regularly ... devotionals, apologetics, art and music appreciation, poetry, manners, etc. Some of the materials we're currently working with are: Who Is God? series Philosophy for Kids Children's Book of Art Harp & Laurel Wreath & misc Poetry for Young People books 365 Manners Kids Should Know Story of the Orchestra

We like Visual Link Spanish here. I have Levels 1, 2, & 3 and then he's going to do Destinos after that for some more practice with understanding native speakers. It's not terribly inexpensive, but it is definitely independent and it helps them practice their spoken Spanish. It's a software program, so you have to download it, but it's not online.

Haven't used the Queen stuff. We like MOH. I'm not Catholic (used to be ... still have a lot of love and respect for the Catholic church) and I think it's very Catholic friendly. I alter the pace heavily and supplement too but I like it as a spine. It does jump around a little bit like SOTW but I think she does bring out the "big picture" as well.

I had my husband poke around a little bit and see what he could figure out. Turns out the little search bar on the toolbar at the top right of the screen was set to yahoo search instead of google. I guess that must be the difference because when I went to the google search directly it came up with all the innocuous stuff the rest of you found. I didn't realize you'd get such drastically different results with a yahoo search vs a google search!

It was google. We have parental controls from opendns and if I click on the links that pop up then it denies me entrance to the site, but the links still showed up on the search. I don't use any computers other than this one and my tablet. Well, I guess the library once or twice but the last time was ages ago. So I don't think so?

We do have parental controls on this computer, but still the first sites that came up were all p*rn! And I'm primarily the one who uses this computer (hubby uses only his laptop at work and his phone, kids mostly use their laptop) and I promise I'm not the raunchy one! LOL Luckily I didn't have images on. :)

Yikes! Thank goodness my kids weren't around. I think I need to go clear my search history now ... :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I tell them the point of a lab report is for someone who hasn't read the experiment instructions in the book - in this case, me :) - to be able to read the report and figure out how what happened and to replicate it on their own if they want to. The following is how I grade their lab reports ... YMMV. Each lab is worth 10 points. 1 point for objective/purpose - What do they expect to discover or learn? Usually about 1 sentence 1 point for hypothesis - Must be an in/then statement 1 point for accurate materials 1 point for accurate procedure 2 points for data and observations - measurements, sketches 1 point for results - What did the data show? - could include chart or graph 3 points for discussion/conclusion - Usually a paragraph answering these questions: Was the hypothesis supported? Why or why not? What errors could have caused the results? How does this relate to what they read in the text?

Very good point. You're probably right!

Our drama troupe alternates funny plays with serious plays. Serious ones include Pride and Prejudice and Nicholas Nickelby and this year they're doing A Midsummer Night's Dream. One of the funny ones was The Mouse that Roared, I can't remember the others. That's the high school group. The middle school group has done A Little Princess, The Red Shoe, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, and this year it's Stuart Little.

I just have my kids use the notebook as more of a study guide for themselves. They grade their own OYO questions and if they get them wrong they're expected to figure out why. They know they're responsible for all the info in the notebook because it will likely be on the test, but I don't grade anything except the tests and the lab reports. For those, I use the guidelines in the front of the lab section that tells them what type of information to include in each section. Sorry, I know that doesn't answer your question exactly, but maybe it would make you less concerned about what to grade! :)