When I get together with my college roommates, a visit to a bookstore is always on the agenda. We browse and tell each other what we've read and talk about what looks good. We can easily kill 2 hours there.

K12's textbook Our Human Story is really good. It's secular but as a conservative Christian I haven't had a problem with it. I've had my non history buff kids just read and write a short chapter summary - very to the point. Or for my more history minded kids I've had them watch Great Courses videos (Foundations of Western Civilization and History of the Ancient World) and take notes from the videos and write a couple of term papers. Again, it's secular but I haven't had a problem with any of it.

Daily Geography for sure not, it's way too easy for high school, it's meant to be a K-6th resource. The Visits To books as written are designed to be done in 15-20 min once a week. I'm planning on having my 7th and 8th graders do 3 books each year and doing 15-20 min 4 days a week, which isn't anywhere near enough for a high school credit. I guess it could be a world geography credit if your high schooler did all 6 books in 1 year and also do all the extra projects where they ask them to compare the countries on various measures and keep a running spreadsheet. The required books Material World and What the World Eats are high school level reading, so that would be fine I think.

I totally understand where you're coming from! I held off on buying IEW for years because of the time and money investment required. But my DS's writing was a mess and I didn't know what else to try in order to get him to limit and organize his thoughts, so I took the plunge. I don't think I would have been able to implement the IEW system and see results with my kids without watching the TWSS. That doesn't mean you couldn't, but I personally would not have been able to get the most out of it without watching Mr. Pudewa go through the steps and without actually writing the assignments myself (which is an important part of learning the program). The notes are all there, and the syllabus is pretty detailed, but seeing him and hearing him and then doing it myself brought it all together for me in a way that just reading through it would not have. It was a very good investment of time for me as a teacher.

Your son's application should have a place to give a Ferpa waiver to add a counselor that can contribute to his application. When that is done, the counselor (presumably you 😊) will get an email invite to create a counselor account in the Common App. You will then have a place to input a school profile, a counselor letter, and an official transcript (which all students have) and since your son will have indicated he was a homeschool student on his application there will also be a place for you to provide info re your philosophy of education and motivation for homeschooling, your grading and evaluation policies, and any outside class experience your student has had, and also to provide any additional "transcripts" (usually course descriptions). Your son's dashboard will keep track of whether his counselor's portion is finished or not as well as the status of his applications. Some of the aspects of the Counselor portion will repeat info on the student's portion of the application, but some of it is different. I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that no student's application is considered complete without a counselor. Can I ask why you are doing your son's application instead of him doing it himself? Most neurotypical kids who are college ready should be able to fill theirs out on their own, although with you available for questions and help, of course.

Haven't used the online subscription service (we have the old cd's too) but the homeschool version came with pdf's for written exercises which the regular version didn't have. I'm using it for myself not my kids, so I'm not doing the written work. But if I was going to give them a credit for it, I would want them to be doing some written output.

Snap Circuits, Thames and Cosmos Physics Discovery Kit, and Thames and Cosmos CHEM 500 are what we've used and liked

My oldest D'S did both Calc A and B in 12th, but he is very STEM oriented. My next DS will complete pre-calc in 12th. He started it in 11th but is slow at math so by the time he's done it will have taken him 1.5 years to finish it. He did have enough trig by then to do well on the math portion of the SAT at the end of junior year. I anticipate the rest of my kids will be like 2nd DS as math is not their favorite subject, although they do well at it. They just are not willing to spend more than an hour a day on it like oldest DS was, and I'm fine with that. He was an anomaly 😊 I take a lot of comfort from what @regentrude said once on here somewhere that it was a lot more important to make sure Algebra skills were solid than to get through calculus in high school.

We aim for 6 hours per day. Sometimes math takes more than its alotted hour and sometimes science does too, but other times the other subjects don't take as long, so it all averages out. When my oldest took AP courses he spent 2 hours per day per course, but he liked that pace. My 2nd one does not, and he spends a lot more time on speech/debate and drama than the oldest did. I have absolutely no way of knowing how many hours he spends on those 2 ECs outside of class/rehearsal, but it's a lot.

Repeating what everyone else has said ... accreditation is not an issue, transcript was easy to create, and we had no problem getting into college of choice. Record keeping and figuring out what courses to have them take is more tricky, but you only have to do one year at a time and it's not too hard after you have a basic plan that takes into account most college requirements. To be perfectly honest, filling out the Common app as the counselor for the first time was a lot more stressful and time intensive than actually homeschooling my first high schooler for 4 years! The second time around the Common app was much easier.

My 5th grader was able to read Sutcliff's versions, if that helps. I think esp if you did them as read alouds as Lori D suggests then middle and high schoolers could follow the story well enough regardless of their reading level.

Starting in 7th grade my kids do personal fitness for at least 15 min every morning (starting in 7th because we only do the private school PE class in K-6th). They can go for a run, walk/jog on the treadmill, do an exercise video, or do a workout from their fitbit.

Totally agree!!!

I did not know this! That was the time frame I was born in, so now that makes a little bit more sense to me that she was worried about that.

You're both probably right. Good points! That doesn't make me any less annoyed at my mother though 😂

It has always driven me crazy that my parents named me a longer name but never intended to actually call me that name - they intended to call me the shortened version from the very start. But according to my mom, they wanted me to have the longer name "in case I ever became President and needed a more professional sounding name" LOL So on all official documents I am named X, but when someone calls me by that name (e.g. in a doctor's office or a government agency or what have you) I never actually realize they are talking to me. It's annoying. Why on earth would I all of a sudden after a lifetime of being X, would I all of a sudden want to be called Y just because of a certain job? It's not like I would all of a sudden one day be plopped into the Oval Office with no buildup of other professional or political experiences ... so at what point exactly would a shortened name no longer be appropriate? When I run for PTA chairman? School board? Mayor? And who decides what a "professional sounding name" is anyway??? OK, sorry, rant over 😂

I've never hs'ed with only young kids because we started when my oldest was 13 and my 5th was 1.5, so I don't know how I would have structured my day had I hs'ed with all littles. But I just had my 6th and this is the daily routine I'm trying to get into right now. It would be nice to fit some exercise for me into this schedule, but so far that hasn't happened and I'm not willing to give up my sleep to get up earlier for it either 🙂 7:00 Wake up and nurse the baby, check and respond to email and facebook, check the news, eat breakfast, get out meat for supper, start a load of laundry, shower and get ready - kids make their own breakfasts ~8:45 Start school with morning meeting when baby is ready for a little nap and then do school with somebody all morning long - I have a list of subjects/kids prioritized from must-get-done-no-matter-what right on down to wow-wouldn't-it-be-nice-if-we-ever-actually-got-to-that and I plan to attack it line by line each day til it's time to go on to the next thing - whatever doesn't get done from that list by the end of the day will just have to wait til the next day Noon to 2:00 - older kids make lunch and do dishes and I swap out the laundry and we all have a big break and the older kids all play outside or do their own thing - I think this would probably be where I would put in exercise if I ever get that ambitious - however it's much more likely that I will call it a win if I end up just getting some fresh air outside with the baby and have some time to decompress from the morning 2:00 - hopefully the baby will be ready for some more napping while I do more school with the above mentioned list of priorities 5:00 - start supper and fold laundry on the table so it has to get put away before we eat - older kids do dishes and sweep the kitchen floor after we eat 7:00 - grade any papers and get things ready for school the next day 9:00 - try to unwind and spend some time with DH This is what I'm hoping to do 4 days/week. The 5th is our out of the house day when we do our extra curriculars and grocery shop. You'll notice that there is no cleaning anywhere on this daily schedule that *I* do. My kids do the bare minimum that needs to be done to keep the household running and to teach them basic chores, but that's it. That's because I can only do so many things and do them well, and I've consciously decided that cleaning is not one of the things I'm going to do well during this season of my life. I am going to cook healthy meals for my family (or provide healthy food for them to cook themselves). I am going to educate them to the absolute best of my ability. I am going to make sure I have time to foster my relationships. And I am going to make sure that we all have clean clothes to wear. But I'm not Wonder Woman and I can't do it all. For cleaning other than the stuff the kids do during the week, we all sometimes take 2 hours on a Saturday when we have nothing else going on and I just say, "OK, kids, we're going to get as much done on this list as we possibly can in the next 2 hours, and then we'll stop. Go!" and we call that good as far as cleaning goes.

I don't have any BTDT experience with out of the box science credits, so I can't reassure you with authority that it will be OK transcript wise. But if he also has the 3 "normal" lab credits, I can't imagine that a fire science credit would count against him. I think it sounds like a great idea to highlight his interests!

Agreeing that the WTM guidelines are very, very, very ambitious. Not necessary at all for a good solid 2nd grade education! Here's what my 2nd grader will be doing this year: Phonics with AAR and reading out loud to me (20 min) Spelling with AAS (10 min) Writing/Composition with copywork (20 min about once a week) - she narrates to me about what she's learned in history or science, I write it down, she copies it Math facts practice (10 min) Reading to herself from a book list that includes historical fiction from the time period we are studying (30 min) Handwriting (5 min) Math with MM (30 min) Grammar with Daily Grammar (5 min) History with SotW (20 min) - we do the coloring pages and the maps, but not usually any of the activities Science with Magic School Bus videos and experiment kits (30 min a couple times per week) Music with Reading Music Activities book (10 min) Art with Artistic Pursuits (30 min once a week) PE with a private school class (40 min once a week) It's a lot of "subjects" but none of them take a lot of time. The times I listed above are all on the maximum end of how long each should take. Usually we are done with a lesson before that time allotment.

"Best" probably depends on your DS's learning style and your teaching style. We've had success with both the Wordsmith series and IEW. Wordsmith worked best for my intuitively organized writers, and IEW worked best for my kids who need help with organization. I personally liked IEW best as a teacher because although I am a decent writer myself, I needed hand holding to know how to communicate how to do what I did intuitively to my kids who did not write well easily. Wordsmith has 3 levels - your 7th grader is probably beyond the Apprentice (1st book) and would probably do well with the Creative Writing book (2nd book) and the Craftsman book (3rd book) after that. I was pretty much just able to hand my kids the books and let them go at it with just input from me during the editing process. IEW requires a much bigger time investment as a teacher (and also $$$).

So after reading this thread I did some research and ended up competely revamping our geography plans LOL I am now the proud owner of the entire Visits To series and an Evan Moor workbook 😊 WTM should really get kickbacks from Amazon for all the click throughs and purchases these boards generate ...

I think that would be a helpful thing to add to textbooks and have no problem with it at all - why would I? But I guess I just don't think that anyone can ever know every little detail about something, especially someone else's bodily experience, and that doesn't mean they are stupid or not adequately educated. Especially when we're talking about elementary or middle school or even high school health education. Something is going to be left out, and I guess I just don't think that just because some men don't know everything there is to know about menstruation that means it's a problem that is contributing to sexual inequality or the patriarchy.

For K-6th: Artistic Pursuits All About Reading Handwriting without Tears Math Mammoth For 7th-12th: Analytical Grammar Video Text Apologia science (7th-12th, not the elementary series) Excellence in Literature Spelling, elementary science, history, writing/composition, elementary grammar have all been changed around a lot.

Well of course, I agree that covering menstruation should be included in a health class. But I'm not sure that covering the mechanics of it necessarily needs to include describing e.x.a.c.t.l.y. what it feels like to the male students. They learn that women have a menstrual flow, and that it generally happens at a somewhat predictable time of the month, so it's not like someone has to be a completely uneducated idiot to think that flow = controllable, sort of like the flow of urine. I don't think it's a failure of his education to not have a complete grasp of some aspect of another person's bodily experience that he has not personally experienced.

Medela nursing tanks from Target. I love them so much I will continue to wear them when DD is weaned. I'm an E or an F, so not humongous, but not small either. They are more comfortable than any other bra I've worn, except maybe the ones from Kindred Bravely that I will also continue to wear after weaning. At this stage of my life after nursing 6 kids, the whole perkiness ship has sailed and I'm more after comfort than support 🤣