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Momto6inIN

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Everything posted by Momto6inIN

  1. This is what I do too. Sometimes that average comes down when I add in daily work and sometimes it goes up, so I understand the OP's struggle. But that is the policy I decided on when we started so I want to be consistent.
  2. @summerreading and @Mom21 I realize my comments sound snippy and condescending. That wasn't my intent, so please forgive me! I just think that course descriptions provided by a curriculum provider exist to sell a particular product to us, as homeschool parents who have already chosen a somewhat off the beaten path education for our kids. So they are tailored for that purpose. And that's a very different purpose than the course descriptions that we provide to colleges in our order to "sell" our student to someone who likely is pretty firmly entrenched in traditional education. So our descriptions should be tailored for our particular purpose as well. Please feel free to disregard my opinions 🙂
  3. When I say basic programming, I mean reeeeeeeally basic - they play around with Scratch and NXT Legos and do CodeMonster. And I have them create a website. Just enough so that they have an idea of what's involved. My oldest D'S got into that all on his own and I never had to require it, but my next 2 never would have touched it if I didn't make them. Not that they hated it, just that it would not ever have occurred to them to try it. And I think middle school is the time to explore new things like that, esp since a basic understanding of how computers work is so integral to modern living. Power point - I just tell them to make a presentation on something instead of what I would normally make a writing assignment and let them have at it. If you have a basic understanding of how Word and Excel work you can help them figure out Power Point when they get stuck, but honestly they'll probably do just as good or better playing around with it on their own. Study skills - in the past I've mostly just helped them learn to take notes and made them practice by listening to Great Courses lectures but this next middle schooler I have I'm going to try to do something more formal like Victus Study Skills.
  4. This first paragraph confuses me a little bit ... what are the presentation portfolios for? Just for your records? Admissions officers at most colleges are going to spend at most 15 minutes on each student's *entire* application, unless they are applying for an art/music performance program or an extremely competitive Ivy League type university. I seriously doubt they are going to look up the scope and sequence for Video Text and try to figure out how it compares to traditional programs. And most applications are online. They are not going to look at a 24 page hard copy portolio from freshman year. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you? As for the course descriptions - again, are they for your own records? Or for admissions? The portions I bolded above seem ... a little condescending ... and I imagine an admissions officer would think it off-putting to have a parent telling them what is and is not advanced or college level or honors when they almost certainly consider themselves experts on education. Just tell them what topics the student studied and let that speak for itself. That doesn't mean we need to make our kids' educations look just like public schooled students' ... but that if we want them to get into college we might need to "package" our nontraditional methods in such a way that it makes it as easy for the admissions officer as possible to compare and make a decision.
  5. No, just Algebra I and II and Geometry. I don't designate any of our courses as honors unless we use a college level text or they take an AP exam, mostly because I think the term is pretty meaningless when applied to homeschoolers' transcripts. VT Geometry I think could honestly be considered an honors class because of all the proofs, but Algebra is just a normal Algebra course, IMO.
  6. 7th and 8th grade is when my kids start: Making lunch for all of us at home Vocab instead of spelling Doing a few subjects completely on their own with just discussion with me Personal fitness in the mornings before morning meeting Formal lessons in study skills Required basic programming and website building Career exploration Standardized testing to see where they might need work before SATs and college admissions Science fair project with Excel spreadsheets for data Reel Math video challenge to get them working in a collaborative group on a project Creating power point presentations
  7. IEW is a program that supplies the "what" to write about so they can focus on the "how" to write about it. Some of it is based on classic writing (I've seen Aesop and Hans Chrstian Anderson in there) but most of it is based on just regular writing from other people.
  8. I don't use the honors designation except for (1) AoPS because that stuff is hard or (2) using a college level text that is readily recognizable to those in the field combined with some type of research assignment and presentation/paper or (3) taking an AP test. Quite a lot of my kids' high school level work could be considered honors level IMO, but I just don't think it's very meaningful to a college admissions person when homeschoolers (over)use this designation.
  9. Book A http://A History of US - Concise Edition - Volume A: Prehistory to 1800 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064RXJ2O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_m5PiDb2FTNJ2X Book B http://A History of US - Concise Edition - Volume B: 1790-1877 by Joy Hakim (2011-05-04) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1601531826/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_F7PiDb5170Q2M Book C http://A History of US - Concise Edition - Volume C: 1865-1932 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00652WHWQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_58PiDb7RVR6CQ Book D http://A History of US - Concise Edition - Volume D: 1929-present by Joy Hakim (2011-05-04) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FIXQ58Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_I6PiDbDSAAZ7C
  10. We didn't use the guides, but History of Us was a big hit here! My 2 DS's were in 6th and 8th and they both did it and they still remember things they read in those books 6 years later! We used the 4 volume concise edition not the 10 volume set, which is a lot more manageable in a single school year. Basically they read, we discussed, and they wrote a research paper on a topic of interest. The Oxford guides might be great, I don't know, but they certainly aren't necessary.
  11. That wasn't meant as a slam, just that I think matter of fact straight up and to the point is probably more what admissions officers are looking for 🙂
  12. I don't generally like course descriptions from websites, I think they sound too much like a commercial 🙂 When we used VT, I wrote a separate one for each year and called one Algebra 1 and the other Algebra 2: "A year long high school level course meeting 5 times a week. Evaluated by daily exercises, quizzes, and unit exams. Covered (insert titles of the units we finished that year here) with an emphasis on solving word problems. Text used: Video Text Algebra modules X - Y. Credit: 1.0 Grade: X
  13. I posted on the thread that Scout linked, but I'll put it here too. My 6th grade DD is finishing up All About Spelling, reading lit from a list (historical fiction and science primarily), going through 1 lit guide, Analytical Grammar season 1 followed by IEW's Student Writing Intensive B, and Wordly Wise. I am teaching AAS and AG and watching the IEW video with her, but the rest of her LA is on her own. Math is mostly with me still because she has a hard time focusing on that (Math Mammoth). For science she reads the lesson to me and I ask her questions, then she does the experiment on her own (God's Design). Her history (Human Odyssey with written chapter summaries), geography (Trail Guide to World Geography), Logic (Building Thinking Skills and Mind Benders), and Typing (typing.com) are completely on her own. All of my curricula are separate pieces because I have a small curriculum research addiction 😉 and I enjoy pulling the pieces together. I don't think that means anything as far as the quality of education.
  14. We didn't like the Van Cleave books - the experiments were fun but there is almost no explanation of the science behind them. While I like the text portions of Usborne, the experiments rarely work well. If someone made a book that put the best of both together, it would be great! But so far I haven't found that unicorn ...
  15. Is he just making lots of careless errors? Or does he not understand the concepts? If he's not understanding the concepts in MM, I would try a different program and re-do prealgebra. But if he's ok on the concepts then maybe the following will help ... My 2nd DS conceptually understood math concepts but floundered with both MM and Saxon. It was our 1st year hs'ing and since math wasn't his strong point and we were jumping in mid sequence his math was all over the place. Like I said, he understood the concepts but made tons of errors in arithmetic, negatives, and whatnot. I ended up giving him LoF for a year (Fractions, Decimals and Percents, Pre Alg with Bio) and then started him with Video Text Algebra and he did well, although we had to go very slowly. I would not recommend LoF in most situations as anything other than a supplement, but it did save his sanity that year because he was so down on himself about math. It rebuilt his confidence and made him not hate math quite so much anymore. But I wouldn't use it for anyone who is shaky on the conceptual side of math, just for those who need a little bit more time to let the concepts brew in their heads and practice with them a bit more. Hopefully some of the math gurus will weigh in as well, but that's how I got my non-mathy son headed on the right path in high school. He did eventually do well in Alg 1 and 2, Geom, and now Precalc. He's just slow and still sometimes makes silly errors, but he does know his math.
  16. We really enjoyed Great Courses for World History - History of the Ancient World and Foundations of Western Civ I also think an Economics course is a good idea, although maybe your Comparative Gov covered enough of that. We liked Great Courses for Econ too https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/economics-3rd-edition.html
  17. Good point! These would be by invitation only to a few select families from church that we know well, so I'm not too terribly worried about it, but that is definitely something to consider.
  18. One thing I noticed when my oldest 3 were going through middle school was that they all seemed to have a few years where it seemed like they "weren't doing enough" and were often at loose ends. A friend of mine's husband wanted briefly to put their son in public school because he "just wasn't busy enough" so I don't think it was just my kids who experienced this. But I'm glad we persevered and that we didn't try to add too much additional academics at that point because those 7th-9th grade years are all when they all found "their thing" - something to be passionately interested in - programming, music and video composition, creative writing. If I had added in more "school" stuff like I was tempted to, they wouldn't have had the free time to figure that out and dig into it in a self motivated way. Just a thought I have every time I see someone asking if their middle schooler is doing enough ... please disregard if it doesn't apply to you 🙂
  19. That's awesome! The rep I spoke to pre-admission didn't even know that hs'ed students in Indiana don't necessarily get a diploma or transcript issued by anyone other than the parent. She told me I just needed to tell his supervising school to send his transcript. She was ... less than helpful 😉 She probably wouldn't have known what to do if I'd whipped out my course descriptions lol!
  20. It's not fancy but I'm trying the Olay Regenerist stuff from Walmart and been happy so far with their cleansing pore scrub, so I'm going to try some moisturizer and eye cream next. I didn't like the new formula of the MK Time wise night and day solutions.
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