Space station
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Posts posted by Space station
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6th and 7th grades here. I agree with everyone else who has said "whenever they are ready."
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You can order the unit set, or order each piece individually. There is no price difference.
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I'd like a textbook that might be at or close to college level reading. This is where my kids are for comprehension. I've found SWB too far below their reading level and if I recall, Human Odyssey may be as well.
Sorry I didn't clarify this earlier.
I think you are confusing her elementary SOTW books with the high school books like History of the Ancient World. They have a much higher reading level.
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I agree! Do bio together and skip physical science. ETA- However, it is doable for a motivated student if that is what she wants to do. My 8th grader is doing Earth Science and Biology this year, so it can be done, but certainly not necessary.
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Ellen McHenry's The Elements would fit the bill.
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This might be something that your daughter would really like for Greek.
I had one daughter use MP Greek Alphabet book, and one use Greek Code Cracker. Either will get her fluent with the alphabet. Only my younger daughter who used the MP Greek Alphabet book has continued to study it. We used Alpha is for Anthropos along with it. First of all, it is a beautiful book. There is a simple song for each letter, a teachers guide, and a coloring book if your kid likes that sort of thing (not for my kiddo).
After The Greek Alphabet book and Alpha is for Anthropos, we moved on to Elementary Greek. Yup, 15 min per day. However, my daughter is learning and retaining it. All of the memory work is bible memorization.
This is my suggestion for German:
I think it would work fine even without you having a background in it. I speak German, so I have always just read simple German children's books to my kids or sang German songs to them. I just wanted them to be familiar with the sounds if they ever decided to study it. So far, no takers, but maybe someday...
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We took a year and a half to do Latina Christiana before First Form (half of 4th and all of 5th grades). It has made FFL this year a piece of cake.
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I emailed the Writing the Classical Way folks this morning about 8am to ask for the teacher's resources for this program. They emailed me back in about 30 minutes with the complete teacher's answer key (208 pages) in PDF, as well as Essay prompts for each chapter for free. Now I will have my own workbook copy to refer to on the iPad without having to look over my daughter's shoulder. She also included these scheduling tips, which I will copy here for anyone else who might be considering the program.
"As far as pacing, we wrote the books with more material than we could cover in one year to allow us to pick and choose based on our students' abilities. Generally, we taught the first two-thirds of the Ancient workbook in 7th grade and the last two-thirds of the medieval workbook in eighth grade, covering each chapter in 2-4 weeks.
For chapter 2, I would recommend choosing about half the exercises to do, and then move on to the rest of the book unless your children are really interested in the chapter. (When Eileen teaches this curriculum, she does half the chapter in 7th grade and the other half in 8th grade.)
Appendix A can be taught at your discretion--some years we have classes that need a basic grammar refresher, so on years that we teach the appendix, it usually comes anywhere between chapters 3 and 8. "
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Thanks for your help, Chrysalis! I received the books yesterday, and they do look like they will work well for my daughter. Some WWS1 review (a good thing), but then lots of new skills to develop. I was a little hesitant about the biblical material you mentioned, but they seem to be truly approached as writing models rather than trying to teach a certain doctrine. Was that your impression, too?
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To answer two quick questions:
VanDiver is excellent on audio. We actually found the DVD's a bit distracting. Nothing wonderful in them, just her talking at a podium. The audio allowed both Ds and I to focus on what she was saying far more than what she was doing with her face, body, stance and such. After two shots with the video, we finished up all the rest in audio. This year we get to do Herodotus and will have listened to all of them. Ds did not get to listen to the Tragedies. He found them boring and I was fast forwarding sections which got a bit too adult. He can listen to that one later. I greatly enjoyed it.
As for the Guidebooks: Each one has a similar format - at least of the dozen or so we have seen - where there is a summary of the lecture, then a bit of an outline, them discussion questions, then continued reading. Some have required reading if the lecture is directly referencing material such as the Iliad/Odyssey ones or Shakespeare and such. Most do not have required reading. Our library has dozens of the courses, so I have looked through many, but rarely find us using them. I almost always use the discussion questions, and make a Word document of all of them before I return the discs. They are really nice for essays and discussions or to see much larger themes. They have been good teaching tools for Ds and also good for me to be sure I am hitting or focusing on appropriate information. The outline section is completed in a couple different ways depending on the instructor. You can tell that different instructors think a out how they organize their material differently. Some do bulletpoints. Some do short paragraphs. Some do much longer paragraphs. If you are wanting the course to teach your student how to take notes, the guidebook could be very helpful. It would be an excellent way to "self check" or to open dialog about what was relevant to the student vs the instructor. Are the guidebooks necessary? Hardly. If you can acquire one for ten bucks or less, go for it. We are not in that place yet, so I merely use the questions. In the coming years, I might start having Ds summarize and then a year or so later begin taking notes. At that point, they are going to have a much larger place in our schooling.
This is nice to hear! I've been collecting the Van Diver lectures for free on Audible with my Amazon credits whenever I get them. Of course, that doesn't give me the guidebooks, but I'm hoping interlibrary loan will enable me to pull out the discussion questions like you suggest.
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Our local university classics professor, and family friend, wrote this book on Ancient Persia which came out last year.
http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Persia-Concise-History-Achaemenid/dp/0521253691
In case anyone has a kid with a specific interest in going deeper with this particular ancient culture, consider this option. It is written for college level, but is very readable. (@250 pages, paperback)
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I had my 8th grader take the real ACT in December for practice. It was a good experience for her and she scored much higher than I expected. If you want to give her a similar experience that won't be as advanced, you could look into the ACT Explore tests (geared at the 8th grade level) or Aspire test (which is for 9th graders). Either is supposed to predict how a student will do on the ACT in their junior year. I don't know if that is really how it works out, but that is how they are billed.
However, you could just do a test prep book yourself, grade it and save a lot of money. :)
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Who is HBC?
Sorry. Homeschool Buyers Coop.
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Welcome, Alim! I have been straddling both worlds between online classes and WTM approach. I think you will find that quite a lot of us on the board do a mixture of things. I'm sure someone who follows WTM more closely than I do will weigh in, but I just wanted to give you a welcome and encouragement. You can absolutely follow the guide, but you will probably find that you need to tweak things for your family. All the best!
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We used:
Knight, Jones Field College Physics for 9th grade algebra based physics
Chang General Chemistry: The essential concepts for 10th grade chem
Campbell and Reece, Biology: Concepts and Connections for DD' 8th grade bio
Alternatives:
Giancoli is another good algebra based physics text. There are many others, and they are virtually indistinguishable in coverage and presentation.
Campbell Exploring Life is a notch below C&C and a nice high school level text.
For Earth science, I like Tarbuck.
For astronomy, I like Chaisson.
I have not found Teacher Manuals useful. I had one for physics (since I am an instructor), and it was basically a fat book on how to teach those things in a classroom, what demonstrations to do, how to guide students, pedagogical issues. What you would want is not the TM but the Solutions Manual.
There are student solution manuals available for many textbooks; they would have half of the problems. That is entirely sufficient, you can simply assign a selection of those problems. Chem and phys texts have a large number of end of chapter problems to allow instructors to vary assignments; they are not intended to be assigned in their entirety, that would be nuts.
Which edition on Chaisson do you recommend? Is it necessary to get the most recent since the information about astronomy is changing so quickly?
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When you figure it out, let me know.
My dd never wants to sound like she is "bragging" so she will gloss over any accomplishments or not include them when writing or talking about herself. This is fine in everyday conversation but when applying for a scholarship program, not so great.
This is a huge issue for us. My daughter was working on an essay for a scholarship to a figure skating camp this morning. It is so hard to get them to feel free to "toot their own horn."
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Thank you for sharing this!
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Thank you for this. I didn't word it well. My concern is that the only option with Derek Owens may be AP Calculus and we definitely don't want to do that. If that is the case, I am not sure what we will do for calculus, because that is one class I'll just say up front that I can't teach. I'll try nearly everything else. :tongue_smilie:
How about Thinkwell's regular Calculus course? HBC is about to have a 1/2 price sale next week.
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We are there this year and I don't want to ever repeat it.
We could do:
- Marine/Earth Science (homegrown-plan to do some travel around state -fieldwork?)
- Precalculus/Calculus (both through Derek Owens except if it's only AP Calculus, then ?)
- English 12 (homegrown w/ Lukieon writing component)
- AP Spanish (PAHS)
- US History (homegrown w/some contests?)
- AP Government - I could do this, but it would benefit ds more if he had someone besides me to talk to. I have to check for discussion component at PAHS.
I really don't think you need to do AP Calc next year to show rigor. Just taking Calculus is showing rigor in and of itself. There is nothing wrong with taking regular Calc and then taking Calc again in college. It makes for a sane freshman year, with one class that first semester that is familiar, IMO. (Speaking as a former Engineer who took Calc in high school (not AP), and then in college.)
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There is LOF Chemistry for high school. The math she would need would be the ability to do conversion factors, which is usually covered in PreAlgebra. This would be a very light chemistry course without labs, and Fred is fun. Two lessons per week to cover the book in one semester.
Another way to go would be to do a kitchen chemistry if she likes cooking. MIT open courseware has 2 of these. They are seminars, not intended to take a full semester, but might work as such for your dd.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/special-programs/sp-287-kitchen-chemistry-spring-2009/
You could do both Fred and kitchen chemistry if she likes topic and the approach.
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If your DS is ready for Algebra, then no, I do not think he needs to do the Pre-Algebra books. And I certainly would skip the Pre-A with Econ book. With my younger daughter we did just the math in it and read the lessons together so that we could talk about why we disagreed with the author. My older daughter did the Pre-A with Bio as a review after a traditional PS Pre-A, and then went into Fred Algebra. HTH!
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Oh, wow. They do look interesting! That Algebra and Trigonometry book looks like it combines much of Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 and Trig into one book and ties them all together. I may have to look at these more closely. Has anyone used them? They look pretty new.
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Have you done elements already? I would do that before carbon chemistry. It's a lot of fun!
Yes, we did Elements last summer, and I know that Carbon Chemistry follows it. But what about the Botany, Cells, and Brain books? Anybody have a suggestion for the order of these, or doesn't it matter at all?
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We're doing it now. I found the teacher's edition at McKay's books, which sealed the deal. In looking through the TE, I was able to match a lot of the non-kitchen chemicals needed with a Thane and Kosmos kit, so that has worked well. I do think it would be better in a group, but it's a good fit for her. She's also doing Uzinggo Chem, LOF Chem, and some bio chem stuff as well.
Does LOF Chem have any experiments? If so, Is there a list of supplies needed for them?
Has anyone used Commonsense Composition from CK-12?
in Logic Stage & Middle Grade Challenges
Posted
I looked through it, but there was something that I hated about the way they taught something - grammar I think? So I deleted it from my kindle.