There is a *lot* of repetition between levels, especially in the grammar and poetics books. It is to the degree where a grammar book might add about two new things and otherwise be a complete repeat of the previous year’s information. Plus, there are 100 sentences a year for analysis, which get tiring after a while, especially when there is barely anything new level after level. I’ve said before that repetition kills my kid, and this definitely wore on her quickly. Island level is fun. Several of the books are told in a lighthearted story format, and they’re silly, which is always a bonus for my kid. Town level drops some of the story format. Voyage level leaves it behind entirely. DD still really enjoyed the vocabulary portion. It’s one of her things. But she took Lukeion’s word roots class after doing the first three levels of MCT, and I think that probably rounds her out for Latin and Greek roots pretty well. Continuing on, she’s more likely to enjoy etymology or linguistics classes.

Another vote for not getting too attached to plans. I’ve made and thrown out so many plans for language arts that it’s completely ridiculous. We’ve now done the first three levels of MCT, and while DD and I both started out loving it, we’re both pretty over it now. I don’t know whether we’ll go back and try the upper levels some time in the future or not, but my plans to continue using it throughout are definitely scrapped. I owned a couple of the History Odyssey Level 2 guides a while back and sold them. Not enough literature and a rather dry approach for us.

When we were shopping for DD, we went with finding a PC with at least 8GB RAM. We did prefer a laptop, so I was particularly looking for a solid state drive. From there, we simply went with the least expensive option that fit. Despite being a laptop, we treat it like a desktop most the time. It used to be hooked up to a separate monitor and keyboard, though at some point we stopped that and only have a separate mouse for it now. However, I’ve been surprised how often it was useful to have portability. She’s taken it with her on road trips when she would have online classes. She took it to the enrichment center a couple weeks ago because one of her classes was cancelled and she wanted to use the time to work on a project. It gets taken to the dining room table on occasion because it’s an easier space for people to gather around to work on collaborative projects. Basically, not all of schooling looks the same as it did when we first made the purchase, and I’m glad we have the flexibility of a laptop.

We separate out assigned reading from pleasure reading entirely. Assigned reading happens for school and is discussed either with me or in an online class. Pleasure reading is entirely free choice; I neither choose the books nor require a minimum level. I will often suggest books by requesting them from the library and dumping them in her book bin, but she is entirely welcome to ignore those suggestions. If she is ignoring a suggestion I really think she will enjoy, I might pick it up and describe it to her so she knows why I chose it, but she is still welcome to continue ignoring it. If I really feel that strongly about it, I’ll add it to our school time eventually.

I don’t have any great suggestions for you, but I will say that on days my DD forgets her ADHD medicine, solo AOPS work is a complete bust. The ability to think logically and stay on track is just not there unless she is being directly engaged by me or some other person. The online class format doesn’t work for her, probably in part because the meds are completely out of her system by the time the classes start and there’s no audio whatsoever, not even a chime or something when answers are pushed through to draw the kids’ attention back (she usually can manage online classes well even when unmedicated because of the interaction involved, but not these ones). The workload of the classes is high compared to what my kid needed. She had been managing fine with the Intro to Algebra book using the online videos and Alcumus, with good understanding. She decided to switch to the online Algebra A class because she wanted the official grade to qualify for a program she was applying for. The total workload for the class was probably about 2-3 times what she had been doing (Alcumus, plus about 10 additional questions in the same style as Alcumus, plus one writing question each week). The lower amount of work that she had been doing was sufficient for her, and the higher amount therefore felt like busywork to her. Shes been fairly independent since then. I sit with her while she does the initial learning from the book. She then goes to Alcumus until she masters every topic covered in that chapter.

Mathy games that actually got played for fun around here include Zeus on the Loose, Dragonwood, Kingdomino, Qwirkle, Qwixx, Yahtzee, Fill or Bust, and Set. Prime Climb was fine, but definitely a “school time” game for us. It was never chosen for fun. It basically plays like the game Sorry, but with more math.

This is exactly what I was going to suggest. My kid ended up skipping the Prealgebra book altogether, but she did watch the videos and then made it through nearly all of Algebra A on nothing but the videos and Alcumus for learning. It worked really well for her, and she and I were both sad that there were no videos for the rest of the Algebra book or classes past that.

I’ve seen Ben’s classes recommended by a few people; you were probably one of them. She did a 14-week dissections class last semester; I was plenty happy to outsource that aspect! I remember looking through a Bio textbook you had and thinking that she already knew the ecology, evolution, and genetics parts of the book, so I’m really happy to have found a way to cover just this one bit of Bio. She’s also going to take some of his genetics classes because she doesn’t believe me that she already knows it at the level required of high schoolers, but that’s because she really doesn’t understand what “high school level” actually is. Once she does a chemistry class, she’ll have covered all the standard high school sciences and I assume she’ll move to taking AP or DE levels of the classes when she’s actually high school aged. She knows for sure that she doesn’t want to touch a Physics class again until she has taken Calculus because she wants to actually be able to understand the math instead of simply using the formulas.

Lol, we don’t even have the current semester planned, let alone next year. The first half of this semester, DD is doing a whole pile of Athena’s classes for fun (Religions and Sustainable Development, Sherlock Holmes, Dragonology, Herpetology, Comparative World Mythology). She is practicing spelling words from the Scripps list. She is learning AOPS Counting and Probability from the book, though I doubt it will take her all semester. She actually already knows some of the C&P and some of the NT, so there’s a small chance we fit in both books this semester. She’s doing some fun Brave Writer and BW-esque writing projects right now. Oh, and she’s taking an hour of Homeschool Spanish Academy per week, so a super leisurely pace. Second half of this semester is up in the air. We’ll do more lightweight writing. AOPS as mentioned above. The homeschool spelling bee will be done. The Athena’s classes will all end. I’m thinking of taking a Python class through Harvard Extension for myself; the kid already knows everything covered in the first half but she may take the rest of the class over my shoulder after spring break. She’s taking a few of Ben Corey’s Bio classes on Outschool because she’s learned most of high school Bio through following random interests but hasn’t been randomly interested in cells. We’re unschool-ish, so around the beginning of March she needs to make some decisions about how to use her time. I require at least two full “core” classes per year right now. She wants to do American Sign Language (Blue Tent, Mr D, or a local class if one exists) for one of them. And then she’s thinking either AOPS Geometry at home or Clover Valley Chemistry or both. She knows she has to decide on at least the Chemistry by the end of February. Other stuff will be decided as we go along. We have absolutely no idea where we’ll be living next fall, so that adds a twist to our scheduling as we have no idea what our local opportunities might be, and we usually rely somewhat heavily on those when possible.

The personal circumstances changing my work timeline are not happy. They are probably shading my attitude, as is a lack of excitement about returning to my previous careers long term. It will be a long term need for employment, so I would honestly like to find something that fits better for me. I do not have ADHD, or at least I don’t think I do. I do have chronic depression and some anxiety, fairly well managed but which can sometimes present similarly to ADHD especially in regards to focus.

I had figured I had a few years yet to decide this, but life circumstances change and this may need to happen more now-ish. I haven’t worked in a good few years, so I’m basically starting over. I have a BA in psychology. College grades were not particularly good, so further education programs would be a challenge, plus while I like to learn I have really disliked formal schooling. My job history includes social services (managing a group home for at-risk teens and as a case manager and supervisor for CPS) and part-time massage therapy. I could return to either of these careers, but they don’t particularly appeal long term, and they don’t pay well. Really, my past education and work have little relationship to doing things I actually enjoy. I’m good at analytical stuff. I like puzzling things out. I’m good with numbers but have no math education beyond calculus. I love statistics and probability. I work well with people, and generally prefer to have people around me in some way (when not in a pandemic, working from home has no appeal and sounds isolating). I can write decently enough for most careers, though I don’t love writing. I like science, but again, my education ends at a year of college bio and chemistry. Super high stress environments are not a great fit, though I work fine pressure when needed. Not sure what other information would be helpful. Are there fields that are easier to get into that would be likely to appeal to me?

We have a cheap platform from Amazon, with a Sleep Number mattress. No issues here with the bed setup for sleep or any other activity.

YI’m seeking recommendation for online ASL classes. High school level preferred, though a class aimed at middle schoolers would work in this case as well. I’d hope the provider offered at least two consecutive years of classes, and have a preference for a deaf teacher though I’m flexible on that. For reasons specific to the child, community college is not an option. There’s also some question of where we will be living, so online classes are preferred to local classes. She strongly prefers structure for this over stringing together resources, so a class that meets online on a regular basis would be best.

I don’t think it’s fuzzy. She could easily tell you that there are two cookies left over. Or that everyone would get 3 2/7 of a cookie, even though she’d then go off in a tangent about how ridiculous it would be to attempt to divide the cookies into sevenths. And when she absolutely has to, she can even use whatever method she is using to convert that 2/7 to a certain amount of tenths, hundredths, etc. It’s just slow and painful. And she can glance at the fraction and *know* that it’s going to be slow and painful, which makes her drag her feet even more, making it slower and more painful than it needs to be. Meanwhile, I could whip out the algorithm and do it quickly. It’s about the only time she ever sees value in the algorithm, but still not nearly enough value to bother learning it.

For the longest time, she could only do division when I took the written problem and turned it into a word problem. She’d been doing real-life division for years before encountering it in a math book, so I was really surprised when she had this issue. She can work her way through when she needs to; it’s only when it doesn’t divide evenly that it hurts her. She had a problem that reduced to something like 23/7 and needed the answer rounded to the nearest something-or-other, stuff like that. Otherwise, she vastly prefers to think of all division as fractions, reduce as much as possible, then use partial quotients to finish. It works; it’s just slower. And, honestly, even though I find it likely she ends up in a math-heavy career, that type of division can be done by a calculator at that point, even if I don’t allow for the use of one now. 🙂

DD just finished the AOPS Intro Algebra book, enjoys math competitions and Epsilon Camp, and she *still* can’t remember the long division algorithm. I’ve decided to ignore the issue, and we’re both happier for it. It is extremely rare that she needs it as the vast majority of the time she can use other strategies. I think 2-3 times during the second half of the Algebra book, the algorithm would have come in handy and she asked permission to use a calculator to check her work before hitting the submit button on Alcumus. I assume she’ll learn it eventually, but thought I’d reassure you that it turns out to be a lot less necessary than one might think.

You may have already made your decision, but I can give information on Clover Creek, which DD did last year. It definitely includes labs and lab reports. There are quizzes and tests on a regular basis, and it was DD’s first experience with such, so she definitely had a learning curve on studying, being prepared, and what grades were. (I know your kids have had some experience with more traditional schooling, but mine had no idea that percentages translated to letter grades at all, lol.) The Algebra requirement is no joke; a kid who couldn’t manipulate equations well would really struggle. Jetta was excellent to work with. She knew DD’s age, and had young kids in class before (DD had been the youngest she’d ever had, when she was 9). She was used to communicating primarily with the parents for younger kids, but when I explained that I wanted to use her class as a “test class” to see what DD could handle on her own, she had no problem with treating DD like any high school student. (I think I only communicated with her once that school year, after the first test, to make sure she could read DD’s handwriting or whether or I needed to work with DD on using equation editors to type the math portions of the tests.) I had to put in some time with DD at the beginning of the year on how to organize her time and organize her work, but Jetta’s organization is so clearly laid out that DD was handling the class completely independently by the end of the first quarter.

They have never asked me this; I assume it is a newer question. When DD started about four years ago, many of the teachers simply didn’t have much English fluency. She therefore started with her teachers speaking Spanish 98% of the time. They would sometimes use English when she was struggling with a word. Maybe because that is what we have always expected from them, that is still what her teachers do - full Spanish, and we know they speak English because DD sometimes goes “um, uh, darn it, well, a plant... how am I supposed to say plant?”

We’ve used HSA for years, but at levels lower than high school. I also recommend scheduling with a variety of teachers and seeing who a particular kid clicks with. Some popular teachers didn’t work well for my daughter; some less popular teachers did. We like to keep one main teacher, and two or three in rotation as additional teachers. Therefore, my kid hears more than one speech pattern, talks to people with different interests (they chat a lot once they’ve covered the main lesson), and if a teacher leaves we don’t feel completely adrift. They’re very responsive to requests. In the four years we’ve used them, we’ve changed focus a few times, and they always immediately adapt. As for the writing, I note that when I took a foreign language in high school years ago, I probably did about 30 minutes of written work per week on average. Therefore, I actually find HSA pretty much in line with my expectations.

Wow, you can really tell the above was written pre-COVID, can’t you? We found a lovely private microschool, focused on Socratic discussion and hands-on work with a flexible attitude toward grade placement and class placement. It is amazing, but the week that we were going to put our deposit in was the week that everything started shutting down around here. DD continues to be homeschooled. All those lovely ideas for homeschooling? They’re not really accessible right now, either. We did do an arts-focused summer at home, and she discovered that she liked the idea much better in theory than in practice. She was relieved to return to a more academic setup. She wanted to do more online classes, and I was happy to have a short break from being the primary teacher, so this fall is far more outsourced than our norm. Current for fall: Math: Review the first half of AOPS Intro to Algebra book and then get started on the second half. Make some effort to work on mental math skills to see if any speed can be gained that way. This is the one thing that I’m really hands on with. English: online G3 Shakespeare Comedies class, Lukeion Witty Wordsmith word roots class, will do NaNoWriMo as usual Spanish: Twice/week with Homeschool Spanish Academy’s middle school level Other: Intro to Herpetology and Superstitions Around the world through Athena’s. Possibly learning some more robotics with the EV3. Our local homeschool enrichment center is taking precautions we find reasonable, so she is doing one day per week there: chess, Arduino, prehistory through dioramas, dissection lab, and magic tricks. Her jujitsu place is taking some precautions, though I’m still nervous about it. But, as mentioned in the quote above, regular exercise is needed for any level of self-regulation. Sparring only takes place with those already in your bubble, and the one friend she is allowed to have in-person contact with was interested, so they’re both going three times per week.

Have you seen the Suppose the Wolf Were an Octopus books from RFWP? They have sets of questions to go along with a selection of books, and the books in each grade range are selected primarily by interest level. They’re my go-to when I’m get stuck or in a rut with discussing books. Each set of questions is divided into six categories based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, ranging from simple comprehension questions up to prompts to recreate parts of the story for yourself.

I remember finally understanding that subtraction is just the adding of the opposite, and that division is simply multiplying by the reciprocal. That made all the rules make so much more sense to me! So, if I see something as simple as 9-7, my brain knows it can restate that as 9+(-7), and then it is easy to move things around because I know I can move the numbers around with addition. If it helps with the problem, I can now rearrange things to be -7+9, because that is still obviously valid in terms of the addition rules. I see division similarly. 12 divided by 3 is the same as 12 times 1/3. It is also the same as the fraction 12/3. If the rules for any way of thinking of that make more intuitive sense to me, I can think of the problem in that way. It is hard for brains to learn things in new ways. Even working my way through the AOPS books, it is easier to let my brain default back to what it already knew instead of always implementing new approaches. I know for my kid, she much preferred watching the videos in advance, before there was any expectation of working problems. She watched some sections repeatedly. It let the concepts have time to rattle around in her brain and sink in, and that works much better for her than having to immediately apply new learning.

I have actually used all or part of everything on your list. I may own too many math things. (Your proposed list, not your ruled out list.) Arbor Algebra - we only used part of the first book. It turned out not to be as good a fit for us as I hoped, but it could serve as a base Algebra program. This could be the program that you use as a core. It does not go *nearly* as deep as something like AOPS, but it’s much, much better than something like Saxon. HOE - great for learning to set up and work with basic equations. Doesn’t get deep enough into the more complex equations that Algebra starts working with, but a fantastic introduction. I would use this either alongside the first book of Arbor or before starting any Algebra program. HOE Fractions - This is way more basic than I expected. Remind me what you’re using now? If he’s done fractions through about a 5th grade level using any other mainstream program, he is already past this. Patty Paper Geometry - has no overlap with Algebra, but has been an amazing pre-formal-Geometry program. Alcumus - I know nearly everyone disagrees with me, but we could have used this as our entire Algebra 1. DD watched the (short!) AOPS videos, then worked on Alcûmus. She was about halfway through the Algebra 1 topics when she decided to take the online class. The class offered nothing new. She had learned it well enough from the videos and Alcumus that she didn’t need more. She did have to pull out the book when it came to the graphing chapters, since she had never done graphing before, but otherwise the videos were enough.

My kid needs a lot of physical activity. I’m horribly lazy about it, so I’ve learned that this is an area that I need to actively schedule and/or outsource. Her physical activities currently include: - 4.5 hours one day per week at a wilderness/primitive skills class, held outdoors regardless of weather - 6-7 hours per week of classes at a parkour/aerials gym (that has a monthly fee that covers all classes, making it a bargain) - 2 hours per week of martial arts - 2 hours per week at homeschool hours at a skating rink - 1 hour per week of a Stage Combat class So, adding that up, 15 hours per week of physical activity, all with other kids. It’s a good bit of our homeschool budget, too.

Neither AMC nor Math Kangaroo require teams. Math Olympiad has options for teams and individual; we found a local Math Circle that joined up with a tiny private school to offer it to anyone who didn’t otherwise have a space to take it. There are places where homeschool kids group together to form homeschool teams.