Yes, once we were done with the videos my son went into the online class:-) I think going through the Pre-A and Algebra A by himself at a slower pace was great -- he learned the Aops method and learned how to handle the level of challenging problems. He flew through the online Alg B class and Geometry he hit a few rough patches in the beginning but now is flying through as well. I help with almost nothing! For my daughter, she will probably switch after Pre-A or Intro to Alg A. She is not the student for Aops long term and has no wish to be!

Forgot to mention she is offering a free six week prep class over the summer to prepare for the class. It meets once a week.

We did (and will be finishing) most of the Investigations. In the first Unit we did the activities on parallax, in the third we did the Superhero Element (because they're 6th graders and that sounded fun:-)) and I think in Unit 2 we did the Make your own comic strip. In Unit 4 we did the activity was there science before the scientific revolution, which was good since it used primary sources and got the kids thinking about what constitutes "doing science". we studied the transit graphs activity a little bit just to get a general understanding (the pdfs weren't great so they were hard to use and really hard for someone without a science background, but we got the general idea), and they created their own species in Unit 5... which one finished and one didn't . None of it was really make or break except for the investigations, but some were helpful to fill in gaps (the astronomy stuff), some weren't necessary since they had a strong background in the periodic table from Ellen Mchenry, and now we are just coasting to the end with the videos and the last few investigations. I sat with my kids and read through all the primary documents for the investigations with them, then we talked about how each one might contribute to the overarching question posed by the investigation, and then we worked through making the outline together. Then they wrote the essay by themselves once they had a thorough outline. It worked.

Just a head's up for anyone needing an AP Lit class... Deborah Simon at Athena's Academy is teaching a new AP Lit class next year. My twins are taking Analyze This with her (8 week workshop) and she is VERY good at leading discussion and inspiring excitement about literature. There is a 30 minute video on the website (log in as guest to access) that goes through the plans for the year, materials, amount of writing, prerequisites, etc. I asked her for an average time commitment, and she gave me this: Reading - 30-60 minutes per night Writing - 3 hours per week Weekly Assignments - 1 hour per week Total: 7.5-11 hours of work per week The class itself meets twice a week for 90 minutes each, which does often include timed writing practice. The drawback, of which the teacher is painfully aware, is that the Athena's website is clunky and it is difficult to navigate. I knew this going in, so I make sure I am on top of the kids' assignments since they are a little challenging to find on their own. The actually class meeting platform is Blackboard, and we have never had issues with that, thankfully. The list of works that they are covering: Lady in the Van Cat on a Hot Tin Roof The Selected Canterbury Tales Agamemnon: A Play by Aeschylus with Reconstructed Stage Directions, Translated from the Greek into English, Candide Blood Wedding: A Play, Federico Garcia The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen 1984 George Orwell Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw Beowulf: A New Verse Translation The Color Purple, 1st Edition, Alice Walker Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Favorite Broadway Dramas), Tom Stoppard Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, Samuel Beckett Hamlet, William Shakespeare Tartuffe, Molière

Middle school for the most part (as my dd experienced it) lost a lot of the excitement of learning for learning's sake, stepped up all the executive functioning skills (constant homework, projects, tests) but kept all the learning relatively shallow so as to focus on the study skills and task completion. My dd had poor executive functioning and no reason to improve them as the work was so incredibly uninteresting. So she would have had a big variety in how teachers viewed her - her 8th grade chemistry teacher almost failed her, she scraped by all three years with C's in math, but her output in history and Civics (and creative writing when they covered it) was always phenomenal. But consistent she was not -- it had to be something that was interesting or else she just tuned out. She had teachers who loved her and teachers who were extremely annoyed and frustrated by her. Her friends were more of the textbook compliant kids. They got all the awards, and had the highest GPAs.

Just a head's up for anyone needing an AP Lit class... Deborah Simon at Athena's Academy is teaching a new AP Lit class next year. My twins are taking Analyze This with her (8 week workshop) and she is VERY good at leading discussion and inspiring excitement about literature. There is a 30 minute video on the website (log in as guest to access) that goes through the plans for the year, materials, amount of writing, prerequisites, etc. I asked her for an average time commitment, and she gave me this: Reading - 30-60 minutes per night Writing - 3 hours per week Weekly Assignments - 1 hour per week Total: 7.5-11 hours of work per week The class itself meets twice a week for 90 minutes each, which does often include timed writing practice. The drawback, of which the teacher is painfully aware, is that the Athena's website is clunky and it is difficult to navigate. I knew this going in, so I make sure I am on top of the kids' assignments since they are a little challenging to find on their own. The actually class meeting platform is Blackboard, and we have never had issues with that, thankfully. The list of works that they are covering: Lady in the Van Cat on a Hot Tin Roof The Selected Canterbury Tales Agamemnon: A Play by Aeschylus with Reconstructed Stage Directions, Translated from the Greek into English, Candide Blood Wedding: A Play, Federico Garcia The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen 1984 George Orwell Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw Beowulf: A New Verse Translation The Color Purple, 1st Edition, Alice Walker Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Favorite Broadway Dramas), Tom Stoppard Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, Samuel Beckett Hamlet, William Shakespeare Tartuffe, Molière

Well we have only done the online Big History Project, geared towards public school teachers, and are now listening to the Big History of Civilizations rather than the other one on Great Courses, that covers the entire course. I like the professor who does the Civilizations better than David Christian, who does the overall course. We didn't start the Great Course until we got to Threshold 7 from the online materials. We had gradually pared down what we did to watch videos, read articles (I had them outline or take notes on some of the articles), and do the Investigation Essays. And added books that Chrysalis Academy had in her book list (she has a great write up on the boards from a couple of years ago) Pros of the Big History Project online: Interviews with all different scientists so that the kids got introduced to geologists, environmental scientists, biologists, paleontolgists... and they all talked about what they were doing in their field and what the big questions were that they were trying to answer. It was very interesting. Utilized Crash Course videos and they are big fans The articles were often interesting, of a good length, and provided good practice at outlining. The Essays were overall very good -- the first few were not quite as interesting (they were a little too obvious which led to overthinking and made things harder) but they got better and were good practice at learning how to use multiples text to support and argument. Very scaffolded. I so am glad we did them. If your kid has a lot of experience with that kind of writing, though, they might be too easy. My kids are in sixth and they were a big stretch. Cons: Choppy sometimes, activities mostly had to be nixed. We only did a few. I think the online portion is a little light for high school, honestly. This is definitely where I would use something more robust, like the Great Courses. We are learning SO MUCH from the Civilizations, and it feels much more cohesive. The other depends on the teacher to lead kids through making the connections, but as I am not a history or science teacher, I need a little more guidance. The Big History Civ course addresses the larger themes of what lead civilizations to form, how did people rise to become leaders within societies, how did empires form, what led them to fall... etc. My kids have not taken a class yet with Online G3 (though at some point I would like them to) and I know they are very heavy on great socratic discussion and less output. I'm sure they will do the Little Big History Project which is the big culminating project and which I am dreading. I would love to hand that off to someone else for my kids to be accountable for! I don't know if we will do it. We are running out of time and summer is calling.

I suspect it doesn't mesh that well with the Well trained mind style -- it's harder to fit in the four year cycle, and the narrative style makes it REALLY difficult to outline (we tried). But we loved it and just read it aloud. Loved even more her Story of Science.

I have both Aops Pre-A and Jacobs for just in case... my daughter who worked through BA (with me to help her) is doing very well with Aops. We don't do the challenge problems and she uses Alcumus a LOT and watches all the videos. Its been a big hit so far, once we got past the first two chapters:-) I really chose to stick with Aops for her because the videos are so well done and Richard Rusczyk is extremely engaging and clear. It helps tremendously. So for a kid that is a fast learner, doesn't need much repetition, but still isn't super intuitive with math, it's a good fit - albeit modified as stated above.

We are doing this for our house we are living in and will be renting out. Service calls are 70 dollars, and since we won't have a property manager and we don't know of good general handyman businesses around here, we will just keep it going and pay the service fee when something breaks. We aren't great at saving large chunks of money and we know that in the lifetime of renting we will need to replace the air compressor, water heater, and many of our appliances. And the garage door opener, which makes a terrible yowling sound right now:-) So yeah, 10 grand for sure. Much easier just paying it per month! But we live in a big house. Two A/C units, huge water heater, etc.

I think also if your kids are anything like mine, (competitive) Aops would be hard to combine! The pace is SO individual, so while other subjects I can keep my twins chugging away at the same pace, for Aops even if they were on the same level, they would be probably very quickly get out of sync. It's hard to schedule Aops. But yes, my son did Aops PreA after Singapore 5 (and a little stint, probably unnecessary, through half of Jousting Armadillos). It took him 1 or 1 1/2 years to get through the book.

That's the other printer we have. I hate it!

Most of most of my dd's groups that she is in send out info over Facebook posts. Her dorm posts activities there, people post ads for roommates on the Facebook page for their whole class, the chess club posts its info there... etc. So she doesn't use it per se, but she gets notifications. She only uses Snapchat regularly. And Tumblr which apparently she has banned ME from using, lol.

Well I totally stalked both of my daughters new roommates before they moved in. New roommates are such a big deal for a freshman, especially when she's never been away from home for very long! I knew everything about them and their family before she did. She did totally call me creepy but I would label myself over-involved and protective. I will say that this year as she was looking for new roommates and did the whole Facebook post looking for one, I didn't check out the new candidates. My daughter has been there for almost a year, has a lot more confidence, and doesn't need me quite as much. I feel much less worried about next year. Plus she already met them on campus and told me enough about her final choice to know she's very different than the ones she has now, in a good way :-)

I constantly find myself with the same questions. How can I not figure out this whole teaching writing thingy when I have a degree in English? We have done all of WWS 1, a few bits of WWS 2, and are at a loss to decide what to do next year, though I was thinking of skipping into WWS 3 since I liked it better than WWS 2... it looks from the scope and sequence to have a goal in sight while WWS was that in between of refining what we'd learned in WWS 1 but not yet getting to more independence and flexibility. I could be completely wrong since I don't actually have it in my hand. One of the few books i haven't bought yet. :-) This year I thought OH NO I have to teach them analysis! What is all this writing without a point! We aren't going anywhere with it and they will not be prepared for high school! Well, I've pretty much made them miserable this year with writing. Maybe an overstatement, they aren't that dramatic, but they have not enjoyed it one bit. We have done the big history essays -- which are basically like a DBQ but in science -- taking primary sources and using them to answer an argument. They are also taking a literary analysis class. They LOVE the analytical discussions, but I have basically asked them to do two hard things at once. Learn to analyze, and learn to write about it, supporting their arguments with evidence. They have completely lost their voice in the process and their writing has become so stilted. Ugh. So lots to think about for me as well, but I have to say I would be THRILLED if one of my kids wrote an essay like that! I know WWS does not expect solid analytical writing until high school. And I will say that from what I have seen from my older daughter's public school experience (never homeschooled) she did mostly expository, a little persuasive, and lots of creative writing in middle school. They talked about literary elements in english class but did not do much literary analysis until 9th. History had no papers, ever. Short answers in paragraph form and DBQ essays on the AP exams, but she wrote not one history paper even in high school. So really the only thing she ever had to worry about was literary analysisl. That is pretty common from what her friends at her old high school have experienced as well. The only problem for my daughter was that she got no explicit instruction in literary essays and thesis formation. There was some magical assumption that kids knew how to formulate their thesis by that point and support it with evidence. They devoted all of their time to analytical discussion of books (fun!) and vocabulary and grammar (not fun!) but as to writing outlines and getting feedback on a strong or weak thesis... nothing. So as long as at some point in the future there is a transition to that kind of explicit instruction, I think the WWS path is fine. A lot of kids they aren't ready to write analytically. Discuss, yes. Write short answer questions, yes. But write a longer composition where they argue a point and support it with evidence? A little overwhelming for some!

My twins are homeschooled. My son started Pre-A in third and took about a year and a half, I want to say. It took a LONG time but he also did every problem. Then started Intro to Algebra in fourth and finished in fifth - just the first half of the book, and sometimes skipped a few challenge problems that I literally couldn't help him with. Also did Intro to C and P. Then this year in sixth he started the online Alg B class and now Geometry. Definitely fewer problems than when he did the book but really challenging ones all the same. It is a much faster pace, covering 1/2 to a full chapter a week. My daughter started Pre-A a couple months ago and is on chapter 4. We are going to just take lots of time and really let the concepts sink in. Probably the rest of this school year and all of next. Eta: school year not calendar year.

If your son is interested, there's a really good documentary on Netflix called AlphaGo -- an AI that beat the world champion in the game Go. My son really enjoyed it!

We haven't taken the classes, but for my son it wouldn't be worth it -- for one, my three kids bleed me dry with extracurriculars so we don't have the money for it. The online classes are more affordable. And two, for his younger years it was too hard to tell where he would be at the end of the year. I wouldn't want to spend a whole year's tuition if he was advancing too quickly. We did too much compacting. Even now the fast pace of the online class definitely better suits him -- 16 weeks for Alg 2 and now 24 weeks on Geometry. (Though there was a steep learning curve in Geometry he has mostly caught up now). It definitely is going to be different family by family. There are some families who wouldn't drive 45 minutes one way each day to bring their daughter to ballet (spending a car payment on tuition) when there is a lesser but decent school 10 minutes away. :-) It's all about the priorities. My son does Math club for the social interaction, which is not quite enough but it's enough for now. Online classes -- definitely less social interaction. Some kids do post a lot and interact on the message boards. My son doesn't post much. He occasionally asks for help. He spent about 1-1/2 hours a day on average on math in Pre-Algebra and Algebra, and in Geometry he has had a few four hour days. Some of the time was spent on the diagrams in Asymptote though -- he really enjoys the write up for the writing problems. We did not use Pre-Algebra online - we did it at home. Lots of videos available through Algebra, and my son just worked through the book on his own with occasional help from me. It is written for the student so no teaching necessary -- it's all in the book.

If you are ok with only black and white, our brother printer is the best. Our inkjet color printers always end up breaking, the ink is so expensive... ugh. Of course if you can afford the laser color printer, even better! I should have just gone for that -- now I have a color printer than scans but it is so unreliable, ink is expensive, and it takes like five minutes to print. (Canon). My brother printer is the workhorse. I love it.

As a mom with 12 year olds, I would love to go to a game meetup with kids their age. Unfortunately around here the number of homeschoolers in that range is pretty low. So telling younger kids not to come isn't going to magically encourage older kids to come. If the attendance gets large enough, then maybe splitting into two groups would be great, but if there are some days with literally no one attending I don't see how limiting it to older kids will bring about the desired result of an older kids' peer group.

My son, no. My dd, she's had no problem with the standard algorithm which I taught her out of desperation when she didn't really get it the BA way. I wonder if down the road we will have issues but we haven't yet.

I'd like to join whenever the group gets up and running again!

The Story of Maths is really well done, if someone loves math. Also AlphaGo -- a documentary about AI. My daughter loves First Position of course, about ballet competition. Cosmos is awesome. Not on Netflix but you can get it on the internet -- Engineering an Empire covers a lot of different countries' histories through the lens of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

No

We are doing Big History for 6th with a lot of adaptation -- I scaffold the essays MUCH more for them and I think they are great practice but my kids would never be able to do them on their own. A LOT of the materials we decided not to use -- it was pretty classroom based and flopped here. The videos were a little choppy, being so short, and the articles so short... overall it just has started to feel choppy. We have enjoyed all the interviews with the scientists -- it's really awesome to expose them to all the different fields of science. We are just NOW in April getting to the history portion, so you definitely would want to go faster through the first units than we did. Great Courses Plus has both the whole Big History Course taught by David Christian, and then a more in depth Big History of Civilizations. There are 36 lectures for it, and we really like the professor and are enjoying the lectures. We switched to it because I saw their interest starting to lag. They are excellent and we will be listening to them the rest of the year, doing the last three investigations, and calling it good. I might still have them do the Little Big History Project, but we are approaching burnout here so we will see... Overall I am really happy about this program. I think if I were doing it in 9th I would have added a spine or a few books to support the lower amount of reading required. As it is, we did supplement from some of the books that Chrysalis Academy listed on her plan from a couple of years ago and they were all excellent.