I wanted to add I think it's a great idea to let him have some input. My son hates drawing and painting etc, but loves loves love poetry so I let him do a poetry course instead of forcing him to draw and paint and he loves it and to him poetry IS art. He also has been obsessed with US history so even though it wasn't in my initial plan I let him do US history this year and he's doing so well and loves it.

My 9th grader is doing US HISTORY, Earth Science, Algebra,a Language Arts course with composition literature and grammar all combined, half credits of fine arts and computer science so switches off each day, Latin, then he finishes his US history early and that class switches to visualize world geography.

I'm starting homeschool over and I'm realizing that there has been a new release of TWTM book and also new high school level history books from ancient through Renaissance. So I'm guessing the high school history recommendations must have changed. In my version it suggests doing the great books study by researching historical context before each book and using something like Timetables of History book. Is the new sequence to use the new history of the world books and just read them along with the great books???

I went through this with my son. Handwriting is so important to me but we tried for three years after we started homeschooling in sixth grade and no matter what we tried it never improved. I have given up and instead have focused on typing skills. I decided I just had to let the handwriting thing go. I think he was in public school where they didn't care about his handwriting for too many years.

I plan to use Latin Alive with my next child and have never used it before. I already have First Form Latin and was wondering if I should keep it and use it before doing Latin Alive, or if it would be too redundant and I should just sell it.

My son went through that and we had success with Connect the Thoughts creative writing. It was so different that it seemed to take away his anxiety.

I agree with Essentials in Writing. It's really pretty independent and works well for us. We have used level 7.

For each school year we have an excel spreadsheet with 180 days of work/assignments on it. Whenever a row/day is complete we cross it off until 180 are all done. So it may take longer or be shorter than the public school year since we can do extra to get days crossed off sooner or take more than a day to get a row of work done. We start summer whenever all 180 days are done and then just read books and do math until we start the next grade.

I don't think you mentioned Essentials in Writing which is our favorite writing program lately. It's dvd based and allows the student to be pretty independent. Also, if she enjoys creative writing but wants it to be more assignment based, Connect the Thoughts has great creative writing programs.

We try to use programs that don't take a lot of time so there's more time for reading. So we are doing Easy Grammar Ultimate which is a very short daily lesson, Spelling Workout alternating days with WordSmart online which is only about 10 minutes, and Essential in Writing which are also short lessons. That leaves us time to read a lot from the Well Trained Mind literature suggestions.

I think the more educated a society is, the better for the whole society. So if homeschooling or helping children with their after school projects results in better educated citizens, then it helps the whole society. I think the logic of the author was off.

Our literature consists of 2 parts. One is reading from whatever book we are on which alternates between one I have chosen to go with our history time period and books that my son has chosen that I have approved. For these books we discuss them a bit in an unstructured way and he writes a brief book review when he finishes and we add them to our list of completed books. The second part of our literature is Mosdos Press anthologies. We are on Jade right now and the student books have a page of pre-reading info and then a post reading section with discussion questions. This is more of a true literature study where he learns about basic literary analysis etc. At this point he answers the questions orally but eventually I'll start requiring well written responses.

We started Spelling Power a couple of months ago and just love it. It is the first spelling program that I've felt really is helping my son improve his spelling AND he loves it. It is just one book for all ages.

My most helpful recent discoveries have been Connect the Thoughts courses...bought tons of them because the first few I tried were so amazing; my 20% off Barnes and Noble discount card; the woman who works in the children's section of a small bookstore near us who is great at helping my son pick books he will love.

Find a neurologist you and she are happy with first off. As needed and before motor skills or speech get too bad, she should try to find LSVT Loud and Big programs. LSVT Loud is a speech/voice program and Big is a motor skills program. They are really wonderful programs and I've seen huge improvement with PD patients who have gone through them, but they work best when the skills are learned earlier rather than later.

Connect the Thoughts has wonderful history courses.

I agree with Essentials in Writing for an inexpensive and solid middle school writing program.

I have good luck with Lands End. They have skinny tall sizes that even have adjustable waist bands.

Connect the Thoughts has a great American Civics course that is student led, interesting, and definitely not boring.

If Life of Fred is going well then I would just move right along into Life of Fred Algebra 1, just making sure to take however much time she needs to understand everything as she goes.

We used a free online typing tutor program for some time and there just wasn't much functional progress in my son's typing skills. So we bought one called Typing Instructor Platinum on Amazon when it was on sale for around $9 and it has been so much better even after only a week. It might be a bit boring for a younger kiddo though since it's pretty dry, but it has a travel theme so the backgrounds while you type are all from wherever you are visiting. Right now we are on Australia so it has brought up conversations about the images from Australia in the program which is sort of a bonus.

I have liked a lot of different books from Critical Thinking Company. Also, Connect the Thoughts has several thinking skills courses that we have used with our logic class.

Yes that's correct. For level 1 they offer a set with DVDs but they aren't necessary. The student book and teacher's manual are both necessary though in my opinion. For level 2 they don't offer any DVDs. The level 1 DVDs are definitely helpful but if they aren't in someone's price range they aren't necessary although the teacher's manual is.

I'm not a nurse but I work in a hospital and two of the issues I've seen are: There are a ton more documentation requirements than there used to be and that takes a tremendous amount of a nurse's time so that instead of being with a patient they have to sit and type a bunch of stuff up on the computer; the laws have changed several times about how many nurses and aids there have to be per number of patients, and now the hospitals will just staff at the lowest possible level so that the aids and nurses have a lot of people to take care of all at once. These are the 2 biggest issues I've personally seen affect the care at a lot of hospitals.

Around 10-14 usually