Sorry, Its taken this long to get back to you. My kids estimate it takes them between 1hr to 1 1/2hrs per day. But some days go very fast & occasionally some days are much longer. The lessons can really vary in video length & the work needed to complete the quizes etc... & it isnt always clear from the schedule ahead of time.

@Porridge My kids had not done regular Biology before doing Thinkwell & I don't think regular biology is necessary, but is probably nice to have & would mke the course less challenging. I think it is a very, very thorough course & I wouldn't hesitate to call it Honors. My kids say they really liked the videos & found them informative & easy to follow. The videos are a big hit & the favorite part of the course. The quizes & tests have been challenging, perhaps a little too challenging for us, sometimes needing to take the tests twice to get the minimum score that I set for my kids. I'm over all happy with having done Thinkwell Biology this year, as it succesfully took biology off my teaching plate while being self paced & I think it has been good quality, that is giving a thorough grounding in biology. But the big con of it for us is the amount of lessons & amount of time it takes. The suggested schedule is over 37 weeks & calls for a 2-3 lessons a day to complete it on that schedule, which didn't leave much margin for error. That is a lot of work per day IMO & as the inevitable schedule interuptions have come up, I've had to adujust the schedule for even more lessons per day & add Saturday work because we have a hard end date to our school year. It is a bit stressfull & kept us so busy that I haven't been able to fit in the Labs that caused me to start this thread, though I still hope we will be able to complete the lab kit I bought later. This may not be an issue for people who can stretch out the lessons though. But I had hoped to continue with Thinkwell for Chemistry & have decide that is too much for us. I hope that helps & I'm happy to try to answer an other questions you have.

I believe the broker is the person who is ultimately "in charge" of the agents, but my husband is out fishing so I can't check with him. If the attorney for the real estate firm has stepped in, you can bet the powers that be, whatever they are in her office, are involved now & you are beyond the clear it up with a talk with them stage. I think your plan to meet with your own real estate attorney is a smart idea & they should be able to give you a good idea of your realistic options. My gut feeling is that your best hope of getting the Due diligence, or comparable, is probably through the real estate office's errors & omissions insurance (Maybe its the agent's insurance? We pay for it through fees to my husband's office & I'm not exactly sure if the insurance is his, personally, or the office's technically). They probably aren't going to offer that though, so you will need someone to essentially broker that by pointing out to them "hey, you screwed up in an actionable way. How do you want to settle it?". Assuming of course that your attorney thinks you have that remedy. I would definitely ask your attorney if you are giving up any options by continuing to close the purchase of the adjacent property & your house sale through this firm before you do that if at all possible.

Unlurking, because my husband is a relatively new realtor in the state in question (I'm pretty sure) & I know the answer to this because I quizzed him a bunch on this stuff recently for licensing exams. I've also paid & been paid due diligence money in our own transactions that was cashed immediately. Due Diligence money is basically to compensate the seller for taking the property off the market or pausing the marketing while the potential buyer investigates the property (inspections, perk tests for land, ect..) or otherwise tries to get things together to close the deal. It's generally not refundable because it's paying the seller for their time & potential lost opportunities to sell to others which occurs even if the sale doesn't close. I believe It can be refundable if the seller materially breaches the contract, but that would be quite unusual. Saying purely as my non-licensed self though, I would think that you could make the argument that since the seller was apparently never able to sell the property in its current situation (If I understand correctly), he actually lost nothing by taking it off the market & therefore doesn't need to be compensated for that time. Since the seller has breached the contract, by being unable to sell, it would seem arguable that the due diligence could be refunded because he didn’t actually provide the time to close the deal that the due diligence paid for even if he appeared to. Having said that, if this guy has long spent the money & is in as much financial trouble as it seems, getting it back might be like getting blood from a stone as a practical matter & may not make a legal fight cost effective. I would massively second the advice up thread to try to talk to the buying agent's broker/ supervising agent, who should be better positioned to try to unravel what might be possible in this unusual circumstance. I'm kind of baffled they haven't stepped in already, but maybe this agent is much further along than my husband while still being "new" or is doing so behind the scenes. (enter boiler plate "This is not real estate or legal advice" 🙂 )

I have seen that kit. It is the one that goes with "The Ilustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments". I have the printed, book form, verison of the PDF (I believe) & had planned to use it whenever we did Biology. It definitely looks very thorough, it just looks like it is too much for us to accomplish this year if there are other options. We have so far been happy with the Thinkwell Biology end of things though. I wish I had prioritized figuring out & scheduling the accompanying labs earlier, but then I would probably have regrets about not prioritizig things in other classes.

Thank you for the suggestions. I had looked at Home Science Tools & thought they didn't have a kit for high school. I went back to check because of your mention & sure enough they do have one. I think when I was browsing before I misread their "Grade 9+" as "Age 9+". The kit looks good & at a cheaper price point than I had been thinking, which is always a plus. Also 13 labs seems very doable. If we go through them fast, or get adventurous, I can always pull some of the simpler labs from "The Ilustrated Guide" to fill out further.

I have 2 kids doing Thinkwell Biology for 10th grade this year. Planning for the school year went a bit sideways this summer & I ended up starting the kids on the Thinkwell site several weeks ago & planned to circle back to figuring out how to add labs to our Biology study once I had our other subjects planned & started. They are doing well with Thinkwell Biology, but the time to figure out labs is finally here & I'm a bit stuck. It is important to me that the kids do some sort of labs so the course can be "Biology with lab" on their transcript, but I'm not a sciency person & dont have a full sense of what is "enough". I'm considering getting Labster subscriptions from Homeschool Buyers Coop & assigning a bunch of them. I was hoping to get some feedback on that idea, or other suggestions, from people more science based than I am. It looks like it could be done mostly independently & integrate into our schedule easily. I do own a copy of "Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments" & my original basic thought was to pick about 1 lab a month from there and do over the weekends. But once I read through it, the time & equipment required seems like a lot. If I need to make that work, I will, but I'm hoping to find something that can be done more simply. I'd be happy for any thoughts or suggestions. Thank you

We have just finished the Great Course "How to Look at & Understand Great Art" & my son, unexpectedly, loved it. I thought it was a very good overview with practical explanations that help you, well look at art with some background knowledge & interperting skill. It has 36, 30 minute lectures, so it would be easy to view 2 a week to fit into a semester. We have moved on to "A History of Western Art" which is interesting, but much longer & somewhat droning IMO. "How to Look at & Undersand Great Art" held my attention better in contrast. We are also using "Art in Focus" textbook by McGraw Hil. Its high school level art appreciation & my kids are able to read it independently. I'm not using them, but each section has review questions that could could easily be assigned to check for understanding. There are also suggested art projects every so often. We skip those but I could see them being a good compliment along with the text, if one felt creative at that point.

Lasy year I did Beowulf's Grammar with my then 10 year old & enjoyed it (at least as much as I was likely to enjoy grammar that is). My daughter found the ongoing story line with the dog very engaging & funny. The lessons started really gentle with lots of cut & paste & other activities, but built up over the year to more straight workbook by the end. That was a good thing in our case, because the activities drew interest & fun at first, but towards the end of the year my daughter just wanted to get the lesson done & move on to other work. The lessons paced out with that change very well. It sounds like that might work similarly for your family as well. The amount of work per day was very manageable IMO. I dont think it was as deep a grammar course as many others, but it did cover all the basics & then some. I'd think it about perfect for a reintroduction to grammar study that isnt at all intimidating to the student & makes a good base for futher study.

Our first 9th grade year is comming up for my oldest daughter (15) & son (14). I've been lurking a long time & reading this forum particularly the last several months, finding it invaluable. So I though I better join in as we start this next, some what intimidating, chapter. My plans as of this point: Math: Mr. D's Geometry LA: Mystery Literature & composition- From a curricculum I bought from TPT, secularized a bit, & added A Great Courses Mystery & Suspense literature lecture series. Kids should write at least 2 short mystery stories over the year. The curriculum calls for writing a small novel in addition to a short story, but that seems overly ambitious & pretty sure I'm going to modify this down instead to a second, longer, short story. I have this class 70% together. Science: Clover Creek Physics (I was on the ball for registering for this because of all the recomendations here!) Elective Science: Guest Hollow's Chemistry in the Kitchen, which we already started in January & will finish before Physics starts Lanuguage: Mr. D's ASL 1 (I'm not sure of this, but dont have a better idea at this point- ASL is a must though, as we have learning disabilities that have made us crash & burn at other languages) History: American History - I'm putting this together myself & planning to cover it over 3 semesters, leaving the 4th semester of Grade 10 to do American Government, unless I need that time to finish out American History. We havent actually done a strickly American History course before & that is both my jam & important to me to be covered in particular ways, so I want it to be very in depth & not outsourced. I'm planning, at this point, to use K12's American Odyssey, supplemental books & videos, & parts of a couple Great Course Lecutures ( American History & Civil War). Not sure about output for this yet & I haven't actually done a ton of planning, so this whole thing could change radically. Fine Arts: Art Appreciation - another put together course using Art in Focus text book reading as a spine along with the How to look at & understand great Art Great Course lectures & some additional art videos. I think we will also visit a few Art musems over the year & let the kids each pick a work of art they see to write a small report on some aspect of. PE: ? Not sure if we are gong to do anything with this for 9th, but if we do, it would minor with the idea of awarding .25 credits a year to make 1 credit over 4 years. At some point, we will have to let the 2 kids branch out to classes separately, but as they have always schooled together, since we started homeschooling when they were small, it seems better to me to keep that aspect consistant for this 1st year when so much else is already changing.

Regarding purchasing Lightning Lit 8- Hewitt Homeschool has a PDF download bundle of student & teacher materials in their website store. https://hewittlearning.org/product/lightning-lit-gr-8-set-of-tg-sg-sw-pdf/ I’d assume a download would likely work for Canada as well as the US & you would just need to purchase the books separately. I haven’t used 8, but I purchased the download bundle for Lightning Lit 7 (& books from Amazon) & I don’t feel like I’m missing anything receiving it that way.

We did both 1A & 2A this year in my house with different level kids. I found the beginning lessons of each to be a bit light, but the amount of work did ramp up towards the middle as the amount of writing & required elements increased. I moved my older kids to 2A midway through the year & effectively doubled up many of the lessons in a week to finish not too far behind our original end date target, through that has been a bit challenging towards the end. The suggested schedule was pretty easy modify to fit our needs, so I’d feel free to combine & lengthen weeks as you need.