LeTU is my husband’s Alma Mater; he went for Aviation & is now a CA for a major commercial airline. He’d be happy to speak with your DS about the decision, if you’re interested. No recruitment, just information - the good, the bad, & the ugly. 😉

Thank you for letting me know! I had no idea where to even start, but came across a list on Goodreads. Was able to easily eliminate some, but it’s so hard to tell from only a short blurb & many would be hard, if not impossible, to source here. Fortunately, I think I’ve got a few good options now. 🙂 ETA: What is traumatizing about Storm Boy? Is it a “loss of a beloved animal companion” book? My DS isn’t sensitive to that sort of thing & likes older literature, but definitely want to steer clear of any of the -isms!!

I forgot about Whale Rider! Would you say that it & Call it Courage are too similar to read back-to-back, or do they feel pretty different? Walking the Boundaries looks good, too & can be added into one of our later lessons, which is great because the others all fall into the timeframe of the first.

I’m searching for novels set in Oceania for a 10yr old. We’ll be touching on the area twice: pre-1850 & again in the 1880s. If anyone could help me determine which of the following would be best suited, I’d greatly appreciate it! Storm Boy The Green Wind Sister Heart The First Voyage New Guinea Moon Bridie’s Fire Crow Country* (This had mixed reviews - problematic?) The Golden Day The following I suspect have an older target audience, but if you could also weigh in on their quality for me to keep in mind in the future, I would greatly appreciate it! A Waltz for Matilda A Rose for the ANZAC Boys (WWI) Eventual Poppy Day (WWI)

I’m sure they’re betting on this very thing.

I’m not sure when you attended, but when I was in high school (~15-20yrs ago) anyone who wanted a high GPA took as many as possible. Our school weighted AP classes on a 6.0 scale. Many of my peers dropped all of their hobby extracurriculars because it dragged their GPA down too much to be in any class where “only” a 4.0 was possible. The front office would post GPA (to the hundred-thousandth of a point) & updated class rank on huge bulletin boards every 6wks; made students absolutely neurotic.

I have. I found the webinars really helpful as a reference alongside the resources, but I’ve struggled to provide what I feel is adequate composition practice when working independently. We tried “writing across the curriculum” this year & I don’t feel that we were nearly as consistent or successful as when had been while using the IEW texts. I do own some of the upper-level books, given to me second-hand, which I plan to use as a framework to design my own thematic units in the future. Those are all 2+ levels above what we’ve used in the past, though - Wonders of Science is at the very next level.

This has been incredibly interesting to read, as the parent of a child who will graduate at the end of this “cliff”. Selfishly, I hope it means that DS will have a better shot at a competitive placement in a quality program. I am concerned about the impact of further narrowing students’ academic background by eliminating courses / majors in literature, philosophy, & the arts. Public K-12 schools have already lost so much depth & breadth, so much vibrancy - it would be a shame to see the same trend expand to the university level.

I am very much hoping we will have the same experience, as my son has absolutely loved Beast Academy but I’m concerned that the format, pack, & scheduling of AOPS Online would not work well for him. 🙂 From the WTM Academy FAQ: “This is how our courses line up with the AoPS curriculum: Pre-Algebra = AOPS PreAlgebra 1 & 2 Number Theory = AOPS Number Theory Algebra I = AOPS Algebra A Counting & Prob I = Intro to Counting & Prob Algebra II = AOPS Algebra B Geometry Pre-Calculus Calculus Please note: We do not currently offer AoPS Intermediate Algebra because topics from that text are covered in our Algebra II and Pre-Calculus classes. Students who complete our Algebra II class are prepared to move on to either Geometry or Pre-Calculus.” It sounds like your student is ready for WTMA PreCalculus &/or C&P II, which appears to be a new offering as it isn’t referenced above. There is also an Advanced Statistics course which uses a non-AOPS text.

AOPS Virtual Campus classes are $875 per *semester*. We actually have an AOPS Academy locally that I would love for him to attend, however it’s extremely expensive ($600 per trimester) & the same issues apply regarding class scheduling & pacing. We’re keeping it in mind, but at that price point it would have to be undeniably our best option.

WTMA has added courses to their offerings using AOPS Intro to Number Theory, Intro to Counting & Probability, & Intermediate Counting & Probability! All signs point to AOPS’ online class format just not suiting our family well (pace, frequency & length of sessions, scheduling) so I’ve been planning to have DS take the courses here on WTM, but a HUGE drawback was that these wider-rather-than-faster courses weren’t available. I’m so excited to see them being offered & really hope they do well so that he can take them once he’s completed the prerequisites!

Thank you for mentioning this! IEW’s themed books have worked well for us in the past, but the history-based offerings don’t line up well with where we are & when I last looked they hadn’t released this title. I think you just filled a gap in my curriculum-planning for the fall!

If anything, I’d do #4. Summer is a great time for going wider & exploring the fun, puzzley side of mathematics!

Another vote for Beast Academy (& AOPS afterwards, assuming it’s a good fit). Fun, colorful guidebooks he could easily use independently. Material moves quickly but deeply. Lots of puzzles / out-of-the-box topics. Online or physical book options. My mathy guy has absolutely loved it!

We used LOE, but began with manuscript because it frustrated DS that the cursive letters didn’t look like the ones in his books. Ramona Quimby’s “kitty-cat Q’s” are what convinced him to learn cursive, several years later, in 1st grade. 😅

Thank you for posting your experience; very interesting!

Dragons & sea voyages - what’s not to love?! thanks for the recommendation 😊

We have read The Hobbit & the Secret Garden, but not the others. Wind in the Williws & Peter Pan are on the literature shelf, but haven’t made it off, yet. Watership Down is definitely on our “to be read” list… eventually 😉

A bit of an odd request, perhaps… I read aloud to DS10 nightly. He enjoys poetry & particularly enjoys reading books that reference it, as afterwards I’ll look up the poem itself for us to read & discuss. He particularly enjoys longish narrative poetry: The Raven, The Highwayman, Charge of the Light Brigade, The Hanging of the Crane, etc. We did this with Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass (compared Carroll’s satirical poems to the originals), the Math & Magic books, & five books (so far) of the Anne of Green Gables series - among others. The books don’t emphasize their inclusion of poetry - quoting it here & there is treated as simply a normal part of conversation. Do you know of any other good books we might enjoy that do this?

Animal sensation & perception could be a cool one. So many animals experience the world vastly differently than we do thanks to higher sensitivities to various stimuli (seeing in a different spectrum, magnetic sensitivity, pheromones, etc). Animal learning & community behavior could be another. How do animals glean information to one another? How do they pass information between generations, or between distinct groups (two different herds, for example)? Where is the line between following instinct & learning?

We are very fortunate to have a “non-affiliated” team in our area made up of homeschoolers & public / private school students without school teams available.

DS, a laid-back kid who has never in his life wanted to pick a “favorite” anything & never had any sort of answer for “What might you like to do when you grow up?”, has developed an interest that has blossomed into full on starry-eyed discussion of going to MIT / WPI / etc to become a robotics engineer. We’re going to work through some Scratch Coding Challenge books this summer. He might attend another robotics day camp as well. He’s joining a FIRST Lego League team in the fall which is in partnership with successful FIRST Tech Challenge & FIRST Robotics Challenge teams. He’s bright & mathy, but not profoundly gifted - he’ll be heading into AOPS PreAlgebra for 5th grade so theoretically he could probably complete the AOPS core sequence. We’ll look into their Python classes as well. Assuming the interest sticks, what else should we consider to help develop the skills he’ll need?

We are going to do this in a couple of years & I am already super excited about it! History has become a chore here, despite my best efforts.

We use Michael Clay Thompson’s grammar. My son loves it & always gets excited when we come across his vocabulary words “in the wild”.

We moved from LOE Foundations to Michael Clay Thompson LA + AAS & it has been great! We have added in other composition from time to time (NaNoWriMo, CAP W&R, IEW, Killgallon) but mostly just because we enjoyed doing so & had ample time to go wide / play around with different approaches.