Hi Jennifer, Trying to get what you are saying. My spine will most likely be BJU World History. Are you saying to add books in to the different time periods? What kind of writing assignments? Replace text with whole books in certain places? Thanks!

We are going to attempt World History in one year with a textbook..... how would you fit everything in if you expand it.... did Geography last year (9th), World this year (10th), US in 11th, and Govt/Econ in 12th. We did do Story of the World in middle school, hoping she will remember it when she reads a World History text in summarized form. Stay tuned! (I could see skipping Geography and doing World in 9th and 10th, but its too late now!).

If you are familiar with it, it may be alright. The dvd teachers know how to present the topics, and know how to explain the harder topics to first time listeners. They also remind you of topics covered previously to tie to the new lesson. You will have to do all of that yourself. I am about to do Apologia Biology for the second time and really like that science publisher. BJU was more indepth, and too much for me to tackle, but I only had one semester of biology in the 9th grade.

My son just finished freshman college, in calculus 1, there were nursing students in there.... might want to check :) I think if it were me, I would split the precalc. into two years, doing the trig. part one year, and the college algebra another.

Not sure if I would tackle BJU upper sciences w/o their dvds..... BJU is meant to be taught by a teacher. We did do Space and Earth Science successfully w/o the dvds, but after that, I wouldn't even try :)

The Precalculus does include the trig. It also includes college algebra.

Just finished 9th grade with dd. We did Apologia Physical Science (doing Biology in 10th), BJU Writing & Grammar 9, six books for literature, BJU World Geography, BJU Algebra 1, keyboarding, and Phys. Ed. That was quite a step up from 8th grade for her. First time with a textbook (Geography) and first year of Algebra. She is a good student, but not a speed demon, so her day was filled. Except for her slow speed, it was a good year :)

Shelly, If it were me, the 9th grader would be mostly independent, the 7th would be semi-independent, and most of your time spent with the two younger (while checking periodically on the older two). My hats off to you, I was overwhelmed with just two..... but the thing that saved me was to get curriculum that "ran itself" where I only checked answers and gave tests. I got dvds and email support for math/science, so if they got stuck, they could email for help. I said I would never use textbooks, but that changed when life got crazy and I didn't have time regularly to teach subjects. Cathy Duffy has a great book out, 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum. She rates the curriculum according to several things, one is how much parent involvement is required, I only pick the "low involvement" curriculum. Funny, everything with high involvement was on the shelf not getting used. Now, breathe in, breathe out :)

You will all love this: Until my husband took the second job, he cooked and cleaned the house for me. Taking bets on how many of you will announce this to your men :) He said I looked overwhelmed when our youngest reached middle school age (have two kids, four years apart). The two years where we were doing 7th & 11th, then 8th and 12th grades were a lot of work for me. He said to tell him what he could do after work, I said clean and cook. He was relieved it wasn't teaching a subject!

Bets on she is about to get "it." Be nice to her....... you might want to consider not stepping up the school too much in the near future, hormones are hard to get used to! My dd was a complete airhead (sorry..), but is better now. Once she adjusts to the hormones, she may temper a bit, but it could take a year or two. My dd is almost 16, and she is now thinking about what she wants to take in college, speeding up the school a little :) and taking it more seriously. Maybe your dd can expand a hobby of hers and get elective credit for it. Mine took a cake decorating class, and is now adding cooking at home so she can get enough hours for a culinary arts credit. Good luck and hang in there :)

Pretty close to everyone I know that has non math/science kids is using Teaching Textbooks. Lots of stories of kids that didn't like math that do now because of TT. I love their explanations, that it is affordable, and the support. Its the spiral thing that did it in, but not everyone minds that.

Check out Beautiful Feet (bfbooks.com). They have a great high school study with great book recommendations. It is called U.S. and World History from Civil War to Present for Senior High (I'm guessing on the name, it will be close to that). The Marrin books are great. We pared it down (Beautiful Feet helped us do that) because we only had one year. My son really enjoyed it. He read the Hakim books, then several of the suggestions as well. The guide is inexpensive, and then you can get most of the books at the library, and order the ones you can't find. I've not seen the Marrin books at the library, and they are not to be missed!

If you are good enough at Algebra 1 to teach it well (and I emphasize to teach it well), it isn't bad. But there is a huge gap between us moms being able to figure it out, and being able to teach it to our kids, who have never seen it. I learned about that the hard way, poor kids had to sit forever while I figured it out, then I still couldn't explain well enough for them to get it. A good math teacher has that gift. Check the Standard Deviants to see if they cover word problems and the stuff mid to back of the Algebra 1 book. You will probably need a little back up for that. And, you can order Chalkdust dvds individually (per dvd price is on their website). Even though he tends not to repeat himself a lot, you can rerun the dvd as much as you would like :)

My son came home during first semester of college. (Homeschooling, we did mostly Apologia.) He had two days to research a subject for an experiment, none of the information was given. And come up with his own experiment to prove something about it. And then, write a lab research report in less than a week, including diagrams and stats. This happened every week. This was a huge jump from what we did in Apologia...... Apologia did provide great foundational knowledge which was very useful, but wasn't near this rigorous...

Sue, Hmmmm, I hope someone can give a review on it. I guess you are trying to figure a way around the dvds?? I just did BJU Algebra 1 with my daughter, but used their dvds. I also borrowed Chalkdust Algebra 1 videos from a friend, they were good for review, but moved too fast for her. You will need something to help her if you don't want to teach it. My daughter was able to figure out some on her own. The dvds were very helpful for those dreaded word problems. I've heard Standard Deviants dvds are good also, they have Algebra 1 as well. sdlearn.com

Hi everyone! I am going through "the closet." Yeah, the one with everything both of my kids have ever done for school. I have one in college, and one going into 10th, so there are two of each kid's workbooks etc. for everything through 9th grade, and one each for 10-12th! Math notebooks, science notebooks, history notebooks, tons of workbooks, old test copies, papers written. We have yet to ever look at one of them for school purposes, but to look at them again, oh, the memories! What are all of you doing with all of this stuff???

What grade is she in? She needs to master prealgebra before tackling algebra, even if you need to do it again!

Thoughts here: Chalkdust Algebra is on the hard side..... would their Algebra 1 be equivalent to other texts Algebra 2? The Algebra 2 was very close to college algebra level, Dana Mosely admitted to it.... and was too much for my son..... but he really liked it after he took an easier Algebra 2 course.

Right there with you! You will feel better after you graduate one and have been through all of the grades. You do need help of some kind. In South Carolina, you homeschool under an umbrella association. And you pick it, the lady who runs mine has been invaluable. I'm not talking about homeschooling where they tell you what to do and when and grade, but one that guides but lets you make the final decisions. She knows what is honors, what is not, what is same level as what the kids are doing in high school, did my transcripts, gave input on how to grade, gave names to our electives and input on what was a credit, etc. I have seen just as great help and input on this forum, so if you state is set up different, run things by people here! Also a fellow homeschooler in your area that has been through high school already could encourage and guide you. I see myself as "administrator" in high school. I get traditional texts in subjects I don't know a lot about with enough help either by email and/or dvd support. My job is to get what my daughter needs and equip her. For me and my schedule, everything needs to run itself, things that require a lot of my time tend to end up on the shelf (but others are not like me). You need to be realistic on how much time you can devote, don't say I can do this myself so I won't get this particular item that does it for me, you don't want to be spending every waking minute doing school things (but I admit, that is what it seems....). I have graduated one, and he is nice to give me input on what I can do to better prepare my daughter. The things that were a big adjustment for him were he didn't know how to do schoolwork with others, didn't know how to interact with the teacher ex. challenging grades, clarifying assignments, getting help, and had quite a difficult time with inflexible deadlines. He did well, and for my daughter, I think a few dual enrollment classes at the college will address all of these. Both of my kids are slower paced, and tend to stay to themselves. A larger church with a great youth group helped them a lot. Last year, my daughter took a cake decorating class at Michael's. I cringed at how she would get her school done, prepare the cake and all of the frostings, and still get her school finished.... but she surprised me, and juggled it all. I made sure I didn't change her deadlines, and told her she needed to be at a certain point by a certain date, and she worked at night, and some on the weekends to keep her school up. As for the pressure, yeah, its there. But it keeps me straight. It goes hand in hand with parenting teens, which is pressure anyway, don't know if it would lessen with sending them to school, I think that would cause more pressure! My son had no trouble whatsoever getting accepted to the four year college locally, they even gave him a scholarship this past year! It is secular, but conservative, so it is working for him.

My son's problem too, and he is creative (art and music). Ditto for testing, my son got 170-190 points more for critical reading and writing over the math on SAT. He did fine with precalc at home in senior year, but I did slow it down for him and prep him for tests. They sure don't do that in college, and that hurt him.

Wish we had known that......painful year. With your son being a music major, theory will be hard enough, pick the lowest math he can get a credit with! And, if you do the dual enrollment, if he gets a borderline grade, it will transfer, but may not figure in his college GPA. Wish we had known that as well!

Same with us, looks good, but no time for it..... still on the shelf unused.

My son liked the Calculus ones.

I thought BJU was quite a bit harder than Apologia. We really like Apologia over here, but I recommended it to a friend, and they didn't like it. They switched to PACES Biology.

People laughed at me for doing precalc with my son, I think we were the only ones in the county! They stopped at Alg. 2 (but some of them had their kids take college algebra as dual enrollment at a college). If math isn't his thing, I don't know if you could get him to take calculus, it is definitely a step up, I saw my son's book, it looked bad to me (and even though he got As through precalc, he didn't do very well with calc). At the college, there are other math courses, ours has a business calculus that is not quite as hard.