dietcokette Posted October 30 Share Posted October 30 THi all — My almost nine year-old is currently in public school 3rd grade, but we are needing to pull her out, and so I’m working to put together the homeschooling options that will work for us at this time. While we’ve done side-schooling the last few years (like using Beast Academy to give her the higher level math she wasn’t getting at school), this will be the first time since preK that we will be doing it full time. Here are the constraints I’m working with: * Given the specifics of the disabilities and medical conditions involved, it can be super unpredictable what time of day or even how many hours in a day she will be able to work well. I have no concerns about her/our ability to tackle enough each week on average, but I want to avoid any synchronous classes other than the extracurricular stuff we already have, and also avoiding curriculum where the main selling point is that they have these detailed daily schedules that would never work for us, especially given that we will also be working around my work day (sometimes from home, sometimes from my lab). * She does fine at working independently as long as I can give her a to-do list for the week that has some “must dos” from me and leaves room for her to add in the things she wants to focus on that week (which might be anything from a specific kind of math to coding or piano or trying to make a comic book). * Fine motor delays. While she can copy a sentence with more or less legible handwriting if that is all she is focusing on, it takes so much cognitive and physical effort that there isn’t much left for actually processing content. Both in standardized testing and in how she learns new material, there’s a huge difference in the level she can work at online / orally or even typing vs. pencil and paper. So I’m trying to be very intentional about which things she will be doing with pencil and paper — but that means that I can’t rely as much on workbook type options for her to work independently from, as much as she loves the idea of workbooks before she actually starts trying to use them. * Wanting secular content as much as possible. * Like a lot of gifted and 2E kids, she is pretty spiky in her skills and knowledge, and so I am looking for options that either adapt or make it relatively easy for us to skim some content and go more slowly for others. For example, in math she seems to have down at least half of algebra one content and loves number theory, but sometimes struggles with decimals and percents, and definitely does not have all of her basic multiplication and division facts memorized — she just stops to work them out in her head each time, over and over, just like she would with larger digit problems. So while standardized testing shows her at about a 11th grade level in reading and language arts, and a 9th grade level in math, there are all sorts of gaps to shore up on. So far, here’s what I’m considering: MATH: For sideschooling, we have been using a mix of Beast Academy and Math Academy. She really likes how much Math Academy adapts to what she already knows and has down, but really hates their whole XP system and all the different ways you can lose XP, and I *really* dislike their multiple choice format because I see her frequently skipping steps or working backwards from a likely answer choice — and while that can totally make sense on a timed standardized test, it isn’t always helping her truly learn the underlying math concepts. While I think we’d keep up the Beast Academy for now because their challenge problems and puzzles are so great for her in working on being comfortable with things not always coming easily (and she really loves the videos, almost as much as she loves the chesskid ones), I’d love to have a less-gameable adaptive math program that can efficiently target her gap areas without me needing to go through and identify which specific things she needs to do each time, until she’s ready to move on to the self-paced AOPS Pre-Algebra. Any thoughts on iLearn vs. IXL vs. ALEKS for that, or have other suggestions? SCIENCE: I’m trying to find a physical science option that actually uses math for things like gas laws, kinetic energy, acceleration, etc. Most of the things I can find seem to focus on being as math-free as possible, which isn’t what either of us want. She has a decent starting understanding of the concepts involved, but is ready to start seeing and practicing with how that interfaces with actual math. It looks like Biozone Physical Science might be great, but I can’t find anywhere I can buy a teacher’s guide or an answer key without buying a whole classroom set of student books, and I would really like to avoid needing to solve every problem myself to check her work. I couldn’t find enough info on Friendly Physical Science to tell whether it uses math to any real degree. The CK12 physical science is definitely conceptual rather than quantitative. Do I need to be looking at high school intro level courses in physics and chemistry instead and just cherry picking which topics to tackle? In an ideal world, I would find something that has a digital experiment platform she can use. There are some experiments we can and will do “for real”, but I think she would really love something that had simulated experiments. If nothing else, maybe I can find some good ipad games / simulators in that area? LANGUAGE ARTS: Guest Hollow’s language arts program, using their Beowulf’s Grammar as the spine. I really really love the look and scope of MCT Town, but I just don’t see how I could make it happen without a lot more time on my hands, and Guest Hollow has a lot more flexibility built in. She also likes playing with Nightzookeeper, and I will probably keep that subscription, but I truly don’t know if it is actually that useful from a learning perspective — the parent reporting dashboard gives so little information that it’s hard to see what she gets out of it unless I physically watch her use it. I would love to find an online program for spelling that is adaptive and use that instead of either of Guest Hollow’s spelling options — any suggestions there? She has a pretty good grounding in phonics, but has an easier time applying that to reading than to spelling. There are some adaptive language arts online programs that include spelling — but I need to really really avoid for her anything that has multiple choice reading comprehension questions. She tests well, so clearly is capable of doing them — but finds them intensely distressful. FINE MOTOR SKILLS: Cursive Logic, typing, Mark Kistler’s Draw 3D, and working on embroidery of different Pokemon. HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY: I think we are going to do “Unstoppable Us” (human social evolution) with a friend’s homeschooling family. Also thinking about at least part of Guest Hollow’s Jr Early American History and also “Draw the USA”. If we don’t do much in the way of formal history this year, I think that will be fine, since she reads a lot of history and we talk about it. PE: has dance several days a week, lots of hiking, and is also working on strength and conditioning. OTHER STUFF: She plays piano and is working on learning guitar, and likes composing on both, so will keep up that — and I am going to see if I can get her to start to learn to transcribe her own compositions rather than wanting me to do it. 🙂 She will keep on with creative writing on her own (essentially fan fiction), doing projects in Tynker and Scratch, and might try some simple Python projects. And finishing up the last bits of the ChessKid program. Since she will be in the lab with me a decent amount, I will also teach her to use Excel and Stata — she has a starting sense of both already, but I think she would really enjoy getting to play around with them more. And given all the questions and angst she is having about the world, I think we will also go through at least some of Royal Fireworks Press’ “Western Philosophy” together — both for the discussions, and to give her practice doing narration on something other than fiction or history. I WOULD LOVE TO DO BUT PROBABLY WONT HAVE TIME OR BANDWIDTH: American Art history from ArtK12 (I might give in and buy this anyway). Bonyfide Anatomy (we have this on hand from when we used part of it during preK). Taxonomy of Living Things: The Five Kingdoms. Nature Anatomy. Guest Hollow’s Botany. RightStart Math G/H for geometry with compass and pencil. Foreign language (she plays with Duolingo intermittently, but I don’t think we will be able to make more than that happen for right now unless she decides on her own that it’s something she really wants). She would really like to learn a lot more cooking, but I don’t think I can cope with that until she is more predictable about the cleaning up after. 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amiesmom Posted October 30 Share Posted October 30 (edited) Just a couple of ideas or resources for science that came to mind after reading your post. Science Mom Physics I . This is intended for 8th grade, but they also give some oprional resource suggestions that can bump it up to more of a high school level. Even without the extra resources when my dd completed it in 8th, there was quite a bit of math. She enjoyed the video lessons and completed it pretty independently. My high school kids have sometimes used PhET for lab simulations in their classes. I believe it's free. Edited October 30 by amiesmom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dietcokette Posted October 30 Author Share Posted October 30 Thanks, that is super helpful — off to go check those out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malam Posted Thursday at 06:17 AM Share Posted Thursday at 06:17 AM (edited) For math, you could try Unlock Math. They use multiple kinds of input, including free response, and there's no losing progress. They also have a free trial that doesn ask for your credit card. Edited Thursday at 06:18 AM by Malam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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