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I am trying to plan out my dd14's high school. She is doing CTC now after using Prep last year as our first year in HOD. She has very mild special needs that require her to do about twice a typical math load in order to gain a full understanding of math concepts. She also reads very slowly and struggles greatly with comprehension. Because of this, she is not doing extensions. (As an aside we have dd11 also using CTC with extensions and doing great with them).

So my plan is to continue with the normal HOD sequence for both of these children: RTR, RevToRev, MTMM, World Geog.

In our state she needs 3 sciences and one of them must have a lab. The requirements say 1 life or biology, 1 physical or chem or physics and 1 lab class. She needs 2 History credits.

First, if I use the science as is as much as possible with labs as offered, how do you suggest getting the life or biology credit?

Second, would you add extensions every year for now on?

Third, would you add Getting Started with Latin (we've done Song School Latin a few years back) and then do GSWSpanish?

Thanks for any input!

So, if you are doing to do RtR, Rev2Rev, MtMM, and World Geography for high school, the physical science should be pretty easy. Rev2Rev, MtMM, and WG have physical science. Maybe call Rev2Rev and MtMM together physical science and then WG 1/2 credit chemistry and 1/2 credit physics if you need to, but from what Carrie has said, the topics don't overlap too much. You could even just call them Physical Science 1 and Physical Science 2 probably. That leaves net year and RtR. It is scheduled as earth science, which you won't need. So maybe do what Carrie has planned for World History? I don't think the PACE biology would be too advanced for her, as it isn't as rigorous as many biology options (although supposedly it is very good still and allows students to really LEARN the material). They even have DVDs to go along with the text (plus the DVDs for the videos) if she would learn better that way.

She's never studied astronomy or earth science. How would you suggest we cover that too? (We do look at stars and planets in the sky with an app for the iPad but she's never really covered this in depth at all.) So should we do the science in RTR plus Biology?

One other question: Will we get enough labs in these to count as a lab or do I need the biology lab?

Thank you!

bumping...

If you do the Advanced level of Exploration Education Science that is scheduled in Rev to Rev that is considered high school level and has enough labs to count as a lab credit. You could probably call this introduction to physics. The lab in the World Geography guide definitely counts as a lab credit and that would be considered Physical Science. For life science/biology for a struggling learner I would keep the Genetics kit and the Evolution: The Grand Experiment part of the MTMM science course and delete the rest of the science and add Biology 101 DVD to it.

Thank you LynnH! So, would you change this upcoming year's science with Res to Ref at all? I was thinking I'd do Biology 101 plus PAC Biology as both sound lite, without a lab, but have her also do Astronomy as scheduled so she'd cover it since she never has. This is so hard to plan!

I would do the biology with MTMM because it fits well with the evolution study and you don't want her to miss that. For RTR you could look at something like Signs and Seasons for Earth Science. It might be too challenging but I know Carrie has recommended it to beef up RTR to high school level. If you think she is more at the level of the books already scheduled in RTR then do those as written for Earth Science and maybe look at adding a few DVDs from somewhere like Answers in Genesis or I know we have a local astronomy club that does night sky viewings where they bring out all their telescopes on certain nights. We went to those when we did RTR.

Thank you for your input!