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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So in other words, homeschooling mom--you are using your advanced degree to prep your kids for ap exams.

To each his own, but to me that sounds like hell on earth for so, so many reasons.[/quote]

You are WAY off base with that.

Rather, we are letting our math and science kids go as fast as they want and as fast as they can (younger child has hit a wall in Physics because they don't know Calculus so we will teach him the necessary equations or whatever - husband in charge there).

The kids take AP exams to validate our home schooling, the same way they will take the PSAT and SAT (but not the PARCC).  And they get to study what they want - one hates Chemistry, don't think we will bother.  And one only wants to go so far in math.

There are lots of things we are learning that there is no AP for, and you can basically create a course for anything that interests them, and go at their speed, and let them have more time to pursue outside interests.

They can go faster in languages and speak to each other and speak to us.  And both will eventually take that AP.

We can teach them History about areas of the world that otherwise they would not be able to learn until college, like going in depth on the Inca's and the Mayans and what is going on now (no AP for that).

They can follow the political race to the White House including what is trending on Utube, do research to understand the Superpacks, the Citizen's United decision, and why Lawrence Lessig was not allowed to debate, and that education includes watching SNL spoofs.  (No AP for that). Ulikely to take AP US Government and Politics because it seems boooooring.

They can build their own computer and have a Utube channel, learn Java from Khan Academy, make their own games.  No real AP for that but one of them will take the CS AP eventually.  But right now the course is called "how to monetize your interests." and writing a step by step guide of how this all is happening.

And they can read what they want in English as long as it builds their vocabulary - the Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, the Tom Clancy series on Jack Ryan.

Outsourcing how to write because I don't have the confidence to do it.  They will take both English APs eventually.

And the one who wants to act and make films can go to auditions even in NYC, take classes there as well, and there are Master classes taught by Dustin Hoffman and others where the tuition is de minimus and they can go on forever.  Furthermore, you can as part of your research watch all the movies that win awards and analyze why, make reels using cooperative sibs.  There is no AP for that, either.

The boundaries are just a certain number of APs so colleges take our other courses seriously - and they say what they expect you to have taken on their websites, and what we think they need to be educated - writing and reading and speaking a foreign language, doing the same in English, studying US History and getting to Calculus BC although one can and wants to go beyond.  And colleges will know then that my husband actually taught one of them linear Algebra and differential equations - no APs for those, they are college courses, but they will believe us.

So APs and SAT subject matter tests serve a purpose - to demonstrate that we actually have a rigorous curriculum.  That is all they do.  If I were God, I would design some of the courses diffferently, emphasize some topics more than others and wrap that into the AP exam.  But I am not God, so in our courses where there is an AP it is a floor not a ceiling because I can focus and hone in more deeply on anything that really fascinates them.

And we do and will keep doing a ton of things that have no APs.  How fun is it to choose your own books for English?  To study acting by watching movies?  To study your own cultural heritage whatever it may be?  To make a Utube channel?  To make your own computer games?  To read what you want in your foreign language, listen to music in that language, and write about what you want including writing songs?  To go to the Spy museum, the Supreme Court, and museums when it is on point?  And finally, to design your own courses, a kind of independent study wrapped into whatever you really want to do at the moment.

It is fun, and now that they are not in school they have the time. [/quote]

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