We’re aiming for several Advanced Placement exams this spring, including World History, European History, Art History, and maybe Biology. Yes, it’s going to be crazy, but at least we’re not short on guidelines, outlines, examples, and how-to-teach information. These are all available free for students as well as for teachers. Students do not have to attend a school with an AP program to take the exams, but can prepare for the exams on their own.
Miss 16 Year-Old chose the three history courses herself, to my great astonishment. Looking at things objectively, it does make sense to take all three history courses at once since there is a fair bit of overlap in the subject matter. We’ve been encouraging our children to “Do Hard Things,” and I suppose this qualifies. Even so, we will re-evaluate the workload in about 6 weeks, just to ensure that we’ll survive.
Already my daughter knows more history facts than I do, so I’ll have an exhilarating year of learning as I struggle to keep up with her. On the other hand, I have a broader and more experienced outlook on the past, which can only benefit her. Fortunately we have both volumes of Streams of Civilization as well as the entire Truth Quest series to help us get a quick, simple, and Christian background to the topics she’s studying in depth. We’ve also studied art history before.
Her main texts are older editions of Spielvogel’s World History: The Human Odyssey, Spielvogel’s Western Civilization, Jansen’s The Story of Art, and BJUP’s Our Christian Heritage in Art. Why older versions? First of all, it seems that older texts are more rigorous. They are also undeniably more objective and less politically correct. Finally, they are much less expensive. Of course, we will supplement with primary documents, literature, historical fiction, biographies, videos, and, if needed, current textbooks from the library.
For more frugal tips see Canada Girl’s Tightwad Tuesday and Being Frugal’s Tightwad Tuesday.
For more tips on everything under the sun, see We are THAT Family’s Works for Me Wednesday.
We have done a few of these with our oldest and plan to do the same with # 3. Hubby is also Clep Testing for his college degree. Saves money and time!
My daughter was hoping to do the CLEP exams instead of the AP exams, but there are very few CLEP testing sites in Canada.
Annie Kate
Wow ! You are are going to learn tons ! Let us know how it all goes.
PS: I answerd your ? on my post. ((HUGS))
Blessings and ((HUGS))
-Mary
Sounds interesting. I'll have to check out the links later. I'm headed to bed soon.
Glad we're not the only home that is planning to "evaluate to make sure we'll survive" this year! I think our struggle is more with time leaks, as I call them; schoolwork is devouring my youngest (16); if he makes it through the year successfully, he'll end up with 12, maybe 16 college credits (dual credit classes and CLEP), but only if it doesn't bury him! God bless you all!
Lori (aka Plans4You)
Oh, Mary, if all goes well I'll learn so very, very much! I'm quite excited about it. But I'm not planning to study, just to absorb things, since I'm not taking the AP tests myself. 🙂
Yes, Lori, we tend to overload ourselves at our house, so we need to do an occasional check and be willing to adjust things as we go. That being said, learning is wonderful! It's good to aim high, and I hope your son will do well.
Thanks for mentioning the 'time leaks' issue. That's a biggie.
Annie Kate