I could, theoretically, make that tree into a peach tree with some fancy genetic engineering– but the fact is this modified peach tree will never be a very good peach tree – because built into the DNA of an acorn is the purpose of being an oak tree, no matter how much I try to talk it into doing something else.

What is in your DNA?  Ever thought about that? Are you pursuing the things you were made to accomplish or chasing something else?

Take a piece of paper and a pen and write down: where do I want to be in 4-5 years? When I’m holding that diploma—what do I want to have accomplished? Answer these questions before moving forward.

Scholarships and entrance exams will continue to remain. So aside from paying for it and getting in, once you’re there you have to do something. And that’s the most fun part, so let’s take a minute and focus there. You’ve made your list, you’ve decided what you think you are good at and want to do. So now what?

If you have decided to go to Paris – now you look at the options for getting there. And – there is more than one. So it is for college – you are NOT to be focused on college YET. That comes later still. Right now we focus on learning from people who have already gone there before – who is living your dream? Who has already gone to Paris – start by asking them before you listen to the travel agencies – learn from the pros.

-       For more information about the ACT, where to take it, how to take it, how to study, and facts about the exam itself, you can check out their website:

http://www.act.org/news/aapfacts.html

-       Most college websites provide information about their college’s entrance requirements. Check under “Admissions” or “Admission Requirements” some college websites hide this information under “Academics” as well, so just poke around the website see what you find.

-       Another way to find out what is required to get into a college is to ask people who attended the college you are interested in. With Facebook and other social media, it isn’t hard to connect with people.

-       You can also email the professors. Most universities have a faculty page where you can get in touch with them and ask questions. Just locate their email and ask—they don’t mind answering questions. They are teachers, answering questions is what they do for a living .

Find ways to incorporate math into the things your student enjoys already–you know, the things that are outside the classroom and not at a desk or kitchen table. If they like horses and rodeos, do distance/rate/time equations (Algebra 1) at a barrel race. Consider attending a rodeo, and having classwork that day be to write down all of the barrel racing times, then come home and use that information to calculate how fast the horse was running in miles per hour.  When the math is connected to something the students are interested in already, then suddenly the math becomes interesting as well. Click Here for Some lesson plans and activity ideas to get you started.

For instance, if your kids are prone to asking the “why do I have to learn this?” question, you might choose to add in some activities with math instead of making every day a textbook day.

Some ideas for supplementing material might be to study area by measuring the area of each room in your house, then adding it together to get the area of your whole house. Students often have fun (and a lot of laughs) trying to measure around furniture, etc. If you’re brave, you can measure the attic too!

Some other ideas I’ve found is when students like to say “I will never use this after school”, instead of trying to argue with them, I offer a challenge:

“Ok,” I say, “If you are so sure you’re right about that, I challenge you to go through an entire day–from the moment you get up, until the moment you go to bed again–you cannot use any math. No numbers, no figures, no adding, subtracting, algebra, or geometry, or anything. No math at all.”

“no homework?!” they immediately ask. Which, I concede, “No, not even homework.”

So we try it. Then they are surprised to learn that they immediately can’t tell time, can’t cook anything, can’t drive, can’t read road signs, can’t buy anything at the store, can’t count their allowance, can’t pack a suitcase (because you have to know how many of each clothing item you might need–that’s math). They can’t even use the remote, because that’s channels–that’s math.

Math is everywhere in life, it is the fabric things are made of. Without math, the world could not function. But rather than try to talk your kids into this belief, it is easier to show them.

This kind of supplementation is called “real world activities” it gets your kids out of the desk and into the world around them. Math can be fun, and real for students, if you look for creative ways to do it.

By the time most students make it to their senior year, they not only have some idea of where they want to go in life, but they have many have parents, advisers, and friends whose advice is helping to guide them towards their dream. As a high school senior, you more than likely have some experience in your “chosen field”, which can prove invaluable as you take the next steps after graduation.

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For many of you the path ahead will require some schooling and several of you will need to go to college. But the unsettling trend among the majority of students (and their parents) is that instead of choosing college because it is something they need, they treat college like the 13th grade. They assume college is just the next step in academics, but rarely does a student take the time to stop and think about why they’re going or what they want to do there. Most parents/students just dive head first into picking the college they think is coolest, what gives them the biggest discount, or where their friends are going. Most parents and students I know don’t even worry about what degrees are available, what kind of education they need, or how the college education impacts their life goals.

This lack of thought concerning college is unfortunate because the raw facts of the matter are that college is expensive, a considerable time commitment, and that fancy degree becomes essentially worthless if you aren’t able to use that education to reach your bigger life goals.

So as you prepare for that high school graduation— or if you’re heading into your senior year here in the next few weeks— take time to define your goals and what you WANT from life. Not all careers need a college degree, especially in the world of the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates entrepreneurship. So as you take that university leap make sure that the steps you are taking in education are the ones that will enhance, encourage, support, and hopefully accelerate, your journey to the career you WANT. College can be a great experience, so make sure it works for you instead of just wasting your time (and money) on something you might not need.

Addition
Subtraction
Multiplication
Division
Fractions
Geometric shapes
Time
Space

Granted that can include a lot of stuff such as mastery of addition includes
knowing the placeholders of base 10 number system. The one’s place, the
ten’s place, etc. Fractions are going to take you into the 1/100 place and
such. But still its addition, start simple and grow.

Basically, all of those concepts can be taught at home without purchasing much at all. Paper, pencil and a clock can get you a long way. But doing math as you go throughout the day gets you a lot further. We wrote a lot on chalk boards and made lots of games out of numbers and shapes and time. We are always noticing shapes and calling them by their correct names. We add as we go along -”We counted 10 steps. There are 5 floors. How many steps are
there to the top?”

One thing we do that I haven’t seen in any curriculum for grade school is to use the alphabet for blank spaces to make formulas.  Use the word ‘formula’
and use X, Y or something else. This is critical to make the move to Algebra easy. Such as

1+ X = 2

Write this on your chalkboard (we wrote it on the driveway), and say something like “what do you need to add to 1 to get 2?”

Out on the driveway it’s a game and a mystery, then when they get to the course called Algebra, they have already done it. We were always told that
children had to reach a certain age to understand this abstract notation. I have found this is not the case. My son could do this as soon as he could
and 1 and 1. I just wrote it with a blank first  1 + ____ = 2 and later with the X and told him the X was the blank. He got that. I left all sorts of
mysteries on the driveway or large cardboard boxes and the chalkboard. He had a blast figuring them out.

See this picture:

This is our son learning sums and geometry. Some of the math is more than he currently comprehends and he has no idea that he’s learning, but when he gets there it won’t scare him or look odd.

We did math this way only through the 2rd grade. Our cover school requires taking the SAT beginning in the 4th grade (each cover is different), so we
decided 3rd grade was a good time to begin expressing math on paper. So after looking around a lot, we finally picked http://www.mathmammoth.com
worksheets. It does a great job of moving into new techniques and concepts as well as continuing to enforce prior skills. It approaches problems in a
common sense way so that the math can easily be applied to the real world. For example, it teaches to add in a way that can be done in your head not
just on paper. Such as adding 16 and 20 you don’t just pull down the 6 on the right side and add the 1 and 2 to get 36.  You add the tens and get 30
and the ones and get 6 for 36. That can be done in your head and is useful for adding in life when paper and pencil and desk are not always readily
available. We do these sheets and still do the activities as well as pointing out math everywhere we see it.

Think of math like you think of language. First you learn to speak it before you read and write it. Kids should be able to speak math and understand it

before they are reading and writing it.  Its not just an activity, it is a language that explains a lot of things in this world that words just can’t do.

Don’t get bogged down on when to move children to Algebra. If they understand the basic math concepts outlined above, then they can go on to
express math in algebraic terms. Its just a more sophisticated way of expressing math. The higher you go in math the more detailed you can express how something in this world works.

To try and help out, we  have opened the

AskDrCallahan Scholarship Program

This program exists to help parents provide a quality, college-preparatory education to their kids no matter what their income, financial situation, or hardship situation might be. In these economically difficult times, the need is especially great and as stewards of our gifts and talents here at AskDrCallahan, we feel that we need to do what we can to make sure all kids get a solid academic preparation for their futures.

We have several options available to families who need the scholarship program from discounted materials, to free stuff, and more.

To find out what options are available for your family, please contact us. support@askdrcallahan.com

If you’re not in need of a scholarship program, you can still help. Consider spreading the word, selling back your textbooks, or donating to the program.

For more details on how you can help, please contact us. Support@askdrcallahan.com.

We will be glad to talk with you.

Grade them correct answer only allowing them to correct wrong answers for partial credit.. This approach works well (we always use it) and really helps the students learn from their own mistakes. Feel free to use our test grade sheets
This form is intended to help you grade according to our grading method. For detailed solutions to test questions our Algebra 1 Teachers Guide provides detailed answers to each test question on the test. They are divided up by Test 1, 2, 3, etc. And will be titled “Test # Answer Key”. We are working on providing similar test answer keys to the Teachers Guides of the other courses, but in the meantime you can either refer to the Solutions Manual (since all test problems come from the Chapter Review sections and our teachers guides give detailed problem reference guides per problem, per test) or you can email us and we will work them out for you and send them back via email pdf.

In fact, since we recommend it we will support it for FREE. If there is something you do not understand from the solutions manual, just let us know and we will attempt to clear up the issue. We provide detailed answers to any questions your students may come across at any time, from the tests or anywhere else in the course.  All they need to do is send us an email to hwhelp@askdrcallahan.com

You can buy the textbook (probably cheaper than from us) on amazon or somewhere similar and borrow the dvds.

You can even buy only the textbook and download our syllabus for free on our product pages.

If you let us know which courses you are wanting to take, we can give you the ISBN numbers for the textbooks and solutions manuals you will need and you can search for them easier on amazon or wherever. Also, you can email us and we can sell you just the textbook and solutions manual. Most of those prices are outlined on our product pages.

Homework Help will support any of these customer options for free. What we do not support for free is if you are using an alternate curriculum. We will support other courses, but we charge for that service. Read more here.

For parents who are new to homeschooling, or who didn’t know there were scale options, we have listed some popular grading scales here:

The Tens System:

90-100 A

80-89 B

70-79 C

60-69 D

59 and Below F

The Nines System:

92 and above A

83 -91 B

74-82  C

64-73 D

65 and below F

The Eights System 1:

93 and above A

85- 92 B

77-84 C

69-76 D

70 and below F

The Eights System 2:

94 and above A

86- 93 B

78- 85 C

69- 76 C

70 and below F

There isn’t really any indication that any one system is particularly harder than any of the others. In fact some studies show that the Tens System, which most consider the easiest, might actually be the most difficult since that system also accounts for pluses, minues, etc. In addition, the grade depends a lot of the test difficulty level, extra credit, and student ability. As you can see, there are a lot of factors that go into assigning a grade, therefore we prefer to let parents decide what works best for their students.