science
 Many biology courses are asynchronous or meet just one hour per week. Our Honors Biology With Lab, by contrast, meets live, in real time, three times per week. The reason: It is our conviction that in a science course, students should be able to interact with and ask questions of a live instructor — and do so frequently, on a regular basis. We consider live interactions with the instructor vital to deepening students' understanding, correcting confusion, and cultivating real engagement.
Honors Biology With Lab is quite different from an AP course, which must cover a vast number of topics at a rapid pace. In this course, the content is taught in a tiered fashion — laying foundational concepts, building up knowledge, delving deep into the facts. The instructor continually loops back to essential concepts covered earlier in the course and, as a result, reinforces students' understanding and builds real mastery of critical concepts. Her aim is threefold:
- to train her students in real scientific thinking;
- to impart deep understanding of the subject;
- to foster a real love of science.
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 In this year-long, honors-level class, each student acquires both a deep understanding of chemistry and an appreciation for its real-world applications. Each week comprises live lecture and live discussion enhanced by graphics and PowerPoint presentations. Students perform labs under the instructor's guidance and are provided with lab materials and worksheets to be completed at home.
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 Our online science intensives are eight weeks long; each delivers in-depth, focused study of a particular topic in science, and they all include labs. Each is a standalone course that may complement nicely your at-home science curriculum. These courses are appropriate for late middle-school-level and early high-school-level students. In these courses, accordingly, study guides, tests, and note-taking sheets are provided to help students develop the study skills critical to science instruction.
Instructor Diane Speed will deliver intensives on the following topics:
- Ecology: September 26 – November 17, 2023
- Genetics: January 16 – March 15, 2024
- Botany: March 26 – May 24, 2024
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 View our schedule
To view our weekly schedule for 2023-24, click on the image at right.
 View our calendar
To view the annual calendar of our 2023-24 online classes, click on the image at right.
math
Most people think of geometry as a study of shapes — intersecting lines, triangles, angles — but what it's really about is logic. This geometry course helps students develop two forms of logic: 1) visual/spatial; 2) verbal. We use exercises, proofs, and puzzles to train minds in higher-order thinking.
Students develop a host of reasoning skills:
- order & sequence — for instance, determining the proper sequence of statements in a proof (in the wrong sequence the proof may be invalid);
- evaluating facts — those expressed as well as those not expressed;
- synthesizing — combining two or more ideas to understand deeper insights, e.g., learning principles related to simple lines or angles, and then applying those principles to much more complex figures (cubes, pentagons, trapezoids, etc.);
- multi-tasked information processing — holding ideas in short-term memory while processing new information, then retrieving the held ideas.
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WORKSHOP FOR PARENTS
 Live & online
This program addresses the principal concerns parents have about homeschooling through high school — everything you need to know about the high school curriculum and credits, standardized tests, transcripts and record-keeping, applying to college, pursuing scholarships, and much, much more.
The thing I liked best about this workshop: The workbook! Having all the information presented by Diane also on paper where notes can be added is so valuable! That's the true treasure from this workshop — it can be referred to repeatedly through high school years and when applying to colleges.
—Jacqueline B.
Homeschooling mom
Terrific. Full of information. The materials were so thorough. I now have a plan of action. Also, this workshop is inclusive: No matter what type of homeschooler you are, you will understand better how to prepare your student for college and present him or her in the best light.
—Homeschooling mom
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At the heart of effective writing is the ability to develop and sustain a clear train of thought. This acclaimed year-long writing course is designed to help students develop the missing skills — the writing tools and know-how needed to organize and express their ideas. To better understand the essay form, students they not only produce and revise their own essays; they read closely and analyze dozens of essays by really fine writers.
The emphasis of this course is writing essays that produce insight: those fleeting, intuitive leaps and connections we all make at some point — magic glimpses of understanding, and even wisdom.
This online series comprises eight sessions on one of Shakespeare's finest comedies. Twelfth Night satirizes unrequited love, mocks sanctimony and snobbery, and celebrates the simple pleasures of ordinary life. This course serves as an introduction to Shakespeare's comedy, and it is also a course in close reading — students become acquainted with Shakespeare's vocabulary and verse and get practice in important skills, like annotating the text.
