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Category: Homeschool For Success

3 Reasons to Take Advanced Placement (AP) Classes

Aim Academy Online aligns its classes with Advanced Placement (AP) and College Level Examination Program (CLEP) exams. Both are a type of equivalency exam–they are an alternative, cost-saving method for earning college credit. Furthermore, most of our AP teachers have served as AP readers and completed AP training.
If your kids are collegebound, here’s why the AP exams, in particular, should be a part of your high school plan. (More on the CLEP exams later.)
See AAO’s AP classes.
AP and CLEP exams helped my four kids finish college on time (if not early) and earn merit scholarships. All then graduated with little or no debt and most with double degrees. Strategic use of AP and CLEP exams were a critical part of why that happened.
I founded Aim Academy Online in 2011 so your family could have the same opportunities.
Here are three compelling reasons to make AP exams during high school a goal for your collegebound kids:
1. AP exam scores are an objective measure of a homeschooled student’s academic achievement.
AP exams are developed with ongoing input from professors at a representative sample of U.S. colleges and universities–including private, public, religious, and elite. This team determines the standard content and skills students are expected to master in the college-level course represented by an AP exam. (This is why AP exams undergo periodic revision—this team continually surveys colleges to make sure they are testing the most common course content and skills.) AP exam scores provide objective evidence to back up the grades and coursework on a homeschool applicant’s transcript. Admissions offices and merit scholarship committees can be confident your child is ready for college success since AP exam scores show he or she has already completed college-level work.
2. A passing score on an AP exam converts to college credit at no additional cost at most colleges and universities.
AP exams are scored on a scale of 1–5, with a 3 considered a passing grade at most colleges. More competitive schools will require a 4 or 5 on some exams to earn credit. Each school sets their own AP and CLEP policies. Search on “AP exams” or “credit by exam” on a college’s website to pull up that school’s list of accepted exams and required scores.
Other methods, such as transfer credits or a portfolio review, may have fees attached–it’s not uncommon for a college to say, we will accept these credits but you will need to pay the cost per credit we charge–in that case, you save yourself the time of taking the class, but you don’t really save any money.
My kids accumulated college credit through multiple ways during high school and college, and the AP exam route netted us the most credits at the lowest cost (including the cost of the AP class and AP exam) of all other methods. The main reason I say this is because of benefit #3–the scholarship money AP scores can unlock.
Read Next: 5 Ways AP Exams Can Cut College Costs
3. AP exam scores heavily influence a homeschooled student’s merit scholarship consideration.
First a definition: merit scholarship is not based on financial need. It is solely based on the student’s high school achievements—academics, leadership, and extra-curriculars.
Put yourself in the shoes of a scholarship committee. They want to award scholarship funds to the worthiest candidates and to not be accused of favoritism or subjectivity, especially if they are passing out taxpayer-funded scholarships.
Homeschooled applicants often have non-traditional documentation and grades awarded by parents (not the most objective of measures). Please do not throw tomatoes at me—this is their perspective of our objectivity about our children. (Do you think your friends are objective about their children’s achievements and talent? You may be free from bias, but the rest of us often aren’t.)
AP exams are among the most standardized and objective of measures. Grade inflation runs rampant everywhere, so these are not reliable measures of academic achievement in most committee members’ minds. The SAT and ACT have cultural biases embedded in them and have been shown to favor students from privileged backgrounds.
As AP exams measure college-level achievement, they provide better evidence that your child is college-ready than grades or an SAT/ACT test, which measure high school level achievement only.
Most importantly, AP exams show your child is willing to challenge him- or herself and desires high academic achievement—a more reliable predictor of college graduation than high school grades or test scores.
Does this kid want to work hard and learn and advance in his or her studies? Then that is the kid we should give a helping hand to!
Tips for Scoring High on AP Exams
Aligning coursework in middle school allows students more time, at a gentler pace, to achieve college-level mastery by the end of high school.
AP exams measure college-level achievement. To do well on AP exams, students must first master high school level course content and skills. Introducing more advanced coursework in middle school (for example, starting Algebra 1 in 7^th grade) gives kids time to reach college level mastery in AP courses in 10^th–12^th grades.
I learned this lesson the hard way. I enrolled my sons in AP US History in 9^th grade. They had never had a decent U.S. history course—we’d read all of Joy Hakim’s wonderful History of US series but leaping from that into college-level history was very stressful. They passed the exam, but it was not a pleasant experience for them or me. Without a solid background, they devoted so much time to AP US History that other coursework suffered. Nothing about this experience supported a love for learning–a primary reason I was homeschooling in the first place!
With my next child, Kayte, we anticipated all the AP exams she might want to take by the end of high school, and we started folding some of the content and skills on those exams into her middle school coursework.
How did we know what content and skills were covered on the AP Exams? We downloaded the course descriptions at AP Central on the College Board’s website.
Even if your kids never take an AP exam, Aim Academy’s alignment with AP and CLEP course content is gradually preparing your children for college-level work no matter where they attend–private, public, religious, or elite--we are here to help you make sure they are well prepared!
Read Next: 5 Ways AP Exams Can Cut College Costs
See Aim Academy Online AP Classes.

June 4, 2024
SAT English Prep Course Updated for New SAT
As of 2021, 100% of the SAT’s English content is now based on multiple choice performance – there’s never been a more important time to ensure your student’s MCQ strategy skills are honed and ready!
My SAT English prep class has been preparing students for testing success for almost a decade. This summer, our seven-week mini-course is a comprehensive preparation for the most current, up-to-date version of the SAT in the areas of Reading and Writing MCQs. We will seek to demystify the English sections of the SAT and have fun learning the ins and outs of each category.
We will:
- Prepare for the reading section of the SAT. This will include practicing evidence-based passages, inferring meaning based on tone, diction, and context clues, and more.
- Prepare for the writing section of the SAT. This will include practicing strong grammar, diction, and punctuation skills in preparation for the SAT Writing questions which require a student to spot errors and choose the most concise, correct phrasing of a sentence or paragraph structure.
- Prepare for SAT-level vocabulary. In addition to providing vocabulary resources and virtual flashcard sets, I will provide a good set of strategies for improving vocabulary in general – for the SAT and beyond.
- Students will complete MCQ passages and full practice exams in their own time as well as live in class with my guidance. I will provide feedback on their areas of weakness and help them succeed in their individual goals.
For more details and enrollment options, check out our SAT English Prep description page.
June 27, 2022
12 Things to Know About How Children Learn*
The child
1. Happy children learn more than sad children. Stress and negative emotions drain a child’s cognitive resources. Laughter boosts a child’s memory capacity.
2. Play is essential for emotional wellbeing and cognitive development.
3. An element of risk (risk of failure, risk of danger, risk of pain, risk of embarrassment, etc.) produces a greater sense of accomplishment and reward.
4. Persistence predicts progress more than talent or intelligence.
5. Children who believe they will succeed achieve more than children who expect to fail.
The teacher
1. Praise and encouragement help children persist.
2. Criticism and punishment undermine motivation.
3. Targeted feedback is essential to help kids improve.
4. Assignments should be challenging but attainable with effort.
The environment
1. The learning environment should be secure, comfortable, and free of distractions.
2. Surround children with others who know and love them.
3. Children should be free to move around, change positions, and take a break without asking permission.
*These research-based principles of learning are true for how you learn, too.
May 31, 2022
3 Easy Ways to Help Your Child Learn Anything
1. Retrieve It
Every time your child recalls what she is learning, she thickens the neural pathways to that information in her long term memory. Research shows that recall practice is more powerful than almost any other learning strategy. You can help your child accelerate this process by routinely asking questions about what she is studying.
- What did you study today in math?
- Explain to me how to solve this kind of problem.
- What are the reasons this historical event happened?
- Tell me about the process of photosynthesis again.
Every time your child recalls specific details or re-solves a problem, such is 3×5, that information becomes slightly more fixed in his long term memory. And he becomes just a bit faster at retrieving it.
Once your child can retrieve this information effortlessly, move on to retrieving newer learning.
2. Question It
This is what a healthy brain does: It craves new information because learning fuels cognitive growth. Without effort, your child’s brain calls questions to mind to pique his curiosity and to motivate him to engage in learning. Raising questions. Asking questions. Pondering questions. These are the indicators of a healthy, growing brain.
Your child participates in this process by purposefully raising questions about what she is learning—Don’t require her to immediately find answers. It is merely enough for her to ponder questions about the subjects she is studying.
You can maximize this strategy by asking your child to write his questions from the school day in a special journal. He doesn’t have to write the answers down—just the questions. You don’t want to make this task laborious. It should be fun and rewarding.
At the end of each week, sit down and discuss these questions with her—talk about any answers she may have found or theories she has formulated. Ask what new questions have emerged. The act of raising questions about what she is learning fires active learning—a brain on high alert for answers—a brain primed to make connections to prior learning—a brain attentive to the subjects she is studying.
If your child asks you to answer a question he has—please do! But otherwise, just let the answers present themselves naturally over time.
3. Draw It
Finally, ask your child to use that special journal to draw pictures about what she is learning. We think in pictures. We remember more details about information and events attached to images (not words). As we read text, we convert what we are reading into a movie in our mind—the words themselves do not scroll across the screen—the pictures we associate with them do.
Again, just as with the previous two strategies, we can contribute to these automatic brain activities by intentionally engaging in them—drawing a picture about the word problems from a math lesson or the processes in a science book or the events in your history studies will help him remember more details about those lessons.
Want to know the 20 Power Tools of Learning? Download a free printable here.
August 25, 2021
Why Homeschooling Works–From the Research

Homeschool Works Podcast, Season 1, Episode 1
My daughter, Kayte, a second-generation homeschool mom, and I have long talked about doing a podcast together (we are podcast junkies ourselves). With her persistence and technical knowhow, we finally found the time to pull it off. Our first two seasons are in the can and available on your favorite podcast app.

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In our very first episode or our new Homeschool Works podcast, Kayte and I look at the research behind why homeschooling works. Everything we cover will help you focus on what’s most important in the design of your own home school. Spoiler alert, it is all about tailoring to the unique needs of each child. And we have suggestions on how to actually make that happen. We’re also going to be talking about interest, and why it’s so important to spark our kids interest. Before we start teaching them. We close out with ideas on how to pique the interest of your most reluctant learner, I learned so much while recording this episode with my mom, and I’m really excited to share it with all of you. So why well, the school works? What’s the purpose of this podcast? Like? What were we thinking when we decided to start this?
Transcript

April 5, 2022
8 Reasons Homeschooling Works . . . And Tips for When It Doesn’t
After I finished homeschooling our kids, I headed back to school to complete a Ph.D. in educational psychology. I wanted to know how kids learn best. Wouldn’t that be helpful information for homeschooling moms and dads?

Researchers have studied how children learn for more than a hundred years. We have a substantial body of knowledge and consensus among scientists on many aspects of learning. One day in class I had an ah-ha! moment. I realized all our research points to one obvious conclusion:

If we built a school based on how kids learn best . . . we’d build a home.

How’s that for some liberating good news? And, doesn’t it make complete sense? A child’s optimal learning environment is the one God designed: a family.

Now, here’s the caveat—we can miss the opportunities our homes afford our kids to learn. We’ve got to nurture the advantages and eschew practices that undermine their learning.

Let me unpack this with eight major findings. (These results should correlate with your own learning experience. How kids learn best and how adults learn best is not that different.)
1. Kids learn best when they believe their teacher and fellow students care about them.
Have you ever taken a class where the teacher didn’t even know your name? Worse, how about a situation where you suspected that the teacher or another student didn’t like you? What did that do for your confidence and motivation? Think about the effect circumstances like these would have on each of your kids. Conversely, think of a learning situation you really enjoyed or you put forth your best effort. Was the teacher or mentor personally invested in your success and well-being? Did you feel included? Didn’t that help you to push yourself?

No one cares more about your kids than you do. There’s a lot of power in this truth—even the best teachers can’t be invested in them like you are. When conflict arises, hit pause. Wrap your arms around your brood and talk it through. Learning will be a slow slough until relationships are restored. (And, celebrate the freedom you have to hug your kids. Sadly, classroom teachers can’t do that anymore.)

Motivation skyrockets when we fill our homes with affirmation. I posted notes in strategic places to remind myself to be nice and praise my kids (but I’m sure you don’t have this problem). Get your kids in on the game plan too. They need to know that they have a lot of power to undermine or propel your success and the success of their siblings. You will be the best homeschool teacher possible when you feel loved and affirmed. And, your children’s learning will soar in an atmosphere that exudes warmth and affection.
1. Kids learn best when they have opportunities to pursue their interests.
As a classroom teacher, I knew this. But, I just couldn’t allow ninety students that freedom–I was paid to keep them in their seats and away from the windows. No, you can’t look outside! Eyes front while I teach you about what is out there. What a shame because interest indicates readiness. Is your child interested in what the letters on the page mean? Then your child is ready to learn how to read. Is your child curious about dinosaurs? Then dive in now before his or her interest wanes.

Our son, Gabe, got fascinated with the physics of flight when he was seven. What a joy to have the ability to drop what we were doing and head to the library to check out all the books on the topic. Many were way above his reading level, but his interest accelerated his comprehension. Dad bought Estes rockets and taught Gabe how to launch them from our backyard. (Neighborhood kids were asking to be homeschooled when they saw all the action at our house!) We all went to an airshow. Even Gabe’s siblings and moi got caught up in his enthusiasm for flight. By the end of his exploration, Gabe could explain how planes fly better than most high school students–even I remember what we learned to this day.

Think of the lost opportunity if I had said, hang in there, buddy, we’ll get to that in fifth grade. Right now the second grade science standards require us to study plants. It’s a good thing we took advantage of Gabe’s interest when it appeared. By fifth grade he was no longer interested in flight. His attention had turned to rocks.

Interest is powerful stuff–go with it. It awakens the brain and facilitates deeper learning. Homeschooling works when kids have a lot of freedom and leisure to follow their own pursuits. It empowers them, and they’ll take more responsibility for their education. Fill your home with fascinating, worthwhile things to explore. Banish the media and twaddle to a dark corner or grandma’s (guilty). Then sit back and watch the magic–or better yet, dive in with them.
1. Kids learn best when they can make choices and participate in decisions about their learning.
Test this against your own experience. How much motivation would you have if someone made you homeschool your kids? How about if someone else assigned the curriculum and determined the schedule you follow? Doesn’t this finding make complete sense? When we have no voice or control, our motivation wanes. We invest the greatest time and effort in areas of our lives where we have freedom to choose and the opportunity to be heard. Kids are wired just like we are.

This doesn’t mean we have to let our kids run the show—but they should have a seat at the table. Give your kids as much choice and involvement as their age and maturity allows. Young children can choose between two books to read; teens are ready to choose what classes to take. Young kids can participate in setting the schedule for the day; teens can manage their time. Invite younger kids to weigh in on the curricula you are considering, while teens can bring their choices to you for your thoughts. A collaborative relationship with your kids may feel time-consuming at first, but you will be so glad you went this direction as your teens take on more and more responsibility, and your time is freed up to concentrate on little ones.
1. Kids learn best when they can observe older students who model what success looks like.
Kids learn more in a multi-age setting than a room filled with age-mates. (It’s why the one-room schoolhouse worked.) A multi-age setting allows younger kids to see older kids achieving success in areas they are just starting to learn about. This visual gives them confidence that, with time and effort, they too will achieve success. Peer modeling also makes the steps involved in progress apparent. Having only an adult (like a teacher at the front of the room) as a model of success is too big a gap.

If your child is the oldest of siblings or an only child, join a co-op or activity that includes kids of multiple ages. Our homeschool drama troupe has a wide range of ages in our productions—it is striking to note the acting chops our youngest members have by the time they reach high school. They’ve had the advantage of watching the kids ahead of them go from stage fright to accomplished actors. Keep this finding in mind—kids learn more from observation than instruction.
1. Kids learn best when they have a teacher who is available to provide feedback and support.
I believe I was a dedicated high school English teacher. But with ninety students a day, my goal was to return essays within a week. Even that was too big a lag between submitting the assignment and receiving feedback. My students’ lives were eons beyond that assignment by the time I returned their papers—few gave my feedback more than a glance. The more immediate the feedback, the more useful it is to students.

I remember a day my youngest, Kristen, was working on some math exercises. As I took a moment to observe her progress, I saw she was forgetting to carry and borrow when needed. It was a simple matter to review those steps together and have her correct her mistakes. (No tears. No drama.) What a different story if I hadn’t looked at her work until the end of the week—she would have completed several math pages by then and repeatedly reinforced her mistakes. The more we practice a procedure incorrectly (like solving a subtraction problem) the more difficult it is to unlearn our errors.

I realize that your time is limited—so prioritize being available when kids are learning the proper procedure for completing a task. With other types of assignments, I asked my kids to schedule appointments with me if they wanted help on a project or composition. I always tried to get with them within the day. Being available to help when asked is key. (You can also involve older siblings in this responsibility—explaining something to a younger child reinforces learning in both students. Isn’t that amazing? Another finding that explains why homeschooling works!)
1. Kids learn best when what we ask them to do matches what they are ready to learn.
God has created this fabulous process called development, and each kid has a unique timeline for his or her cognitive growth. We need to cooperate with God’s game plan for each of our kids. We don’t stress out when a child’s physical development is not the same as a peer’s. If our child is two inches shorter than an age-mate, we don’t bring in specialists to figure out how to help him or her catch up. We don’t start remediation exercises. We understand that physical growth is not standardized. But we are conditioned by our own school experiences to believe cognitive growth is. If our child is not reading by age seven, we believe our child is behind. We worry that we are not doing something right when the real reason may simply be that the child is not developmentally ready yet.

This is the fundamental problem with Common Core standards (yep, I’m going there). Not a single developmental psychologist was involved in developing them. These standards don’t account for the wide degree of variance kids of the same age can have in cognitive growth. Some kids mature physically early. Others mature late. We understand this is normal. But, variance in cognitive abilities among children until after adolescence is also normal development. How abusive to make kids believe they are behind because some peers develop cognitively a bit earlier than they do. That’s what the current high-stakes testing climate in our schools is doing. It is harming kids. (One reason homeschooling is growing worldwide, even where illegal, is parents in Asia and Europe have seen what high-stakes testing does to children, and they believe they are saving their kids from harm.)
1. Kids learn best when they can experience what they are studying firsthand.
God gave us five senses for a reason. Each one has a limited capacity for processing information. However, our capacity multiplies when we use more than one sense to process new information. When all five senses are involved, our brain’s capacity to learn is exponential. If I read a book about elephants, I will remember some of what I learn. If I watch a documentary about elephants, I will remember even more. But if I travel to Africa to see elephants in their natural habitat, I sure won’t forget that, and my recall will be extensive and vivid forever.

Textbooks are at best a tool to help us save time. As a learning aid, they are limited. Schools have no other real option because they are mass educating. But homeschoolers do. I’m not saying throw the curriculum out the window—but our kids will remember most what they experience. So, make the most of the freedom we have. Liberally link field trips to what you study. And choose to study what your kids can experience whenever possible.
1. Kids learn best when they have plenty of physical activity, sunshine, and fresh air.
Not only did God intend for us to use all five senses to learn, He situated us on the third rock from the Sun intentionally too. The Earth is brimming with the data our brains are built to process. Our kids need to get outdoors and start processing! Exploring God’s creation promotes brain health. This is one reason I travel. I’m keeping my aging brain healthy. I’ve got to keep processing new information if I want to stay young—just like I’ve got to keep active. Research shows just fifteen minutes in nature increases our cognitive capacity. (What a shame that recess is being eliminated in many school schedules.) We intuitively know this to be true—We go outside to clear our heads, take deep breathes to calm down, walk to help us think straight. We gravitate naturally toward what is best for us.

When you consider these eight findings about learning, it’s obvious why homeschooling works. You’re probably already doing most of these without thinking about it. Our optimal learning environment is the one God has designed—the family and His creation—and it fits our kids (and us) like a glove.
March 13, 2022