I am of the opposite bent. I don't mind correcting Logic,Math and Sciences. I mind correcting papers. Which is why I outsource writing most of the time. This year, my dd will do British Lit with no writing and a separate writing course with someone else. Her first year of high school she did her English altogether with someone else. Last year, she did write papers which I corrected to some degree but she wrote other stories, poems and other writings which were critiqued online, in contests, and in a separate class she took

Dh defers to me an all things medical except that he is military and has to take whatever they tell him to take. As it is, we are both pro-vaccine on most vaccines and he knows we have high risk people in our family and we need flu vaccines (both regular and H1N1). So far, they don't have any here yet of either.

I will be praying for her, Crissy. What a horrible situation.

Clinton and Obama come to mind. Clinton, yes. Obama, no. Obama came from a priveleged background. His parents were highly educated eventually and he went to private schools and to private colleges and universities.

There have been other studies that showed that there was no link at all between how well homeschooled students did and whether their state was highly, moderately, or not regulated. Other studies have looked at things which don't depend on parent self selection like ACT or SAT scores. You can say that not all students take these tests and that is true but in my state, not all students take the school tests too. Last year, they started to allow portfolio reviews for students who don't know English well or had certain handicaps. The controversy here is are some of those children being allowed portfolio reviews improperly. I remember when I was in school, they took some of us out of our honors classroom and gave us an idiotic test all because we spoke more than one language. Now the funny thing was not that we passed the test, but they labeled one of my neighbors as a limited English speaker. She didn't have issues because of another language since she had been in the US since infancy. She had issues because she was limited in intelligence, not in English. They mislabeled her and didn't give her the right classes. In my fifteen years of homeschooling in six states and two countries, I have not run across poorly educated homeschoolers except for ones that had obvious problems and I couldn't assess whether they were educated to their abilities or not. I found the children who were using the lamest curriculum and had the most unfortunate backgrounds to still be doing at least as well as publicly educated children and usually better. How do I know- I taught in lots of Sunday Schools and VBS, helped in lots of co-ops and homeschool programs, worked with Scouts and 4H,etc, etc. I don't need convincing that homeschool works. Could a school environment work for these same kids- some yes, some no. I think about adopted children I have seen who came from horrendous orphanages and needed lots of attention and one on one tutoring to get up to speed in our country and our language. I think about dyslexic students who graduate and when you hear what they did with their homeschooling education, you just feel amazement. I know that my own daughter who is shy and suffers from medical issues would not be doing the advanced work she is and has done at a school where they would focus on her medical and other issues and not focus on her abilities. We participated in this study. My middle one helped raise the averages, my youngest lowered them. This year, my youngest topped out on math scores and even her lower scores improved a lot. I focus on what my kids need, nobody did that in either my dh or my schools.

I can't say we have a favorite. One of my favorite thing is planning great vacations and trips and my family thinks I do a great job. Some of the kinds of vacations we have loved- cruises- they are probably the most restful and best vacations for me, renting cabins, apartments, cottages, etc.= this is the second best vacation for me since it lets me rest while others do whatever/ The third type only works if they bring it down to the lowest denominator (usually me since I have arthritis and asthma and if my joints aren't acting up, my breathing might be off). That has worked okay when we are moving or in cities and that is hotels, motels, and military lodging. We are doing one of those this weekend when we are traveling up to the Brandywine Valley of southeastern PA and northern DE. Some of the places I want to really return to (and so does my family) Bretagne, France; Bavarian mountain, Germany, Slovenia, Venice, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Costa Rica, Big Bend, Death Valley, Blue Ridge Mountains, and I could go and on. We love to view nature, go to museums, go to gardens, visit historic houses and places, and see special festivals.

A good friend of mine had two children very close apart because she thought that breastfeeding would keep her infertile for that time. SHe got pregrant about nine weeks after the birth of the older one.

My youngest did Horizons Math for a few years and they had math problems which if you did correctly you would solve a Christian riddle or uncover a cross or something like that. I didn't mind it at all since it was sort of a Christian response to uncovering a Jack o'lantern for a math sheet in October in a secular book type thing. However, I didn't expect and with Horizon, didn't get, religious lessons in math. That is not what I would be looking for, anyway.

I don't know how else to put it. THe majority of women on this board are NT. The majority of women in life are not. The majority of men in life are NT. One aspect of NT life is that non NT people often find us cold and unemotional because we do tend to use our rational side instead of our emotional side.I went to a conference on one of my diseases and our substitute keynote speaker talked about statistics of the types and gender and who they marry and what tends to work. 60% of men are NT, 40% of women are NT. The NT men will marry either. The NT women will marry NT guys. Their marriages tend to work out. The NT men who marry SJ women are the majority of late divorce marriages where the woman wants a divorce. Why? Because they don't feel loved and they have been waiting for him to change and he doesn't. An NT man will consider providing for his family to be of utmost importance and how he shows his love. In the same way, when we talk with other women, we tend to want to give practical advice if asked but are a lot less comfortable and adept at muttering benign pleasantries. Constant gushing about isn't it cute, isn't it adorable type of group doesn't interest me. I do get along with some women's groups - mostly ones where we have a specific interest and topic to address- gardening club where we discuss flowers scientifically and practically, book clubs where we analyze books, Bible studies where we are studying something intellectual rather than reflecting on our emotional connection to something,etc. I do go to social events and can ask polite questions and reply politely. I just don't make friends with emotional women and don't usually find that they have any trouble making plenty of friends.

My dh is a big homeschool supporter. I think one big reason is because he has had to deal with lots of graduates of public school and he is not impressed. He also is not impressed with the education a lot of colleges are meting out. One of my husband;s first superiors in the military was homeschooling his children. That was before we even had any. They were well spoken and well behaved so I think that impressed my dh. We started with my son in Christian school but even in that year, we had a six or seven week period we homeschooled with their curriculum while we were in a different state for a temporary school assignment. He took some time off from his studying and experiments to come to our first homeschool convention in Ohio in 1995. He has attended several since then and is always interested in what we are doing. I think one reason he is such a fan of homeschooling is that he is a big fan of lifelong learning.

Like the above posters, my confusions are rarely, if ever, spiritual. They usually involve something like misplaced traffic signs, badly worded directions, diagrams with no labels, etc.

I don't have antipathy towards people who send their kids to school, more like the pity some of them think I need. I know what my life is like and I know that my life would be much worse if I had to mix conventional school into the mix. Both of the kids I am now homeschooling have medical issues which they would still have at school. However, they wouldn't be as well accomodated at school. My youngest has to take a medicine on empty stomach, then sit or stand for an hour, then not eat for an additional half hour, then she can eat and move about. IF she was going to school, we would have to get her up particularly early. As it is, we get her up normally at 6:30 and she is ready to eat at 8 or a little bit afterward. That is early enough in my mind but the bus would be picking her up much earlier so I am not sure when we would have to wake her. Her older sister suffers from school stopping migraines. We accomodate and treat. (They are getting better and are certainly better than the seven month long headache). Then they also can't accomodate their particular gifts and issues. My youngest is doing two sciences this year and both a math program and a history of math. My middle is doing two English credits. We tailor to their needs and desires. I don't need bureuacratic hassles in my life anymore than I already have. It is less work for me to choose curriculum and help teach it (or teach it with my younger) than it is to fight battles for apporpriate educational and medical environments.

I would see if the have the Rugg book of colleges in your library. He is a statistician who has perused over colleges for many years and has majors listed with which colleges have strong departments. You can also look in one section and check which departments are strong in a particular college. He lists many small and regional colleges so there is a wide selection in many fields. They are all divided up by very selective, more selective and selective categories. I found the guide to be very helpful to me since my dd is potentially majoring in fields that I have no personal knowledge about the strength of the department and can't tell much with the course listings either. One particular caution I would like to mention is that in these economic times, colleges and universities are cutting and will be cutting departments. You don't want to have your child go to a school and have the department cut after their freshman or sophomore year.Transferring usually means extra semesters sepnt in college.

I do give my kids grade once they are in high school or doing high school work. I may even start giving my youngest grades this year because she may try to get into a summer program that will need a grade report. Most of the colleges request transcripts with grades.

I called last Spring and they told me to call in the fall after school starts. I did that last year in a different state too. I will be calling later next week since school starts here on the 8th.

Praying here. MS is a dreadful disease.

I have been buying nice clothing for my dd12 on Lands End and Eddie Bauer. I got some very nice skorts (she likes those better than skirts), and some nice shirts too. She always likes the Lands End knit dresses.

Have any of you done the Myers Briggs test? Both my middle daughter and I are INTJ and we always think we are more like males. That is because we are seriously analytical thinkers and also rathr non-emotional. I am trying to break the news gently to my middle that even though she is like this and naturally gravitates towards boys for hanging out, that will have to be changing. I found that out in college where boys I thought could simply be my friends turned out to eventually want more than that.

My daughter wants to go to college but had very little idea of what she wanted. We were traveling to get her driver's license and we decided to visit some colleges on the way back. She had decided she didn't want a large college so we only chose medium and smaller. We kept telling her these aren't the ones you necessarily are applying to but here are some that have good programs in interests you have and are in the right size category. So she visited two in cities, one a fairly large university though with a medium 5500 college student body, one a small women's college, then we visited a smaller college in a rural location, and two somewhat larger colleges (2200) in small town near or suburbs of large cities. This trip not only helped her but also helped her much younger sister. Between other things she has noticed in her life (she hated the cold weather in Philadelphia in January), (she hates registration processes in community colleges), she is narrowing down her choices. Now she has some ideas. She will go to a large college fair in October and take the PSAT then too, and then we will plan additional visits, etc. SHe is getting a break from college stuff in September.

We are long time homeschoolers since I have been homeschooling since 1994. Anyway, I used to hear lots about courtship in the homeschooling community. I haven't seen or heard anything about it in recent years. We were never into that because it simply wasn't practical for our lives. We are military and move around too much and our children don't usually go to college where we live. ANyway, I am curious. Has this movement faded or is it just not gettting much attention in the circles I move in?

I have autoimmune problems. I had to stop my immunesuppresant drug becasue I was hospitalized for a serious infection. SO now I am on less medication than I have been in 5 years or so. Not only are my joints bothering me more (both in pain and in stiffness) but my thinking is becoming fuzzier day by day. I am trying to hold out on starting a new drug until I have had the swine flu and regular flu shots. I don't know that I will be able to. WHat I am doing right now- taking naps, getting the kids to help more, taking advantage of clear thinking and energetic times to do my necessary thinking (like plan my class I will be teaching). I also am drinking more coffee. I am just really happy that I have older kids and my middle can now drive and even my youngest is doing math on her own. I also plan on getting lots of food in the freezer for my dh's upcoming trips and am investigating grocery delivery services or shopping services that I could send my middle out to pick up.

My dh had no programs in his school until he was in jr. high/high school. Then he was accelerated in math and science. He ended up doing both AP Chemistry and AP Physics which was very unusual in his school district back then. Most smart kids did only one AP science. Coming out of that school district and now as an adult, he realizes that he was held back in English and Social Sciences solely because of his spelling. He is a very dedicated reader of history and literature and an award winning writer in the military. I know he would have done fine in accelerated other programs too. For me, I was in a mixed up situation in elementary school. They were using an innovative math program tht supposedly let you accelerate as fast as you were able. It didn't work in application as well. I spent my math periods waiting in one line for correction and then another line to get my next assignment. The next year you would be back down in at a lower level to try and make it up again. You couldn't skip or pass out of levels. Then when I was in fourth grade, they got confused and put me in a fifth grade advanced classroom. We took a novel and turned it into a play. That was a challenging and interesting project. However, the next year they realized that I was a fifth grader and put me in a fifth grade class again where we learned about poetry by listening to "Spiders and Snakes", that wonderful piece of literature. I decided that 'School's Out" was more my style. In Jr. High I was unfortunately and incorrectly placed in average math. My father died that year and my jr. high years were mostly a waste. My high school years did have some good and challenging teachers but also had plenty of wasted time and expectations that I teach others. The one thing I learned from schools was that I hate group projects and to run away from them. Group projects invariably meant I do the work, others profit.

We have Tricare Standard and some doctor;s offices want them but I don't know them and they are no longer on our dependant ID cards so I leave it blank. The biggest problem we usually have if someone has any of our SS# is that they file the claim under that SS#. In the military, and for me for the rest of my life, the only SS# that matters is the sponsor's, i.e., my husband's. If they file under mine or one of the children's, it won't be paid so it is best if they are simply left out. Since all the doctors keep accepting us as patients, apparently they are getting paid.

Not yet. Here school is back next Tuesday and since we still have PT three times a week, 4 doctor appts, and one blood test to do this week, I decided to wait. Right now, my youngest is doing math to "Boogie Oogie Oogie" on the Party Favorites channel and she has history from last year to do then she will go swimming. Older one still is doing a lot of last years work and is on her last American Novel- THe Great Gatsby. Beowulf will be next week, along with Bio and Life Science, respectively. My classes I teach start next Thursday.

The dizziness can be a non-headache migraine but I don't know about the night sweats. It can be many things but if it doesn't go away or you keep having problems with being hot and sweaty at night when it isn't hot, please go to a doctor. There are some serious problems that it could be.