Can vaccinated people still carry and pass around the disease without actually coming down with it? No, not usually except with live vaccines right after innoculation and then only for immuno-suppressed people. So if you get a MMR in 2009 and are actually vaccinated (see Perry's informative post about how vaccines work above), if their is an outbreak of measles, let's say, you won't get it nor will you pass it on to anyone. Someone who isn't vaccinated can get a mild form of some disease, maybe just sniffles, not realize they have a serious disease, and go spreading that around.

My 12yo 7th grader will be doing: LOF math BJU Life Science Physical Science from a old textbook we have Rosetta Stone Spanish LIghtning Lit 7 Daily Grams Apples Spelling Drill IEW Writing Across the Centuries history Robotics Cooking Ancient Greece Soccer Swim Clinics and I am still debating geography

Unlike some of you, I believe that vaccines are one of the best discoveries in medical history. We used to have smallpox which had a high fatality rate. We don't anymore. We used to have people die from rabies, now that is rare. We used to have lots of deaf people from measles, again it is very rare now. I could go on and on. Between antibiotics and vaccinations, childhood diseases have almost disappeared. It is wonderful that since the vaccine programs have been so effective, non-vaccinators don't have too much to worry about. I do not advocate anyone disregarding actual vaccine reactions that are serious and vaccinating regardless. However, slight fevers are a normal reaction to many vaccines. I don't see anyway you can prove that a fever two months after a vaccine has anything to do with a vaccine. Antibiotics overuse is a problem, and I certainly don't want anyone to get their child vaccinated if they have had vaccine problems in the past without medical advice, not web advice.

:iagree: My youngest was my most voracious junk reader. However, she is also reading good literature on her own too. She has been searching the house to find Treasure Island on her own. Why should I mind that she also reads the Warrior series>

My brother and my oldest are both OCD and while my brother, I believe, is a hoarder, I also think my oldest may becoming one too. He gets his room. He doesn't keep everything so I am doing okay with it but I think he may well grow into it as he gets older. I don't think either of my two girls will have it and I don't have it either. I am just mildly adhd and disoroganized. But I don't mind purging junk and do that regularly. We are military and are always moving cso no hoarding can get too bad with anyone. My brother, on the other hand, doesn't move. He has lived in the same apartment for over 22 years and he continues to live there even though the neighborhood has gotten much worse and he works 60 miles away. He is not married so the only real reason I can see for him not moving is his hoarding. He can't have others over. The last time we were there was very briefly to pick him up 17 years ago. It was a giant mess with newspapers and magazines piled up that were "really important".

Pertussis is more common but both distemper and tetanus are more serious. Tetanus is around in the natural environment and is an aneorobic bacteria which is why you need to get a tetanus shot if you haven't had one recently and get certain type of cuts or puncture wounds. It is a very serious disease. Distemper is also a potentially deadly disease that is unfortunately happening more often, both with people refusing vaccinations and with immigrant populations.

We have used Florida Virtual School and it is not a charter school. In Florida, you can be a public school student, private school student or a homeschooler and use Florida Virtual. They do not award degrees. You can take as amny or as few classes as you want. It is much more like taking a class at any other place be it community college, co-op or any other place since the parent in homeschooling is still in charge but the get an additional resource for a class or five. My dd took two classes from them and no one, including HSLDA, had any problems with this option. You can use it if you want to or not. It didn't make you a public school student.

Dd had an opportunity for a job this year that was only 10 hours a week and paid 9.63 an hour. We examined her schedule and saw no way for her to do it. She has a very heavy course load, plays soccer in fall and spring, sings in 2 choirs, and will be doing debate, and possible 4H too. She doesn't have any time to work outside the home. She will do some volunteer work. She doesn;t need the money for college unless she decides to go to a non Yellow Ribbon college at a too expensive college.

My kids do not play in my room and never had. The most they have done is watch a program on our tv with permission and certainly not when anyone else is over. THey have their rooms and public rooms to do their projects, play, etc. Why would I allow them to use my room except for certain exceptions. By the way, we all treat each other's rooms as private like I may put some clean clothes away or a book away in one of my kid's rooms but I wouldn't think of co-opting it for some project of mine or to read a book or whatever else that is more than extremely temporary.

My son did Advanced Math at the same time as Apologia Physics and had no problems at all.

All papers that are not creative can have a thesis sentence. Say the topic is Hunitng in the Middle Ages. Well, what about that? Possible thesis statements could be Hunting in the Middle Ages was an important way of adding food to a peasant or Hunting in the Middle Ages in Europe was mainly practiced by the landed gentry who had hunting rights and most peasants ate vegetarian diets primarily. I have no idea really about hunting in the middle ages but am just showing how you can have a thesis statement.

THey will be separate. At least at this time, that is the plan. You can start getting the regular flu shot in early to mid September. The H1N1 flu shot will hopfully be available late September and needs a second shot three weeks later to be effective. That means the earliest one can be potentially safe is in mid to late Oct. I am not sure we won't have a major problem before then. Japan, a northern hemisphere country with 4 seasons like us, is having a major spike of H1N1 right now.

I feel sad for the murdered student's family and friends but also for that whole university community. Will the tragedies with that campus never end?

In that article it says that AIDS patients are not at any special risk with H1N1 flu. That along with the fact that it is hitting younger populations especially hard makes me think that people are dying from an overreaction of their own immune system that is most likely flooding their lungs. That is what most of the thinking about the Spanish flu deaths in the WW1 era is now thought to have been. If that is true, they should be getting large stores of corticosteroids and other immune suppressants to lower immune response in flu victims.

If any of you are gardeners, that means zone 7a and higher. That precludes KY, IN, IL, OH, just about all of the northeastm the okaun states, the mountain states, etc. I think we are left with south east, coastal northwest, CA if the GI bill correction goes through, AZ, NM, TX, Arkansas, and I am not sure about some others. She doesn;t mind some snow but hates frigid weather. I have to say that I am not that interested in outfitting her for frigid weather either. With my son who went to school in MI at first, he already had heavy winter gear because of boy scout camping. I think I will be able to find 7 colleges for her to apply to.

We also live in Fairfax County, VA and my dh works at the Pentagon. He found a great house with only a 25-40 minute commute and more normally it is the 25 minute. I am continually amazed about how even with the enormous amount of traffic here and most roads having construction, how well the traffic does move for all that.

How much is he on currently and what type? I have been on and off steroids for years and have never had increased infection rate. Now I have been on another stronger medication that sent me to the hospital but never with corticosteroids. Unless it is a really high dose, I think he will be fine with co-ops and such like. I know that I lived a normal life with my steroids and my youngest has been prescribed steroids when she had active infections a few times.

We are NOT going to be asking our Dr. about XYZ (new medication). ___:iagree: completely with this and for me, some of the ads are downright depressing because some people believe them and then wonder how come I am not playing tennis. I specifically am referring to all the very heavy duty arthritis drugs which get everybody to suddenly be completely athletic and non=disabled. But I am sure that many of the other drug commercials are equally annoying to others with specific condition. I also have a number of conditions I don't treat because I am not adding medications. Unlike the tv commercials imply, a lot of us who have chronic conditions have more than one and have to make choices of what to treat this week and certainly will not be adding annoying but very minor issues to the treatment regimen when you need to be taking care of the major life threatening or disabling conditions first.

Does he drink coffee? If not, is he ready to start? Look up on the internet the strong positive effect of coffee for preventing diabetes. I wondered why my slightly overweight, and with the weight in the wrong place dh didn't get type 2 diabetes when lots of others around him were getting it, or pre=diabetes. They are all military so all do tons of exercise. The one big difference was that he was a coffee drinker and they drank sodas, often diet sodas. That happened a few years ago and then last year came study after study. I just wish I could get middle dd to like coffee. Her older and younger siblings already do. Coffee also protects against a number of other diseases.

Currently the one I am finding most helpful is Rugg's Guide to Colleges. He has selected the best schools in each major and divided them up in lists of something like very selective, more selective, selective (I don't remember the exact titles). He has other ways he presents his lists too but I found it a very good starting point for looking at colleges that I was not even aware of before. My dd wants to go to a small to medium school in a not cold place and this helped me find suitable schools that had her potential majors and were well regarded in those majors. With her that was essential since she is looking at majors that almost all liberal art colleges and universities do have like biology, political science, and psychology. I will continue to use this for a while but then I will switch to ones that describe atmosphere and learning environments more.

For child one, we outsourced art classes (drawing, watercolors, etc.), Russia, Choirs, and writing. For child two, we have outsourced one PE class, the rest of PE to various sports, choir, vocal class, English - complete year one time and this year writing, psychology and field geology so far at CC, and one year of Spanish. We haven't outsourced math or science or regular history so far. I am teaching a class of social science this year and my daughter will attend that.

I am teaching a class this year at a homeschool co-op. I did specify grades but was flexible. THe class is US Government/Ecomonics. I had two concerns. One was that economics needed Algebra as a pre-req so I didn't care what age your child was for that part, you needed to have done algebra. The other issue was current events. We would be covering those and discussing those. This past year that would potentially include such topics as Gov. Sanford's behavior, Chris Brown beating and choking Rihanna,slavery in hair salons in NJ, ramifications of health reform policy, murder of the late term abortion doctor, etc, etc. I feel fine discussing these ideas with high schoolers. Younger children, it completely depends on their maturity. I do have a 13 year old who will be in the class. Most others will be 15-18. Do I think a 10 year old who has finished Algebra is good in the class? No. And that is because of the second point. I am not going into graphic details on whatever unsavory issues come up but I still think that the kids should be old enough to understand what adultery is.

My kids got PE from a variety of sports- karate, soccer, swim team, dive team, biking, running, tennis, hiking, snorkeling, rock climbing, all kinds of things. The ones I have had in high school never had any problems getting their PE hours in. I don't think I will with my youngest when she does it either though that depends on what condition her bones are in at that time (she has osteoporosis from as yet unknown reasons).

I put in six to seven but that is probably the minimum. Both of my kids who I have homeschooled in high school were probably doing more like 8 hours or 40 hours a week since some of their work was always done on weekends.

I started this thread because of the strong anti-medication philosophy I see in a lot of homeschoolers I have met. I don't tell people to take medicines. I might tell that about something that worked for us if they asked but I don't criticize or even comment on their homeopathic, fruit juices, or other non-tradional treatments. But how I hate to hear how I could wish my chronic illnesses away, how some fruit juice will make it all better, the askance looks I may get if someone finds out my middle takes daily medicine for ADHD which enables her to do honor level work rather than run around like a babbling idiot annoying everyone else, how someone will question what we eat when hearing we have certain medical problems (nothing to do with any weight issues at all since my kids are slightly underweight anyway), etc, etc. I don't wish disease or injuries, syndromes, or conditions on anyone. I always feel that if your family doesn't need medications, that is great. It isn't a moral failing though if your child or you or any family member does need it.