What a great opportunity! Tell her Happy Birthday from all of us fellow homeschoolers here.

The total cost this year at Davidson is 45K without books, transportation or personal items. They are potentially affordable to us because my daughter was given her GI BIll benefits by her father, my dh, and they are participating in the yellow ribbon program wherein any costs over the GI benefits are half paid by the school and half by the VA. Davidson is giving 4 people this opportunity so it is a stretch but first we have to see if she even likes it.

In my way of thinking, God is immortal and timeless among many other attributes. He knows how someone would react to the gift before he gives it. He doesn't waste his gift of grace. On other things, I totally think that the Calvinist doctrine of salvation not only makes sense but is also very freeing. It relieves guilt that maybe if we phrased our VBS lesson a bit differently or served cooler snacks, someone else would be saved. It doesn't lessen my zeal to help in the Lord's work but does relieve the anxiety.

I am unfortunately going to be directing the study of British Lit with my 11th grader. THis will be a solely read and discuss class as she is doing a separate writing class. I figure I will start with Beowulf and go on to selections from Canterbury Tales (and hope she remembers our field trip there). She read a translation of Beowulf back in 6th grade and really enjoyed it. I am not a big fan of epic poetry so if I am to read it, I want it as painless as possible. Also if people have recommendations on the Canterbury Tales, I will take that too.

My 12 1/2 yo is finally getting somewhat better. But yesterday I gave her some history reading to do and she ending up napping. I am hoping this next year will be the turning point and she will become independent. As least she was independent at swim and dive.

These are the books I have been reading in the last week: Stephen King's Just after Sunset, which is a collection of short stories THe Marshall and the Madwoman by Magdalen Nabb - a mystery set in Florence (Firenze) Belshazzar's Daughter by Barbara Nadel - a mystery set in Istanbul and starting this morning, Staying Home is a Killer by Sara Rosett written by an AF wife and with an AF base being the setting (I am an AF wife too)

Those are the colleges we will be visiting in a few weeks. Anyone have any experience with any of these? They aren't on any short list we have made, just a variety of schools that have good reputations in her possible majors, architecture acceptable, and will give her a feel to be able to figure out what she does want in a college. The only one she chose was Salem and that's because they are one of the very few that found her (we moved after the PSAT) and they keep sending her things.

:iagree: completely. Also, if your child is undecided but has a few things they are interested in, check those majors out too. Another thing to consider is whether the overall education is enough to let you switch in grad school. I was an economics major as an undergraduate. I was able to successfully switch to a master's in criminal justice. There was one other grad student with me who did that and she had gone to a fairly good school. Everyone else had majored in criminal justice as an undergrad too. Those grads were amazed that I especially who only had two sociology classes but only in two specialized areas which had nothing to do with criminology (military sociology and sociology of group dynamics) and no psychology classes after high school, ended up doing so well. Well my excellent well rounded education helped me be able to learn about basically any subject.

As a preliminary tool, I am using the Rugg book. It lists majors and which colleges have good departments. It divides them into three categories- something like highly competetive, competive, less competetive. Those aren't the terms but you can get the idea. I chose which schools we will be visiting on our trip this month based on that book. It also has an index in the back with the colleges listed and all the degrees there that are recommended. NOw as I said, I would use this as a starting point and go from there. Some additional points- you need to make sure there is enough faculty there. I was looking at one college that has a certain major, and there is only one professor in that department. IF you go there, you better like that professor. I think that I would be very hesitant to recommend my child to go to a college where their major only has one faculty member. Now if it was a major that had many close kin like international business but there were also business and econ and finance professors around, that could be okay. In this case, it was a major that is a stand alone major and only one faculty member.

With my daughter, she was tested after she had three fractures. SHe has since had three more. She is now on supplemental Calcium and VIt D plus she takes Fosamax. She has had the first round of testing for the osteoporosis and nothing showed up. Our doctor decided with us that rather than subjecting her to a bone biopsy which would be the next step we would try the fosamax. She will have blood tests again in Sept and Dec along with a DEXA bone scan on Dec too. He is hoping that her osteoporosis disappears with puberty and since she is 12 1/2, that should be within the year. If she keeps breaking bones or the bone scan comes out bad, she will have to have more tests including a bone biopsy. WIth my other daughter who has mildly low vit d, we found that out as a result of trying to find the cause of her sister's problems and some of her own too.

I have been homeschooling for 15 years and I tell you this is true. We all make choices and nobody's perfect. My smiling happy daughter in public is a whiny negativity child with school with me. My unsmiling serious daughter who replies I don't know is actually a very hard working, very smart child who does know but just had her answer taken and is having a bad headache and can't think right. I get so amazed when people mistakenly believe I am very organized. I am about as unorganized as anyone could be- I have ADHD and don't take medicines and right now, can't even drink caffeinated beverages. Some days my children help out readily and quietly, other days it sounds like this place is the shipyards and they are longshoreman brawling.

I will pray.

I didn't think a book was the best way to do an introduction to music. I used the Teaching Company course with my first two kids and will also with my third. I find that listening to a lecture and hearing the music that is talked about is the best way.

I don't think that anything one does in high school (except not take enough math or science or something criminal) makes any difference in grad school acceptance, be it vet school, med school,law school, or reg. grad school. I don't recall anyone asking us for high school transcripts. The only think that might matter in vet school admission in a helpful way is volunteer work with animals that goes back to high school years. Otherwise, your college record, work or volunteer experience, and test scores on grad school tests will make the difference.

Actually I wanted to add, it wasn't that it was a prestigious school that gave us the better education. It was that it was a better school. Not better than any other, but definitely a better education that at most state schools or military academies. I am well aware that many small liberal arts schools give an excellent education too which is why I considered and chose one for my son and will be considering others for my older daughter.

Basically what Pamela H. said- limited choices. SOmetimes my children have a choice of how they get a specific subject too- like biology. She could have done it at co-op or CC but chose to do it at home. Once that was decided, we could have used a video program or online progrma but chose to use a modified dvd program (some dvd some text some real labs). I haven't given mine choices about how much they would do but then they all had a goal of getting into good schools so they knew the drill and didn't complain. In fact, my only complainer is my youngest so we will se what I will do there. SHe is a seventh grader this year so its a transition year.

We have experienced both worlds. DH and I both went to the U of C. We sent our son to Hillsdale where he got a rigirous education and great spekers like we had. He is now at George Mason University and the classes aren't as well taught. HIs GPA is up though and now he will most likely be able to get into grad school. SInce he wants to be a professor, that is the most imprtant thing. (He didn't switch because of that, he had medical issues). Now with our older dd, she also wants to go to a smaller school. We will be balancing school environment with things like law school acceptance rates. Our final one is likely to go to an engineering school or program and there we will look for rigor and prestige. Has going to a prestigious college helped my husband and I? Yes and no. It gave us a better education (and we know this by comparing our education with others we met in grad school or work environments). Did it help with advancement? I don't think so. IN my case, the only reason I got into one job I had was because I also had my master's and that GPA counted. My GPA at UofC was too low (over a 3 but not high enough compared to grade inflated schools). I also don't think it helped my husband since he is in the military and most of the time, the promotion boards don't see where you went to school. We are very fortunate since we only marginally need to think about costs when choosing a school for our next child since dh has transferred his GI bill benefits to her. We figure that number three as a female desiring to study engineering may be more likely to get scholarships and anyway, we should have more income by the time she goes.

I am out the hospital, on a heavy duty antibiotic, and don't want to end up back in the hospital. I am not getting dehydrated, don't have a fever, and have no pain. My only problem is that everything is going through me very fast. I am fairly sure this is not c. difficile since I had that last fall and it was very different (fever, pain, blood, etc). So I am trying to live with this but would like help with figuring out constipating foods.

Black Rock Mountain State Park in Northern Georgia is really nice and there are fun thing outside the park to do like pan for minerals and trout fishing.

My daughter has somewhat lower Vitamin D but much more importantly she has osteoporosis. We were living in Florida, with a swimming pool she loved to use, and every morning, a break from schooling to go outside for a while. She ate very well, wasn't fat, had calcium and vit d in her diet, didn't drink colas at all and still she got this. She is also very light skinned so she should get vitamin D easily out in the sun. I am not sure what the answer is since it happens even when you are doing everything right.

COngratulations to Molly. Sorry about the hen.

NOne of my children have wanted to trade homeschool for regular school. I homeschooled one from 2nd grade through graduation, the second is starting her 11th grade, always homeschooled, and the youngest is starting 7th also always homeschooled. Do they love it- parts but they prefer it to the alternative. MOre sleep, less drama, pets, drinks, snacks, etc. all help.

My daughter attended a fine arts summer program held at a ps school this summer. We got a copy of the rules and she obeyed them. Many other teens did not and there was no enforcement at all. Then my son was telling me about the Muslim women at his college who wear head covering but extremely tight and revealing clothes. He didn't understand that practice at all.

My kids have read all of the HP books and only my middle has read Twilight. She only read the first book because she found the writing to be poor and the whole book creepy. Given her assessment of the book, her younger sister won't be reading it. The youngest reads both classics and typical kid books like the Warrior series or HP. DO they talk about it in church= I am not sure what you mean. Certainly not in service, but I do know that in fellowship time or in car rides, they discuss movies they like, books they read, music, etc. My girls haven't changed their preferences based on other kids' so it doesn't bother me. For the most part, the discussions tend to be typical girl teen discussion of which actor is cute or sometimes plot discussions. Haven't heard about anyone ever in church deciding to do witchcraft or vamperism or anything like that at all and since my dd15 is so anti-Twilight, I am sure I would hear of any problems like that.

MY girls were terrified in Hungary. They didn't seem to mind Italy as much. WE saw plenty of crazy driving in Italy including 4 different times a person on an highway backing up to a exit. We are actually talking faster highways than in the US since the speed limit is higher. Considering we didn't spend more than 2 weeks total in Italy, that is a lot of incidences. But since we had already mastered driving through a Arab street market in Paris, we were good to go. FOr the most part, dh does the driving and I try to do the navigating. (WHich is how we got into the street marker since on the map the street was a large boulevard but on this day, most of it was taken up by stalls), I also have to deal with imigrant drivers here many of whom have not learned English nor have they learned how we drive. ONe guy was honking at me for not making a left turn on a green light with cars coming at a very close distance from the other direction (no time). After I started turning shortly after that, he decided to go araound me and turn first. THen I saw that his cas had evidence of side impact crashes like he hadn't learned how to turn or didn't really care.