Your plan does look great and just start keeping records. The only harder part for me about high school is the administrative part. I tend to farm out some of the subjects I don't like and have no problems with the rest. You can farm out as much or as little as you want.

Thanks for it and my dd really enjoyed the reading a book talk that Susan gave this afternoon.

We are doing MI-5 currently. I love various English mystery series like Inspector Morse, the older Agatha Christie (hate the new Jane Marple), Midsomer Murders, Inspector Lynley, Foyle's War, etc, etc

I won't have my youngest enter middle school (7th grade) and especially not when I have had the experiences of my 11th grader in summer school. If we still live here when she is to enter ninth grade at a special school for Science and she gets it, I will let her go there. Otherwise, middle school seems like a holding place with not much being done and too much social stuff. High School is better but not sufficiently so for us if it isn't a academically segragated school. We thought we would get that with a summer program that cost 750 dollars and required auditions but apparently not. My dd is learning some worthwhile things but I will not repeat this since even with a strong personality and good morals, I see her behavior slipping already a bit (one week in).

I have it and like it. My dh went to the vendor's presentation at the Florida homeschool fair and thought it look very good so he bought it. I found it easy to use and a good introduction to the language.

We belong to a neighborhood swim club that has people from our neighborhood. Most are some type of European background but we also have Asians from several different ethnicities, and some children who are probably mixed race. My kids swim and dive against others who are off all races too. We attend a church which is multi-racial (which is rarer than many think). But as a person with European background, I was personally discriminated against openly at least twice in my life and probably more than that not quite as openly. In the first case, I was on a Metro bus as a teenager and the bus driver decided that me trying to get off the bus was unimportant. He ignored my bell, he ignored my plea. I was the only light colored person on the bus and thankfully an elderly black lady took pity on me and called the bus driver on it and insisted that he stop the bus for me. The second time was when I was in college and I asked a postal worker picking up mail from a mnailbox if he could take my letter too. He blew up at me and called me a honky and much worse things. Now I was very polite and he had no call to do this to me. So when I sometimes hear radicals proclaim that whites can['t experience racism, I think how wrong they are. It is an evil thing and I abhore it regardless of who you are discriminating against. I wouldn't have liked 60 day care kids come to my pool but it wouldn't have anything to do with color. We don't have parking for a bus and it would make it very hard for me to get to my house. But then my pool wouldn't advertise for that either. It all reminds me of when I was a little kid and there were white schools and black schools and white parks and black parks. For the poster in Alabama, I have found that there is much more overt racism in some of the areas that never had segregation than in areas that did. I think that those of us from areas that were segregated are usually much more sensitive to the issue.

I am so sorry for your daughter Margaret. It is really sad. That brings me to my point. Things happen. I am happy that at least my son is pursuing a college degree and doing well in that right now. Three years ago, my family was all healthy except me. Now I have three kids with serious medical issues all unrelated to each other and unrelated to my problems. I am not pushing anyone to do anything. I help them clarify their choices. My son is the one I was worried about with his choices because at points he was seeming to want to have a job way below his potential and probably not something with which he could support himself adequately. I don't care how much money they are making as long as they have adequate income to not depend on handouts. WHen he was in despair, his thinking was skewed and he couldn't see the alternatives. Now that he is better and his GPA is great, he is again considering graduate school and a career worthy of his talents. Some of his previous musings about jobs were just that. If he was a person who couldnt do academic work and was only able to have low skill jobs, I would feel differently. I just didn't think that he would be well suited to a hard labor, low skill type of job and probably wouldn't do well in the long run. So in our case, I don't mind that he is pursuing a non practical undergraduate degree (philosophy) since that is much more suited to him than many other things. His current plan is to graduate and teach English overseas for a year or two.

Update- she has either a strain or a meniscus tear. If she is still having problems over the weekend, she will have an MRI on Monday.

Hi all, Some of you know that my youngest has osteoporosis due to unknown causes and also hyperlaxity. She is in swim and dive since I thought these were relativity safe sports. Today she did something in either swimming relays or on her walk home wherein she cannot bend her knee without severe pain. We are off to the orthopedist.

I don't really know any true unschoolers and I have been homeschooling 15 years all over the place. I knew plenty of people who called themselves unschoolers but weren't what I would call it. That is because what they called unschooling is not using texts and tests. They did use plenty of learning materials even if they were not textbooks. They also did not simply let the kids watch tv or play computer games. I would really called them relzed homeschoolers and their kids were doing fine. I don't know that I would have met any true unschoolers (what is probably referred to as radical unschoolers) since I doubt they would be going to organized activities like homeschool skate or art day.

My kids get free access. We don't have soda in the house. I don;t go extra to stores to buy snacks ever unless I have to buy something for a function like bringing snacks to a game. The snacks my kids make range from making rice and then making some kind of oriental rice ball snack with seaweed, to kefir, to popcorn, to salads. I go to the store to buy milk or to buy bread for dh's sandwiches. It is necessary for them to eat their snacks since between swimming and diving, they need extra calories and right now are dinners are haphazard. We have three evening meets this week so three days with on the go dinners. I thank God that the youngest isn't that good a swimmer yet since then I would have an extra evening meet. I can't see how I would restrict anyway since I am only in charge of making or delegating dinners. They get breakfasts and lunches on their own and have been doing that ever since they are each about five or six.

I drink about 3-4 cups of coffee a day. I also drink a glass or two of juice. Add to that milk and I think I have it made. (I can't drink alcohol so I ma not protected against Heart disease, unfortunately).

Also, today my youngest was getting a hamster. A few of them looked pregnant to me. We bought a non pregnant male.

I also had a GP in high school from a pet store. One morning not that long after, there were 2. The second one was a small version of the adult. We brought him back to the store after some weeks and got some feed in return.

Yes, my dd doesn't dance now but she does watch So you think you can dance and Dancing with the Stars. She sees nothing wrong with dancing per se. Some dancing is not good but all????

My daughter is interested in these things too but we have to rule out PHC. I believe that college is a time for our children to develop their own identies. WHile I am looking at more conservative college campuses, I am against legalistic institutions since my dd already has strong tendencies towards legalism. I would strongly recommend reading the student life handbooks at any college you are considering for your child since they give clear indications of potential problems. In one college, it was the cookies and condoms that clued us in that this was not the place. In another, it was mandatory chapel five days a week with card swiping to make sure. With PHC, there were a few issues we disagree with including the no social dancing of any kind since some may be offended plus there stand on 6 day creation. I don't know anything about George Wythe but do know that I think it would be very hard to get into a graduate or professional school without a degree from an acreditated school,

It is so hard for me when people talk about their favorite states or places. I have a love for so many places. I love CA, FL, NM, VA and Belgium. I even miss things about OH. I only spent four months in GA and three in AL but love it there too. I always figure that when you move so much, you either find great things about each place or stay miserable. I choose to find the unique things about everywhere.

I know them from way back. I will be praying for a good resolution.

I didn't do that program. I don't think it was around when I did this which would be something like 13 years ago. The one I did had tadpoles or eggs for something like leopard frogs. They were native American frogs though some states did not allow them since they weren't native there. They either substituted other native frogs or simply didn't send them to those states.

I wear a one piece. I have worn a one piece forever. That said, I think that the less hang-ups about our bodies the better. My girls don't wear bikinis either but I am not going to pools, beaches or anyplace to stare at bodies. I go to swim, watch my kids swim and dive, or enjoy the beach. There is so much revealing stuff out there on tv, movies, ads, real life, that I really can't get too excited over less than perfect bodies being revealed.

Chemicals don't explain why the cluster of spectrum kids is very high in Silicon valley but the types of people who work there sure is- many people who would have been labeled Aspergers or one of the other milder syndromes having children who exhibit worse problems. I don't claim to have the answers but I think one part is the lack of labeling or the mislabeling in earlier years. I grew up in the 60s and 70s not knowing any autistic children even though I did know some with Down Syndrome and other mental disabilities. But looking back, I think there were some mild autistic children about, they just concentrated in the chess club or HAM operator club. I was involved in other areas. While I do understand why autistic children need special education, I am not sure that these kids who may very well be labeled Asperger's today needed it. They seemed to do well in school and formed their own social grouping of similarly focused and different people by the time they were in jr. high or high school.

I think it depends what level your daughter is in ADHD. I am low to moderate ADHD and have hyperfocusing too. I know I could have done it but then I wouldn't have been so distracted by people coming and going to other areas of a house. Now my middle kid who is auditory and severely ADHD but medicated could not do school only in five hours but then I could not expect her to do all that much so late in the day either since her medication is off by 6 pm. She does do some work later but no math intensive study. SHe would also be distracted by noises of people coming and going but she masks daily noises with music which helps her concentrate anyway.

I have homeschooled one all the way through and he is a Jr/Sr in college. Next up is a rising Jr. in high school and she is homeschooled and will graduate in homeschool too like her brother. Finally is my rising 7th grader. She is being homeschooled now and will continue for eighth grade most likely. THen it depends where we live. IF we were to continue living here, she may want to go to the Science and Technology school here locally that is one of the best in the country. I don't think we will continue living here though. So whether she will go to school depends on the place we live. I will be happy to homeschool her but realize that she may want to go to school. She doesn't now but she doesn't have any great choices now either. The local PS school is lame on the mid high level and I don't have any extra money to spend on private school when I have one and half in college.

WE did this long time ago with a kit and they were the same as the local frogs because I checked before ordering. That said, it is very easy to get tadpoles from your local area. If you are in some areas, ask on the homeschooling forums in your area and you will get offers. In Florida, they are everywhere.

I agree with waiting until tennis is over. We had tons of emergency situations this last year and we are not done. So my girls have things like swim and dive practices and meets and the other has dive practice, meets, and fine arts camp and still have school to finish up. It is a lot for them and I wish we hadn't had the problems we had- tropical storms, surgeries, undiagnosed major illness, move, etc,. etc. but we are doing what we have to do. For our purposes, we do one thing for our records and another for the state.