Apparently a Muslim convert terrorist. I hope he gets the death penalty and law-abiding, innocent Muslim Americans don't get attacked by some who want to blindly retaliate.

My dd is a fairly slow reader. She is slow in her personal reading as well as school reading. She reads difficult works and comprehends them well but she reads too slowly. She had a vision problem when she was younger and couldn't read regular type chapter books until she was almost 9, I think. I don't know if she still has some residual problems which are not enough to require lenses but enough to slow her down, I don't now if it is her being s very auditory child, or something else all together. It is not a problem for her on standardized tests since she reads short selections quickly enough. IN fact, she always was one of the first done when she did group tests. However, with novels and textbooks, her speed is too slow. I know she would like to read faster too.

My 15 yo has liked the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Federick Douglas autobiography, Poe short stories, and Moby Dick. SHe did not like The Scarlett Letter and we did not conitnue with that. We are not done with our school year and hope to be done by late August. The one she really told me to write down that she hates is "To Build a Fire", which she read 3 years ago. She hates that so much that she told me she would do American lit this year as long as there was no more Jack London. I said fine, since there are more than enough other good authors.

It is hard to find how much is spent on welfare since there are so many forms- Food stamps, section 8, medicaid, tanf, etc, etc. But in the United States, in 2000, the amount spent was approximately $430,000,000,000. That amount is higher today but no one has figured out exactly how much higher. THe figure above does not include entitlement programs where you paid in like Social Security, pensions, or Medicare. Another figure I saw was that welfare constitutes 3.2% of the Gross Domestic Product.

Listen, I hate moving and we don't even pack or move ourselves. However, we still have to sort everything, purge, watch movers,etc. In our last move, which was right before Christmas, the girls and I were in the Christmas Cantata and we had our dress rehearsal the night of our last move day. SO I had to take them and check into our hotel while dh stayed with the movers so I could drive us later to the rehearsal. We thought he would be coming at a certain time to the hotel. He wasn't. Why- cause we had ambulances out twice after I left for one of the movers was having seizures. Since he had track marks, they figured he must have been having withdrawal. THe first time, the ambulance left after checking him out and telling him he was done moving for the day. He kept sitting there and about an hour or so later he had his second seizure. This time he went to the hospital. Turns out that the driver had hired two guys from the truckstop that day. THankfully, neither of them stole anything. Or I can giving you our previous US move where we had convicts from a halfway house moving and packing us. Or our second movers in the military who didn't speak English and tried to disassamble our fixtures in our apartment. How I love US movers (not). On the other hand, our movers in Europe were spectacular.

A shooter apparantly opened fire at a recruiting station in Arkansas and killed one soldier. Police apprehended the shooter in his SUV and he has what appears to be a bomb. Prayers for the family of the dead soldier and for the full recovery of the other person shot.

bump

Although I am no longer living in coastal Fl, I still am a permanent resident there and don't want anything to happen. I will be praying. My prayers will be for a very uneventful season everywhere since I don't want Haiti to suffer or Mexico or Texas or anywhere populated.

Firs of all, Medicare and Medicaid are two very different programs. If you are employed, you start paying into Medicare when you first become employed be it 16 or 18 or 22, whatever. Then you pay into it all your working life until 65, right now but I am not sure if it is changing along with Social Security. THe rate paid is based on income with a maximum cap. If we are US citizens (I am not sure how residents qualify) and we or our spouse paid the tax for 40 quarters, we will not pay any premiums and get it when we retire. Now Medicaid is an aid program, just like food stamps and WIC. It is based on income and the maximum you can earn varies by state. While there is abuse of the Medicaid system, that is mostly done by the practitioners and medical supply companies and not by the users. Of course, some may use an inappropriate level of care but that really is less of a problem than with some of the other aid programs. In terms of statistics, the fact that 50% are on it less than 8 months means that 50% are on it longer. While the current economic downturn is longer than usual, many are on these programs longterm. I think the food stamp budget is overly generous for its family size. I looked at our family size and noticed that it was somewhat less than we were spending on food supplies only in FL and maybe about equal to what we spend here. I am not poor and we are not economizing on our food purchases. We buy steaks, roasts, ice cream, bakery bread, fresh fruits out of season, etc. This is not how I would be spending money if my husband lost his job and I don't think that this is how the FS budget should be set either. I am sure that I could plan healthy meals for a lot less money.

My 12 yo dd is currently on Club Penguin which she pays for herself. She thinks it is getting a bit young for her and was told by a fellow homeschooling girl her age about wizards 101. We don't have problems with Harry Potter so wizardly things themselves are not a problem. I did have a problem with Runescape since a) my older children became obsessed and then b) my middle child had an inappropriate and spooky attempted contact online by someone from that game. I am looking not to repeat that experience with child 3. Any opinions?

WE haven't bought cars and don't plan to unless one or another gets a full ride or it works out to be more economical. We help pay for college. So far we have spent 40,000 on our oldest son's college. We expect to pay another 12,000 or so over the next year and half. That was paying half tuitipn for three years and paying full tuition at a much cheaper state school for the final one and half to two years. Now we are trying to figure out how to pay for child 2 and 3. We will be getting around 80,000 to pay for either or partial educations for both. Like we could get 20,000 a year for one girl to go four years or 20,000 for each girl to go two years. Both girls need stellar educations for their upcoming careers so that makes it hard. If our son turns around his thinking, and does get into graduate school, we may want to help him too. Finally, both girls want careers that require grad school so if the military won't accept them, we may have to help them too. I keep trying to do the college financial aid estimator and it seems like they think we can afford to pay almost 1/2 of our monthly income!!!! It makes me extremely unhappy that dd's won't be able to afford to go to most colleges nowadays. Today's college prices are regularly in the 40-55K category and we can't afford that. Our big problem is that even with the 20,000 for one, that still makes private or out of state colleges difficult to finance. I keep wondering what is wrong with the college finance estimators since it keeps saying we can afford to pay somewhere around 45,000 a year. SInce we have no car payments and

No, it isn't right. Neither I nor my older daughter was 95 lbs. I gre a few inches and my daughter grew at least two. My youngest is 103 lbs, 12 1/2, and certainly hasn't reached puberty under any criterion. WE just had a bone x-ray done last week for scoliosis and the orthopedist remarked that she is not done growing at all since her hip/pelvic area is different from those who have entered puberty. I am very happy about that since she is only 5 feet tall. (We are investigating growth problems to go along with her diagnosed osteoporosis).

I will definitely pray.

I guess we are part of that wealthy white homeschoolers who don't have our children educated with anyone else- right? Wrong. Since my girls have attended co-op classes, homeschool sports, homeschool group events, plus Sunday School, they have had teachers from Africa (2 in different continents), teachers from Asia, teachers from South America and Central America and the Caribbean,an Amerind teacher, Belgian teachers, and my son had a German teacher who taught him Russian in Ireland. They have homeschooled together with South Africans, English, Puerto Rican, Cuban, German, Philipino, and I know I am forgetting many other categories. Take that for diversity. We don't need to make special plans for diversity. We just live our lives and our children meet people. As to raising the standard for public schools - my one child would not have reached that standard at PS. She is very smart but a very auditory child. Schools are not made for auditory children. If they had been checking spelling, she may not have been advanced for some years. At home, with tons of personal help, she is now spelling better than her peers. But that didn't happen until she was 14. Her sister is very social. I think that if she was in school, she would be having a great time making friends and not learning very much. I doubt she would do as well since making good grades is not usually the way to getting good social attention especially a girl who is good in math and science. She wouldn't want to be categorized with geeks and would stop doing so well.

Yes, and since my daughter did that I will be skipping parts of ALgebra 2 with her. (She is doing SAT math prep for a while this summer and that will be her review).

We lived for 2 1/2 years in coastal Florida and rented a house with a pool. IT was wonderful. WE used it almost all the year, though less frequently Late Nov- late Feb. I never wanted a pool when I had littles but our youngest was 9 1/2 when we moved in and she knew how to swim. Both of the younger children became better swimmers with the pool and now we live in a house about seven houses down from the community pool. Both girls are on the dive team there and the younger is also on the swim team. Would not have happened without the pool in our yard those last two and a half years. We plan on retiring in a warmer climate than Northern Virginia in a few years (military retirement, and then a second career for DH) and we hope to buy a house with a pool.

I moved in December from Florida and there we had free community college classes. Here they are 94 a credit. That means almost 300 to 400 a course. Then there is BJU Science and maybe Spanish 3 which would be nearly 800. Then I was looking at a online AP English class and that is close to 500. Finally there is Chalkdust Algebra 2 at 500. This is all for one child and without books in CC. We also have a bill upcoming for tuition for our older son at 4000. She doesn't yet know what she will do in community college here but most likely a social science course. She is considering going into law or maybe psychology or politics (but definitely a policy person, not the candidate). However, she has also been seriously thinking about psychiatry which ivolves a medical degree. Therefore, while I had been thinking about an easier and cheaper Biology course, I think I have to go with a very rigorous one so as to not limit her options. She is a very auditory child and really needs lectures and not just texts. She can do completely or nearly completely reading work but since her visual memory is poor, it takes her a long time. SO this year, her 11th, I need to bite the bullet and change all her courses to lectures whether on DVD, online, by me, or in college.

That ninth grade looks very demanding to me. Doing so much social science at once along seems too much. Your children are quite a ways away from high school. Their interests may change, circumstances may change, etc. The plan looks well thought out with the exception of ninth grade but please keep in mind children's preferences and not overworking them.

I would recommend counting any Algebra you do in eighth grade. Many colleges want 4 years of math. Even if your children are good at lower maths, they may have difficulties later on and you need to slow down. If it ends up that you have four years and your college is not super picky, remove the Algebra I. However, if your child ends up having tired of math or taken longer or decided that humanities is their interest; you will still have four years with stopping after Pre-Calc. My older son was very unsure of where to apply to college so we found out about requirements at probably over a hundred colleges. The requirements were all over the place. SOme wanted math and foreign language taken in eighth grade. Some didn't. Some required four years of any math. At least one required four years with one of those years being Algebra I. This was one of the large state schools out West and since they had a very fornulaic application form and go through thousands of applications, I would suggest that at those schools, you use their system even if your child has gone through Linear Algebra or Differential Calculus. At that point, your kid would be applying for honors programs but in order to first get in, you have to jump through the hurdles.

I have to say that other illnesses can bring on symptoms of mental illness too. When the underlying illness is addressed, the depression or anxiety lifts. THat is not to say that lots of people have depression or anxiety with no underlying disease. But thyroid problems can cause depression or anxiety depending on whether you are hypo or hyper thyroic. My underlying disease, Sjogren's, has at times caused depression as part of my flare symptoms. When I took Medrol, a corticosteroid, all my symptoms would lessen or disappear including depression. In cases with autoimmune diseases like mine causing depression, they think it is the general inflammation that is also occuring in the brain. The fact that a medicine that can have a side effect of causing depression but does relieve inflammation and lessens immunity almost immediately gets rid of my depression shows me that it is not a voluntary mood or anything to do with my spiritual state. We don't know so much in medicine and unfortunately we don't yet know what causes most mental illness. We do know that bipolar is very common in certain populations (Amish) and they think it is because of their closely related families.

Can anyone tell me how much math is needed for the new SAT or ACT? Specifically wondering what parts of trig are necessary and any other topics that wouldn't be covered in ALG 2?

Okay, I understand that they changed the sequencing some but doesn't the SAT and the ACT require basic trig? If you are not doing accelerated math, you wouldn't have pre-calc until your senior year. This kid is not going to need trig in her future life but just needs enough for the tests. (How do I know? Because I got a degree in Economics with Calculus and Stat classes and followed up with Masters and ABD in Criminal Justice with lots of stat and probability classes on a grad level and never encountered trig again until I homeschooled.)

:iagree:with Elaine. The questions were made by someone who was ignorant of the Constitution. That was why the County backed down. The county has rules, I presume, about where institutions such as schools, community clubs, churches, synanagogues, mosques, temples, etc, can be zoned. I agree with that aspect of zoning since if my cul-de-sac suddenly had one of those when all we are supposed to have is residential one family houses, I would be upset too. The area isn't set up for large groups meeting on a regualr basis. However, a Bible Study of 10-15 people is no different than the gardening club meeting, the birthday party, the backyard BBQ, etc, etc. Religious groups have special rights, not less rights. However, whenever you see the polls on what rights and responsibilities Americans have under the Constition with all of its amendments, the ignorance of a large amount of people is staggering.

I guess I am an oddity among homeschoolers. There are books that Iread that I wish I hadn't but mostly I don't remember their names. I did read the first VC Andrews book and never read another one. I read one or two romances both Harlequin and tied one more racy and thought they were either insipidly stupid and boring or in the case of the racy one, bordering on pprn and wouldn;t go on. I read Agatha Christie starting when I was 11 and loved them and still do. I read Stephen King either in high school or maybe college. I like some of his stuff and not others. I still read him. I am a mystery fan and almost always am reading one. I read many types. I also read true crime stories like Ann Rule's Perfect Stranger. It lead to my profession so I don't stop my kids from reading things, except if they wanted to read sex heavy books or Satanic books or that sort of thing. (I am not talking about Harry Potter).

We just our tickets for Pirates of the Penzance tonight but so far the ones we are planning to go to is NSO John Williams and their concert with musicals and also B52s. We are so happy to be able to go to outdoor big concerts now since I haven't lived in a very big city since my youngest was 2. My dh was amazed to how many concerts I went to as a teenager but the tickets were affordable for lawn seats. For our family, spending 125 for a concert for all five of us or 100 for all four of us is certainly more affordable than 60 or 75 a pop like they were in smaller cities. I also will try to go to Riverdance and maybe to Cirque and La Boheme. Now I will try the other outdoor venues in the DC area and see what bargains they have.