Well why has math been dumbed down? I was not a stellar math student. I did have abilities in it since I majored in heavily math oriented economics and then later did grad work which involved lots of statistics and probability coursework. Yet I was able to do Algebra 2 and Trig in the same year. Is it just Chalkdust that is this way? Are there other alternatives that are still combining Algebra with Trig? I don't like the Foerster series.

WHen I was in school, only really non-mathy students took just Algebra 2. Everyone else who was at least somewhat math proficient took Alg 2/Trig. If they were math or science kids, they took it in 10th grade, followed by a year sequence of Analytical Geometry and Functions, followed by Calculus. If they were decent in math but hadn't taken Alg in 8th grade, they ended up taking doing the same sequence but never taking Calculus before college. Has all this changed? I was really expecting to use Chalkdust for my dd's Junior year that is upcoming but I am not sure what to order and if it will be enough. I figure she needs to get in trig before 12 grade so she can do better on the SAT or ACT. Any advice?

ANywhere between 16 and 24 I think. However, I agree with Ellie and say that one can start community college before then and never really return to high school. It depends on what they will do after high school. I go by college requirements since my kids are going to college. That means- 4 English, 3-4 Math, 3-4 Science, 3-4 Social Science, 1 Fine Art, 1 PE, 2-4 Language, and maybe something like computer thrown in. THe first graduated with many more than the required and I see the second following in his footsteps.

My dd is doing BJU Chemistry, has the DIve Chemistry CD, and often I end up teaching her myself because she just doesn't get it without a lot of feedback from me. I don't think it is the book, I think it is her. She gets bogged down in vocabulary and misses out on the concept. If I teach her, I interpret the vocabulary and quickly move on to the concept and practical applications.

I lived in California and homeschooled with the affavidit rather than an umbrella. I knew some people who were urging me to homeschool under the umbrella provision when I first moved there but I thought that filing an affadavit was much easier. SO I did that for three or four years with no problem. I didn't see any reason to pay anyone more money nor for me to waste my time with additional records and requirements. I had only small children then. I gather that some umbrella schools provide additional services for high schoolers but I think we moved around the time my oldest was in sixth grade so we had no need.

WE are starting summer now with swim and dive team practices and meets until the end of July. Both girls are continuing last year's school although they will slowly be switching classes. My dh is leaving for three weeks in June and one of those weeks, my older dd will be on a mission trip to Newark,NJ. THen the older one will be attending a four week Fine Arts day camp which will net her an extra half credit or so. I am looking for something else for the younger. WE will go on a trip back to Florida in mid August so that the older one can get a drivers license and I have yet to plan a vacation around that. THis is our first year living in megalopolis ever with three kids and we plan to take advantage of concerts and plays available locally.

There is another one in VIrginia in Staunton that focuses on different types of early American farms based on places of origin- Dutch settlers, English settlers, etc. St. Augustine Florida has a living history village. THere is an excellent one in the Alsace region of France. WE also went to another excellent one in the Netherlands. They are called open air museums in Europe. There is also a SHaker living history museum in Massachusetts or NH or maybe both.

I am confused about how the Gothard way is anything but a cultlike organization. As I understand, we are not supposed to add anything or subtract anything from scripture. He seems to be adding much and subtracting some of the most important points- In Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, no slave, etc. That means we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, on equal footing, not rejected because of our hair style, beard, adoption status, fertility status, etc., etc. What a unpleasant philosophy to tarnish the Good News of the Bible. I am truly sorry that some of you have been hurt by this mangling of God's truth and hope it hasn't turned you from seeing the beauty of the Gospel message.

We weren't stationed in Okinawa but in Belgium. WE were there for three years and never went back but we had no need to. My parents are deceased and dh's mother is deceased. ANyway, although we spent our vacations travelling Europe and many others in Asia spend there's travelling Asia and visiting Australia, you can fly back. In Europe, those who flew back mostly did that once a year since either they paid the fare or they had to take lots of time out to do the hop thing. If parents are well enough to travel, that is what I would recommend. It would be cheaper to get them there then for you to get a whole family back.

I haven't seen any one style of hair or clothing in Christian homeschool groups? Why would I? We are not all of the same ethnicity, same economic circumstances, same preferences, etc. It has been years since I have seen large groups of jumper clad, pony tailed women. I meet homeschool moms at the soccer field here and almost all are wearing pants or shorts. I suppose if they are Gotharides, they wouldn't have joined homeschool soccer. In Florida, most Christian homeschooling moms had shoulder length or shorter hair. There were lots of styles, though and really hardly any of the kind you describe. I think hair styles have more to do with local culture and climate. Florida was hot and we lived on an island. Here, it will be very muggy but is a much more formal place. Neither place is long hair the norm.

I am spinning off the age poll and noticing that there are a whole lot of young mothers. When I had my first at age 26, I was the the second youngest prospective mother in my Lamaze group by probably close to 7 years. The only one younger than me was an unwed teenager. But here, I am seeing so many young mothers. My question is given economic realities, your education philosophy or any other factors, are you goingto be recommending early marriage and childbearing to your children or will you recommend them waiting until ?. In my case, I married after college but in my husband's senior year since I wanted one parent at least at my wedding and my mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Otherwise we would have waited until he graduated too. I am recommending that my children wait until after college to get married. However, I don't recommend that they wait until they feel they are financially secure since that could be for many, many years.

I have to say that I believe that perfect attendance is a matter of exceptionally good health and some luck. If my children were in schools, they would never win. Between surgeries, strep throats, severe allergy reactions, fractures and moves dictated by the military, we would never have perfect attendance at schools. The fact that some child gets through 13 years with no communicable disease during the school year, no surgeries or hospitalizations, no visits to specialists in other cities because there were no specialists in your town, etc, etc, is in my eyes more of a curiosity rather than any accolade on its own accord.

I am fairly conservative. Yes to drilling, no to higher taxes, pro-life, pro death penalty, freedom to drive the car you want ( to a certain extent - not pollution belching cars since tht infringes on the rights of others). I am not as conservative as some on environmental matters since I believe in the rights of others. So air pollution or water pollution hurts others and I am against it but think we do have to compromise how much is acceptable. As to other countries, I have found that different countries have different freedoms. I found it extremely refreshing to live in Belgium which like most other European countries greatly discourages lawsuits. They do this by requiring a litigant to put up a bond to pay the opposing party's legal expenses if they lose the lawsuit. This practice leads to a huge drop in lawsuits and our lives were enhanced by that. Most noticably, the playgrounds are a ton better than in the states because parents can't sue. ALso power tools and things like ladders were tremendously cheaper. I liked their medical system better too. My daughter was being cast for a broken arm in about fifteen minutes in the door. We never had long waits. The prices were unbelievably cheaper too. I could have afforded all our medical expenses there with just our salary though it was paid by the military. They did not have any fancy waiting rooms and the hospital food was apparently not good. HOwever they figured out I did not have a very sreious lung condition that was misdaignosed in the US due to too low powered xrays. Over there they are not worried about lawsuits so they can use higher powered machines. My misdiagnosis was a result of fake shadows on the US xrays. It was confirmed that I had no problems with a CAT scan that also showed nothing. (I do have asthma but don't have pulmonary fibrosis)

Thanks for this. I do want to pray for you all and it is so helpful to have posts in one location. My prayer requests concern my two daughters. My older one had a seven month long nonstop headache that went away almost a year ago now with Lexapro but we never had a diagnosis. SHe has very loose ligaments that give her pains, her regular migraines cause pain, and she has very bad periods too. She also has mitral valve prolapse and anxiety issues. She is a non complaining very hardworking girl but I can see that all the pain issues are wearing her down. My younger was diagnosed with osteoporosis in February after five breaks in three years and two of those being atraumatic. She also had very low bone density. Just a week or so ago, her bone doctor called me on my cell phone (and I just figured out how to get my message) and told me that he has reviewed her whole body scan and she has some additional?? fractures and I need to call so we can discuss more treatment options. She is already on extra vitamin F and calcium. She is 12 1/2 and not growing as well as her siblings were.

My oldest couldn't get a license until he was 18 since we had lived in Europe until he was 17 and he had to have a learner's permit for a year or until he turned 18 to get a license. Then he was away at college without a car and housesit on a small farm where they let him use their car so he only drove ours when he came to visit. SInce he has moved back home, he hardly uses the car since we only have two and parking at his college is too expensive anyway. He wants to buy a car but needs to have a good paying summer and part time in school year job first. With dd who will turn 16 in Aug., she won't drive the car to the cc because we live about a mile away and she can bike, walk or get a ride from me. I need to keep my car for other purposes. I expect her to use the car alone when she will travel to adult choir practices at our church. SHe also will use the car to transport her and her younger sister to youth group and sometimes to do errands, including her own like going to the library. I won't expect her to pay anything since she is not employed. ALso, she will be helping me out by reducing the amount of back and forth driving I have to do.

My legomaniac son is a junior/senior majoring in philosophy. He is looking for a summer job as either a computer person or audio/visual tech as he has much experience with both including building this computer I am using right now.

I am in complete agreement with Dawn that no one should be having children they can't support. Sometimes aid is necessary and I have no problems with it - fires, catastrophes, job loss, etc. But unless a person is actually disabled, these situations should be temporary. It infuriates me to hear about some man not going to work full-time because he needs to pray with his family. That is fine if you can afford it without taking govt aid. Otherwise it is morally stealing and not something that I think is Godly at all. God gave us brains and says we are not supposed to lead children astray. We are supposed to feed and clothe and house our children.

Since it was a dealer sale, that will be much easier to prove. I would get the mechanic to appear in court, if that is not too much money. I would take the carfax report and start searching on the internet for police reports in those states the car was registered for any accident reports. They may or may not be available to the public depending on the state. Bring the photos, bring all the evidence you can. If this is not a dealer that is about to close, I think you have a decent chance. (I don't think you will get anything from all those dealers who are closing). They may very well want to settle. If you have no problems appearing on tv, try getting your case heard there. Then you will definitely be a winner since you will get your judgement from the tv show and even if you lose, you will still get half of the total pie, if they don;t have a counterclaim.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but if it was a private sale, it is a as is sale unless there is a contract in almost every state. IF the person made claims in the ad like never been in accident or something like that, you would have a case for fraud. However if all they said is it runs great or words to that affect, that is not a guaranty. You may want to turn into People;s Court since she often has car sale cases. You also will want to look up the law in your particular state. But the fact that it did pass inspection probably won't help you any. Sorry.

I miss my Publix. I am in Northern VA now and haven't found the Wegmans yet to try that.

Does anyone want to hear about my flower gardens? (I can't grow edibles since I don't have sun almost at all). My blue garden that I planted this Spring is doing great. My clematis, hydrangea, blue winky columbine, and campanula are all blooming. A yellow perennial (I forget its name) is adding a bit of contrast and white roses are bordering. My rhodedendron in another part is fading. I will be putting in warm annuals this weekend.

I am with Heather. I like paying for classes and the most I like to do is monitoring hall or assist the teacher in minor ways. I would be willing to teach a class, if it was one I wanted to teach.

We were getting these for a while recently when we moved. I picked up one day and told them we have just moved here and we are not who they are looking for. They stopped calling. We also had problems in our vacation rental last week. I told the landlord and he was really surprised. It had nothing to do with him (different names) and other calls were nonsensical for a vacation rental place. I told him to recall the do not call list with that phone number.

My dd had a bad reaction to the injection about a month and a half after she started. They gave her epinephrine, asthma treatment and maybe some antihistamine. She stayed around for about two hours after the reaction. Then they dropped the dose, went to a slower rise in the schedule and six months later, she is on a once a month maintanance dose with which she has no significant reactions. (She always gets red skin since her skin turns red with any pressure at all)/ In her case, I knew we had to do it. She has a wasp allergy and that is deadly, if not managed well. As it is, the doctor says that now if she was stung by a wasp, she would have no reaction. She still carries her epipen and inhaler around because wasps can sting in groups.

With the first two, we had a driver's ed course at the local high school that we used when it was not occupied for the first few hours. After that, it was driving on slow residential streets for several more hours. My 15 3/4 daughter is doing almost everything now including rush hour, rush hour and non rush hour freeway driving, heavy street traffic, night, rain, night and rain. She hasn't done parallel parking nor snow driving yet. On our recent vacation, she learned to drive the pick-up in mountainous roads. I had a much harder time teaching the first one and gave up and let dh do most of it. Plus he was already away at college most of the time so he had some friends help him. He got his license at 18 because we were living in Europe when he was younger and couldn't teach him there.