It's been several years, but we found it helpful. We tended to modify it. In middle school, I have my kids write about history, so we often incorporated some of the techniques that it was trying to teach into that writing assignment. I feel like I learned a lot about word usage and organizing content to make the desired point. I don't think that it can be all of the writing that you do, but I think that if you use the ideas to apply to other places that you might be doing writing - about literature, or history, or current events or persuasive essays about science, whatever is interesting to your family - then the instruction is good.

Voyage is more serious because the focus is on writing essays and reading examples of different types of essays. For us, this level had the most comprehensive writing of any of the 6 that we did. My kids both liked the vocab portion even though it's more serious.

Fruit, veggies and dip, cheese and crackers or cheese cubes, cheese ball, nuts, veggie pinwheels - I wouldn't do all of the above, but I'd probably pick 1-3 of them depending on the people that you've invited. If you want something hot, mini-quiches from the freezer section are easy, although everything cold is lovely and even easier.

I have one child who is highly social and another who is much like yours. That kid has a good grasp of what they want to do and whether or not they want to spend time on something. I know that they have friends who do things without them because they know that kid doesn't want to go to movies, for instance. But, when they are in an activity or social setting that kid wants to participate in, they all get along great. But, kid also sees other kids almost every day - sports practice, youth group, Science Olympiad or quiz bowl practice, co-op day - and that seems to be plenty of social time for kid. I think that my kid is just an introvert who gets along fine with others but only has so much 'people energy' and chooses where to spend it. Kid will show initiative for doing something that they like. When their high school ball team needs workers for tournaments, kid works a lot of shifts. Last summer, shortly after getting a drivers license, kid asked if it was OK for them to try out the open gym basketball on Thursday nights at church. Kid went all summer but dropped it once school started and they got busy. I'm sure it will pick back up once school is done. But, kid is skipping the youth Super Bowl party because it doesn't sound like how kid wants to spend 4 hours. So...maybe there's a problem, but if your kid is happy then you may just have an introvert who is getting plenty of people time during activities.

Life of Fred may be another possibility. As with Jousting Armadillos, not a ton of practice. But, it's in a very different format that may not be stress inducing. Based on what you've said about mastering the operations, maybe their 'Fractions and Decimals' book might be a good place to start? People either tend to love or hate this program, but it can be helpful for the right kid or situation.

My older likes metal and dislikes profanity, so kid has found Christian metal and also Scandinavian metal. Apparently there is a band that sings about history...educational Scandinavian metal? Don't know if you can use it for piano, but it seems plenty poundy for me. 🙂

One of the schools that older is considering offers a couple of entry options - regular fall start, summer start, and a 'bridge' program where students take classes at the CC for a year and then transfer. My understanding of the summer start and bridge programs are that students start as regular students after either completing the summer or 1 year of CC with good grades. So, in that case, it's not an unsure thing if the students can earn the required grades. But, if it was really uncertain, I wouldn't risk it, especially if he'd rather be somewhere else anyway.

No personal BTDT - my oldest is younger than that. But, I've had 4 kids in my orbit join the military. The Air Force guy was an instructor at my kid's karate school and he did ROTC with the plan of enlisting after graduating from college, prior to a career at the FBI. The other 3 are former students. The one in the Army has been in for 6+ years and plans to make a career of it - he's happy with his choice. The Navy guy has been in for 6 months and is doing advanced training in a specific specialty. His mom says that he loves it. The last left for boot camp for the Marine Reserves a week ago and I'm sure his mom will update when she knows something. He's been out of high school for several years doing this and that and looking for direction, and I hope that this is a good fit for him. Good luck - I know this is stressful!

I like the suggestion above to ask 'What are you wanting to accomplish with this comment?' or maybe tell the kids that it's OK to ask 'What do you want me to do?' when he says something. One of my own parenting hang-ups is about not asking kids to deal with things that they can't actually do anything about because it creates stress that they can't get rid of. A simple example is that instead of making them angsty about various social problems I encourage them to be good stewards or volunteer or do whatever is in their capabilities. They can't solve the problem of poverty - they can't even vote yet - but they can get unneeded clothes out of their rooms and into the donation bag so that somebody else can use them and help me gather food for the blessing box in our community. In that vein, whether it comes from the kids or you, could the family find out what concrete actions he wants the kids to take? If he has reasonable ones - wanting the kids to investigate scholarships or to focus on schools that will cost less than X or have automatic aid, at least that's a starting point. If he doesn't have anything that he's wanting them to do, and he realizes this, then it might be easier at that point to suggest that venting such that it transfers the stress and guilt from him to the kids isn't the best option for making these last few years at home pleasant.

Could you get him to a point where you have an agreed-upon budget/limit and then he agrees to not comment as long as the kids are working within that framework? Kind of like on the HGTV shows, where people set a budget for the renovation, and they decide within that budget how to allocate it, but they don't go back and complain about the cost as long as it stays within that budget? If the kids are suggesting schools or programs that are unworkable, that's different. But, if they aren't, it's not really fair to them to create extra stress and guilt when they are doing what they've been told to do. Not that he's trying to do that, but it seems like a possible result. It's always a little disturbing to realize how much our kids are shaped by the hang-ups that we bring to adulthood, but if we can name them then there's at least a chance of tamping them down.

I've seen rules about microwaves and other cooking appliances because of either fire concerns or the amount of electricity that they use. Some buildings have limits on size, or offer a common kitchen. I've never heard of anything about what goes on the walls, and the pictures that I see of my former students' rooms seem to involve stuff on the walls.

It's possible that the course will be less work than anticipated. It's not unusual for kids at co-op to say that their DE classes are easier and less time consuming than the same type of class at co-op. But, lots of courses start slow because the students need to be taught enough background to do more complicated work. I wouldn't feel a need to supplement the class. Obviously they can use the extra time in their week to do something else, but I'd be hesitant to make a commitment to anything for the first month or so - that's usually long enough to get to the first test or major project and out of the introductory material.

I"m not sure what the policy is now, but when I taught at a CC 10 years ago we had to do something to take attendance because we had to know the last date that students attended class if they failed. Financial aid fraud was a big concern, so we had to know whether they failed due to not being able to do the work or whether they took the money and then quit coming after the last drop date. Labs had short weekly quizzes so I could look to see if they started getting zeroes after a certain date. My lecture class had a quiz or test in 1/2 of the meetings (met weekly, students did better getting more feedback on frequent, lower-stakes quizzes the week before tests, assessment had to be 85% closed book to transfer to state U). For that class, I just looked to see the last date that students turned in work - it could have been off by a week, but it was close enough. Obviously no one absence would be a problem, but we were allowed to administratively drop students once they had a certain number of absences. I never did, but I'm guessing that the policy was in response to financial aid fraud. It happened once when I taught at the CC, and it's happened several times with high school/online classes that I teach now, where a student comes/does the work for the first 2 weeks and then disappears, only to contact me the week before the final to ask how they can pass the class. With an online/canvas class you can tell when they logged in and see that they didn't look at the class in any way for 10 weeks. For the record, I have been known to tell them that if they can pass a cumulative closed-book final, we can go with credit by exam, and they have always said that they can't pass a test, having not done the work, but how can they get a passing grade in the class. I don't think that this was intended to be financial aid fraud when it happened at the CC - more of a magical thinking thing - although it probably looked like fraud when documented.

We've explored different types of children's museums and kids sections of other sorts of museums. One feature that we like is when there are places to eat, since we often spend the day. Even with toddlers we didn't mind going to a designated area, but ones where you have to exit and eat outside often meant that we had short visits in the winter. A layout where there might be seating for parents while several areas are in view lets a group of kids explore different things while still being supervised. Anything with water was popular - we must be near kidlit because we've been to the locks and dams one, but we've also been to some where kids can stand up all sorts of things to make the water flow faster and slower based on how much they block the table. We've built large arches a couple of places, and that's always fun. We've also been to a couple that had big things that could be used to build things that the kids could go in. Some places had giant foam blocks, and another had boards cut to be sort of like lincoln logs. Those were outside, and I used to build a house for the kids to eat lunch in. One museum near us has a 2-story 'dollhouse' that kids can play in. Each story is probably only 5 feet tall, with miniature furniture. Parents can sit and watch the kids play house. That was popular with the younger set. Anything that is immersive is suprigingly popular - whether kids dress up in old-fashioned clothes and haul water buckets to a small fake cabin or sit in a concrete 'dinosaur nest' that has eggs that are 8 inches long that the kids can move around. Sand areas where kids can dig up dinosaur bones or sand boxes with stamps that make animal footprints are fun. If you're going to have live small animals. weird bugs were popular and didn't need much space. One place we went when the kids were little had a giant bullfrog. Skeletons of various animals were cool. Some museums have parts where kids have to find things - one not-fancy museum has a room like a rainforest and kids hunt for animals. It's very low-key - the animals may be stuffed or plastic - but a lot can be done with this concept and it keeps kids busy for a while. Calm areas with heavy-duty tangram-style puzzles and peg games (like what's on the table at cracker barrel) can be nice for kids who like quiet. Kids like watching indoor or outdoor model trains. They had one at a garden that we went to, and the kids would run alongside it. Exhibits with colored lights or mirrors can be entertaining. For science exhibits, the biggest thing is finding the sweet spot of something interesting to do that isn't so complicated that the kids get frustrated before figuring out how to use it.

I'm wondering if the variety of responses is related to the types of classes we took/taught. Several posters have said things like 'except lab classes' or 'except classes that meet more than twice a week' or something like that. I had a science class that met 4 days/week with optional review the 5th day most weeks. I never had a semester with fewer than 2 labs. It was incredibly uncommon for people in my major to miss class. There were times when students needed to miss for illness or family situations, but it was rare. I do remember an athlete or 2 in classes with me. They worked so hard to stay on top of things. They often did things like take labs over the summer, because there was just no good way to do a lab during the semester that was in season for their sport. Our professors cared and weren't jerks about it, but they knew that we would struggle if we weren't there. And, to be clear, as a teacher or student I never begrudged students missing class. But, I rarely saw it turn out well for students who missed class often. In some classes outside my major, I probably could have read the textbook and gotten As without ever going to class. But, in other classes, I'd have never made the connections that were made if I weren't there. We had a good study group that worked to help each other if somebody had to miss, but it was still hard to figure out what was going on from other people's notes.

If a student just misses and needs an extra day to turn in work, this is true. But, so often that isn't the expectation. I had it easy, being at a CC with a testing center. Many instructors don't have this, and may be asked to proctor make-up tests for multiple students who don't have compatible schedules for taking the make-up at the same time, so this would take several hours. Or instructors may need to write new versions of the test. Some students expect 1:1 instruction on what they missed because the absence was excused. If an instructor says 'I drop 2 of the 14 quizzes' some students will request that excused absences not be part of those 2 in case they are sick or have another 2 missed days later in the semester, even though the dropping of 2 quizzes is meant to deal with exactly this situation. Many instructors are willing to do a lot to work with students having a crisis and build in flexibility to accommodate choices and 'life happens' moments, but can end up investing a lot of time even if they are just saying 'No, this counts as one of your drops' to the many students asking for an exemption. Particularly for people teaching large classes, this can be a huge deal. A friend who teaches 3 200-person sections of an intro class said that she finally had to tell students 'There are 600 of you. If you send 1 email each week and I respond in 1 minute, that's 10 hrs just responding to email'. She's more than willing to deal with real issues, but can't manage individual work-arounds for everything that students want. Sometimes I think that, as with many situations, students don't understand the cumulative nature of this - any given thing isn't a big deal, but multiple requests from a few students, or even 1 request, multiplied by 30, 50, or 600 students, can really add up. I think it's also hard for people who don't see it to understand the scale of what students do. I once taught a lab (meeting once/week), which started with 24 students but only had 3 pass. Since it was a lab, there wasn't a lot that I could do to change it - many parts were standardized by the department. At the end of the year, i had 1A, 1B, and 1C. The A student had missed class once, the B student had missed class twice, and the C student had missed class 3 times. Everybody else had more than 3 absences. One student even wrote on their course eval ''She did everything that she could to help us succeed. I should have come to class more often.' Fortunately, the school was more concerned with keeping the content of the class consistent with what would be needed to transfer to State U than they were with my pass/fail rate. I have no idea why there were so many absences, but I struggle to believe that they were all necessary. I never had a class like that again, but it was memorable.

My school had 7 credits each year, and spouse's school had 6. Many schools have switched to block scheduling, where students have 4 classes each day that meet for a longer block of time. There are a couple of ways to do this, some good and some dumb, but the end results is that kids in those schools can take 8 credits each year. Some kids who do this finish early - college football teams that have 'early enrollees' who start in January likely did this, and we know a couple of local kids who finished early and started work/college/whatever they're doing next. Some of the kids on my older's ball team seem to take PE every year (it's when they get their workouts in, instead of having to do them before or after school). So, they may have 32 credits but 4 of them are PE. The same happens with kids who do band ever year, or choir, etc. My older has done 8 each year for the first 3 years of high school. Some are challenging courses and some check a box. Some were never meant to be hard - kid had to have health to graduate, but how hard is anybody going to make health class? That being said, I'm not sure what kid will do senior year. Kid is likely to DE a lot, and since some of the classes will be 4 hr classes (calc, physics with lab) I'm not sure if kid will want to do 3 vs 4 courses each semester. Kid may do something interest-led at home to make another credit or 2, I'm still not sure. All of this being said, I'm not sure that my younger will follow the same path. Kid is comparably smart, but much less academically motivated. I think that only 24 credits are required to graduate, and I'd expect younger to earn no more than 28, and probably fewer.

I was never sure what students meant when they wanted me to excuse an absence. The class was weekly and met 18 times. There were 4 tests, which could be made up any time during the week after the test was given at the testing center (and if I knew a full week ahead of time I could drop it off when I was there to teach - I only taught 1 class so only came to campus once/week). There were 5 quizzes, and I dropped the lowest (no make-ups). I did, one time, come up with a different policy for a guy who was a good student who had 2 work trips that couldn't be moved. I could have worked with other extenuating circumstances if needed. But, as i said above, students with a big issue rarely asked for anything and I often only found out about their situation from chatting. Other than than, there was some version of interactive lecture. Excused, unexcused, there was no difference on my end. Some students seemed to feel that excusing them meant that they didn't need to learn the material or get the lab data or whatever was needed to make up the work. I get that with students in my co-op class sometimes - one answered test questions about a lab with 'I wasn't there that day' even though the simple lab procedure and the pooled class data was all posted so that they could all know about it (the online students had no problems). I always did better with students who were proactive - I have situation X, can we do solution Y? Then I know what they want and can decide if it's reasonable. Asking to swap presentation days with another person, especially if they other person has agreed, or asking if they can turn in work early or have 3 extra days - those are easy to work with.

We keep a lot of stuff on hand. Flour, sugar, brown, white, and jasmine rice, quinoa, pasta, and an assortment of sauces (BBQ, stir-fry, mayo, ketchup, mustard, salsa, honey), cooking or olive oil, seasonings (individual spices or seasoning packets), canned tuna and salmon, canned soup, canned beans of various kinds, and dried beans for pantry items. We keep butter and cheese in the freezer. I find that it's helpful to have bags of frozen peppers and onions since they go in all sorts of things and can be great if I can't get to the store to get fresh, so if you have space you might get those. If you use gluten-free mixes to make pancakes or brownies or whatever, you might stock up on those, too. Edited to say - it really depends on how and what you eat. Spouse thought I was absurd when I started getting rice in 25 lb bags. Then we realized that we use at least a pound or 2 of rice any time I make a stir fry or gumbo. Then it seems less absurd. On the other hand, my dad wanted to stock up the same as we did, and mom pointed out that they use 1/4 of the rice that we do (I have 2 teen athletes). They don't need items in the quantity that I do. One frozen pizza feeds the 2 of them. One frozen pizza feeds my teen boy lunch. We try not to waste, which is dependent on knowing what we'll actually use. And peanut butter. We eat a lot of that, and certain canned fruit is popular.

When I was in college, we never missed for much of anything. I think missing a day for a funeral, or a Friday for a family wedding, isn't a crisis - it shouldn't happen very often. When I was a student, almost all weddings of college-aged people were in the summer to avoid this. My family also isn't the kind that would be upset if a cousin couldn't be at a wedding or funeral due to school. I can't imagine family expecting students to miss class for birthdays or vacations. But, I have some cousins that are in their late 20s. I know that when one was a freshman, first they took the whole week off at Thanksgiving (skipping M/T classes and coming home the Friday before) and then they missed some more time in December for a family trip to Disney (they went yearly when they were growing up). They wound up switching majors because, as I could have told them, you can't pass science classes doing that. My older will likely be dual enrolling almost everything next year. Kid will also be on the homeschool quiz bowl team - the group that does those shows on PBS. We are already angsty about the possibility that they may have to miss class to participate since it could be any day of the week. I'm not worried about class- the possible missed days are 2/3 of the way through the semester, and kid will hopefully have established themselves as a good student io instructors are usually willing to work with that. But, we are debating putting the class with a lab in the spring to avoid missing that - I know how hard make-up labs can be to schedule. But, the fact that we are thinking about this now and trying to minimize impact means that we are also not the population that misses class randomly. I still remember being shocked that, when I taught a once/week class at a community college, I had a pregnant student miss class early in the semester because her family had scheduled her baby shower for then. I had students miss class because their wives (or the students themselves) were having babies, and memorably one mom came to take a test before her daughter's surgery, saying that she needed the distraction and to clear one thing off her plate before helping her kiddo recover, and all of those students did fine. The students who missed for things like showers always ended up dropping or failing. Edited to add: I hated tracking attendance, but we were required to for financial aid reasons - we had to know if people quit coming to class and were committing fraud. I set policies around not needing to figure out whether an absence was excused or not. I was as accommodating as possible in ways that didn't inconvenience me - letting them take tests in the testing center within a week, etc. In the end, students with real excuses did fine. Students with nonsense excuses tended to do poorly.

Spouse, an engineer, has made a course on various aspects of computing. To finish the credit at teach a particular set of programming skills, spouse is signing kid up for a class at leetcode. I don't know if they have what you're looking for, but it's another option. I guess we'll find out soon if it's good. 🙂 Edited to add - it's not free, but I think it was going to be $90 for a class that will be around 1/3 of the content for kid's 1 credit course.

At the co-op where the Fundafunda class is taught in person, it is often taken as 'World geography and history' because it has a survey of history as you learn the geography. Some students list it as geogrphy and others as world history. Some people may want separate geography and history courses, but since any course covering all of world history in one year is going to be a survey, this works for many students. If you want a separate class, you might consider a class that just focuses on a particular aspect of history - either something topic-specific like military history or the history of art and architecture - or a specific time period since another survey might not be as interesting.

A lot of kids are spurty - they get interested in something and make great strides at it, and then their interest moves to something else and they make rapid progress there. Not making more progress at something doesn't necessarily mean that the method is bad. In my experience, it as often a sign that the child had reached their developmental limits with that particular skill or had more interest in something else at that time. I'm sure that not all kids are like this. But, with both of mine, who have really different temperaments, I found that sometimes if they were putting effort into one thing - learning to ride a bike, or developing social skills through more social time, or learning math or learning to read - then their progress on the other skills slowed or even regressed a bit. And sometimes we'd hit developmental limits and then suddenly they'd be off and running with new skills. If they were experiencing frustration, we'd take breaks. And, even if we weren't doing direct instruction with something, that didn't mean that we dropped everything related to it. Even when we weren't practicing phonics, I still read both complex story books for content and simple readers that they could follow along with. One of my kids read early after a quick pass through Hooked on Phonics. I practiced with my other, but it felt like we weren't moving forward until suddenly kid started reading midway through K. With kids that I've volunteered with, some plodded along and made incremental progress while others seemed to go from 'can't read well' to 'reasonably fluent reader' very suddenly.

When I had an 8th grader and started laying out a high school plan, I wrote out something like what Lori posted - usually 5 lines under each but a note about how many credits were needed for each subject. Under each I wrote the required courses - in my state, there is a requirement for US History, World History, and Gov/Econ, so I wrote each of those under social studies and then had some blank space to fill in any other credits that we chose to do. We have to do 1 credit of PE, 1 credit of fine arts, and 1/2 credit each of health and personal finance, so I included those on the list. Looking at college preferences, kid decided to do 3 years of foreign language, so our plan for the first 3 years of high school started with a base of English, social studies, math, science, and foreign language. Then we started filling in other things. We chose to cram a lot of the not-difficult state requirements in the first 2 years just so that we could be done with them in case kid wanted the space later, but others choose to sprinkle these easy courses over the 4 years. Then we could use the remaining credits to do courses that kid was interested in. We also chose not do do a generic world history class. Kid chose to focus on military history and trade, so I found some books about that for kid to read. Kid will likely graduate with more than 4 social science credits, but those will include some non-required subjects like psychology. We did an extra 1/2 credit of English based around kid wanting to read science fiction (we might have used it for our regular English credit, but kid had chosen to take a full-credit English class at co-op with friends so we did it over the summer). We've also used those credits for a bit of career exploration. Kid enjoys helping with the garden, so I designed a horticulture credit. Kid decided that it agriculture is a better hobby than career, but that's useful to know! Spouse, an engineer, designed a class so that kid could explore that field after kid liked a basic high school coding class (if spouse couldn't do it, we likely would have dual enrolled). Kid liked it, and we are looking at more options for kid to explore for their senior year. As kid narrows their career interests, we're also focusing on credits that will help to prepare kid for that course of study. That can involve specific career exploration, checking off prereqs with DE, checking off non-major requirements by DE, and using at-home classes to explore random interests. I guess all of this is to say - have knowledge of what is required, but also be prepared to shift gears. Even within courses required by your state, you can specialize to make them more interesting to your kid. As for whether it's too much, a lot will depend on the particular kid, the specific classes that you plan, and how time is spent. Some kids choose an internship, a giant research project, a job, or a time consuming extracurricular instead of the maximum number of classes each year. It's hard to predict what a kid will want to do in 4 years. In our case, I think that kid is looking forward to having flexibility in their senior year, although I'm not yet sure what we'll end up doing with it.

Not knowing the subject matter, as I think about it, does anybody in the class type notes on a computer? I much prefer to hand write and think that it leads to better learning, but a lot of students prefer typing because they are faster at it. If anybody types notes, it might be easier to get notes from them because it's so easy to send a file (although absent students have often gotten notes by taking pictures on their phone). Just a thought that might help in some classes.