oh, definitely not talking about winter! not in the RV, anyway 🙂

Thanks--yes, I looked into travel insurance because we'll be in Newfoundland for over a month this summer, and it seemed fairly affordable. The link you posted above was just re: leaving and coming back and visas, not insurance, yes? US Citizens don't need a visa for Canada, so the rules about needing a new visa wouldn't apply in this situation.

My husband can retire in probably 9-10 years, when he's still in his 50s (teacher...he'll hit 30 years in 10 years, I think, but he also has a ton of sick leave built up, so may be able to retire a year or so early). This lines up pretty nicely with when our youngest graduates and I'm all done homeschooling. Thinking ahead, I sure wouldn't mind spending a lot of our time in a different county, and I'm wondering how it would all work if we were to spend several months of the year (likely in an RV) in Canada...sort of reverse snow birds. Generally speaking you can stay for 6 months as a visitor with a US passport. Can you just stay for 6 months every year without anyone objecting? Can you stay for 6 months, leave for a couple of weeks, and come right back for another 6 months (or a month or two? or whatever). I know my brother and SIL spent a year in Australia this way....they had to leave every 3 months, I think, but it could be for a week long trip and they came right back (my SIL couldn't work at all. My brother was officially working in the US, but actually in Sydney, working remotely. But my brother actually hired an immigration lawyer to help him with all the details). How does health insurance work? How do Canadians do this when they winter in Florida or wherever? do they buy travel health insurance? I mean, we could plan to be back home for routine health care or anything non-urgent, and I've read that insurance will usually cover emergency care when you're traveling, though you might have to pay oop and then be reimbursed. What else am I not thinking about?

There were remote exams offered at home in 2021; my kids took them that way

meh. If the money were there, they'd find a way. They managed to have everyone take exams outside of schools in 2020 with hardly any notice (and then offered remote exams again in 2021--not sure if they still are now, but it makes excuses about access to school buildings a little hard to buy). Evenings are another option (in addition to weekends) if school hours are the problem (which they're clearly not in a lot of places, since plenty of places DO allow homeschoolers to test. I've been told different things by schools in the same school district, so clearly a policy about non-students isn't at play there. The only time I've been told we couldn't test because of such policies was in 2020-21 because of covid). What it comes down to is that homeschoolers are small change.

They certainly could require it. They're their tests; they can require whatever they want. They could be administered like the SAT, where you sign up to take exams at a certain location and anyone can sign up until it's full. Sorry--the College Board gets no sympathy from me on this; I hold them way more accountable for making it so hard for homeschoolers to test than I do individual schools, who have absolutely no incentive to allow homeschoolers.

These are marketed towards kids, but our whole family really loved doing these Treasure Trails in the UK a few years ago: https://www.treasuretrails.co.uk Throwing it out there particularly since you mentioned self-guided walking tours; it's a set of clues that takes you through a given area, and we found it great to sort of guide our wandering and take us to hidden places we never would have found otherwise. We ended up doing one in London, one in Bath, and one in Bakewell, and they were all great.

Good timing on this Vox article that my phone told me I should read yesterday: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/4/11/23673393/pets-dogs-cats-animal-welfare-boredom I don't think there's a great answer here for people who have cats who aren't happy being inside. We do have a "catio" now--or, at any rate, an enclosed porch the cats can't get off of, but my restless cat will still come in from sunning on the porch and immediately scratch on the front door demanding to be let out that way. We tried a leash when she was still young, and she was having nothing to do with it. I don't feel good about her going outside, and I don't feel good about confining her. And I honestly don't know how we could live with her if we did; she would not only be miserable, she would hurt people and literally destroy our house (cat pee everywhere is not something that's easy to deal with). I do think just pretending that cats are all completely content being stuck inside, not being able to act like....cats is setting people up for failure. And that's definitely out there--in particular the idea that a cat who's never been let outside will never want to go outside; IME, it's just not true for all cats (and maybe not for most cats, if we're honest in our definition of "content"). Interestingly, the main reason we have an enclosed porch now is because we had to chicken proof it so our chickens would stop...wanting to come inside and be with us. Can't win! The author starts out talking a lot about dogs because he's a dog owner, but he focuses mostly on dogs who are alone for a lot of the day while their people work. That's not my dogs' situation, and I don't feel like they have the same boredom issues as my cats at all. They can be with people pretty much whenever they want for the most part, they have a large fenced in yard they're free to come and go from all day long, and they're able to go on outings the cats can't. I do plan to stick to just dogs once my current cats are gone (for a lot of reasons, but this is one of them), but we'll see how my resolve holds up; I have a hard time resisting kittens who need homes.

Tip for other people with addicted-to-freedom type cats, we've had good luck protecting birds with those birdbesafe clown collar cover things. She looks ridiculous, but we rarely have "gifts" left on our front steps for us (she always loses it somewhere eventually; I need to order her another one)

I have one of those very hard to live with if kept inside cats. We've had her since she was a kitten and never intended for her to go outside. But a couple of times slipping out the door when young kids weren't quick enough to stop her was all it took. If we try to keep her in, she'll spend literally hours leaping at the door handle trying to open it herself and scratching everyone who walks by (when she's otherwise a pretty sweet cat). And peeing in the house. Our other cat is perfectly content staying inside.

Yes! I've been really un-thrilled about the "everyone just gets covid every year or two; lots of them die, but mostly only old and/or otherwise vulnerable people, so whatever. Also long covid? yeah, we really have no idea--sucks for those people; hope it doesn't get too expensive!" plan that we seem to have been operating with. Also, it's not really catchy for marketing.

My kid took HUG as a co-op class that just met once a week and covered a lot of the AP material but not all (it wasn't intended as an AP class). I gave him the Barrons test prep book a month or so before the test, and he went through that and did fine. My number one tip for human geography (I've also taught it in a small group setting) is for kids to remember that they already know a lot of this stuff just because they're humans living in the world. Not all of it, obviously (and there are some concepts, particularly at the beginning of the course, that are very tricky for some kids). But on the FRQs especially, if they just say things they already know to be true about religion, immigration, agriculture, cities, etc. they can get a lot of the points. My experience is that kids tend to grasp for things they learned in class specifically or overanalyze what the questions are asking and fail to put down things they know. ETA: and this song is really great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzxREH08EkI

Do you think it's significant that they were basically only looking at studies conducted pre-covid (with the exception of two that did show a reduction in transmission)? I just don't see how anyone could use it as evidence that masking to prevent covid in particular is ineffective. Like...I don't even understand how they would try to pass it off that way; it makes no sense to me.

INTJ ....I just took it again because it'd been awhile and I thought maybe I've gotten less introverted and/or judgy lately....but I guess not so much 😂

The Cochrane Review looked at 78 studies, two of which were conducted during covid, and both of those studies found that mask use did decrease transmission. We're less careful about masking than we were before since we all had covid a couple of months ago...which is to say I'll sometimes go without a mask when I'm going into a store for a few minutes or somewhere else that's not crowded and has high ceilings. And we'll do indoor restaurants now when outside seating isn't available or practical. My husband still masks at school and my younger kids mask in classroom settings (no idea what my college kids are up to these days; I would be surprised if they're masking in classes, though). Everyone who still lives in my house wears a mask in any crowded indoor setting.

We haven't done any of his classes, but I'd considered them from time to time. When I first heard about this in another group, I wondered if it was really that bad (I mean, I live in the same area as him; I'm certainly used to encountering and interacting with homeschoolers who have different views than I have on a whole bunch of issues, and usually it's not a big deal)....but I was blown away when I read the course description. Wow.

I'd just have him practice lots of timed questions between now and then. That might be all it takes. And try to take the pressure off the score; I don't know what his goals are, but no one has to see the score if he's not happy with it, and the worst thing that happens is that he needs to take calculus again at some point, this time with a really strong foundation in it.

It depends on the exam. We've used Khan stuff as our "textbook" for a couple of AP histories/social sciences with good results (that's not ALL we did, but that was our main source of course material). One of these was world history, though, and, last I checked, they haven't updated the material to reflect the new exam. We used Khan for government, too. And for AP art history, Khan is great; I'm on an APAH teachers group on Facebook, and pretty much everyone uses the khan material for that--it's more engaging and better tailored to the exam than any/most textbooks. You definitely need to add in some kind of test prep, though...essay writing, etc.

I thought I'd already posted in this thread, but I think I must be thinking of the 4th grade planning thread from last year. Because that's how time works now, I guess! Reading/Lit: Bravewriter's Arrow--we've been doing this this year and it's been going well, lots of audiobooks in the car, book club books from the book club at the library, whatever I find to pair with history Writing/grammar/vocab: Leaning Michael Clay Thompson Town Level right now. We didn't do Island with him, and I was thinking we'd do WWS, but now I'm thinking we're doing a decent job on our own covering most of the WWS-type skills, and this kid appreciates whimsy, so MCT might work better. I've also been having him do research projects on things he's studying or interested in (like he made a Mystery Science style video about narwhals and now he's working on a podcast about Athena, Greeking Out style), so we'll keep doing that sort of thing Math: he's doing Beast Academy 5 now, so we'll give AOPS pre-algebra a try when he finishes that. My older kids were not fans, but I'm hoping having gone through BA will lend itself to more success this time Science: Science Mom...we just started Earth Science (we seem to have trouble sticking with a traditional academic year around here!), so we'll finish that in fall sometime and then do Chemistry. He might take a science class about conservation at the homeschool co-op, too. History: History Quest Middle Times Other: small group Spanish class, a couple more classes at homeschool co-op (math enrichment, rock band, ???), piano and trumpet lessons, homeschool band, baseball. This sounds like a lot, but he's in an enthusiastic about everything phase, and I don't want to waste it!

ah! That is something to consider! That definitely tilts things in AOPS favor (although I've had 3 kids go through Jacobs Algebra with good results so far, so that's another option after math dad if we go that way)

https://sciencemom.teachable.com/p/pre-algebra-bundle It follows the Desmos middle school curriculum it says. I asked DH about it and he says he's not familiar with it but is a big fan of Desmos in general.

Anyone done the Math Dad pre-algebra? Thoughts? My 4th grader is doing Beast Academy 5 now (just started it a couple of months ago, so he won't finish until at least sometime in fall). I'd always figured he'd try AOPS pre-algebra after that, but then he found the Math Dad vs. Science Mom videos the other day and watched all of them within 24 hours, so I'm wondering if the Math Dad class might be more engaging. Combining them somehow would be too much math, yes? Even for a very mathy kid? I'd been planning on just having him do the book on his own with AOPS (or, well, on his own/with his dad as needed, who's a math teacher, so also a math dad), but the live class I guess is another option to consider.

I haven't done it, but GA virtual school course material is all available free online, and it looks like the chemistry course incorporates the GPB material but adds in more complete lessons: https://gavirtual.instructure.com/courses/2690

well, high school's a different issue, but I will see that I see a trend toward this kind of thing in a lot of schools already...my husband's old school had a program where kids could study veterinary stuff and another for agriculture. And I do think that kids who are aiming for selective colleges are expected to do just TOO MUCH in general. But that takes us back to population trends...it's just sort of what happens when too many kids are trying for too few spots. But I'd also say that I always want there to be plenty of space for kids who DON'T want to specialize early on and DON'T know what they want to do yet and do want to try out a lot of different things and get a broad education. Humanities departments shutting down at struggling colleges gives students fewer choices and leaves less room for those kinds of kids.

I guess I don't get what you're saying then...you want K-12 to be when kids get a rich and diverse education across different disciplines, but you also don't want them to do anything could be considered college level work in high school so that they can, in fact, focus on their major field more when they get to college? At any rate, there are plenty of LAC that have pretty much zero gen ed requirements if that's what someone wants.