Mostly I had a couple of books I wanted to read with him and then I based the themes around those and then found essays that worked. I happened to have two collections of essays already of writers writing about writing, so we read a lot of those. Travel writing is, of course, super easy to find. Today we read James Baldwin's "Stranger in the Village." I have a bunch of e-book collections of travel essays bookmarked on my library wishlist. I haven't been pre-reading the essays for the most part. We read them and annotate them at the same time and then talk about them...if something turns out not to be a great essay, it didn't take very long anyway 🙂 ETA: I aim to read/discuss one essay a week, read and discuss a chunk of whatever longer book we're reading, do some AP classroom stuff, and have him write and go over one essay from past exam questions (the format hasn't changed much recently, so there are TONS to pick from)

I won't be much help, because we're doing it now, so I don't know yet how the exam will go (but I think fine, based on exam prep he's done so far). But we're using it as a year of reading/discussing non-fiction rather than following the sample syllabus very closely. First semester we did a "writers on writing" theme and read George Saunders A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, Maureen Corrigan's So We Read On, and Daniel Mendehlson's An Odyssey plus a bunch of essays. This semester we have a travel writing theme, which has turned out to have a travel writing about the South/race specifically theme, and we're reading Confederates in the Attic, How the Word is Passed, and...not sure what else yet. Plus more essays. Writing is mostly short essays using previous exam questions, but he'll also do a research project/paper this semester (visiting a historic site and writing about how the history is presented). And then we do test prep from ap classroom.

This. And/or talk to homeschoolers in your area who have been through the college admissions process already. I don't know anything about Texas specifically, but it's very rare for colleges to require an accredited transcript of homeschoolers. My kids have a combined 20+ college applications under their belts, and we've never encountered that.

What schools are saying she needs a GED or accredited transcript?

nope--he was sick Tuesday, stayed home from classes he had that day, and then woke up feeling mostly fine Wednesday. I'm not sure we would have tested him even if we hadn't been SO SURE he'd just had covid because it really just seemed like a mild cold. We only tested last night because my husband wanted to; I was, again, so sure we'd just caught a cold from my 10 year old that I wasn't worried about it. We'd stayed home from stuff this week because we were feeling bad, but DS17 likely would have gone to classes and rehearsal Monday--a day too early by CDC guidelines--if he hadn't tested. They did piano lessons virtually this past week, and I'm so relieved we didn't have to send a "sorry; we exposed you to covid" text to the piano teacher for the second time in a month!

I THOUGHT this was a cold on top of covid, and that was annoying…but finding out that it’s actually covid on top of more covid with that 3 week gap is bewildering. 10 year old tested positive this morning (he felt sick Tuesday and was pretty much better Wednesday), so I guess the most likely explanation is that he didnt have covid 3 weeks ago after all, and it was a weird coincidence that he was sick right before my husband had it. So we all managed to avoid catching it from DH only to get it somewhere else a few weeks later!

It's me again--last seen in the "when it rains it pours" post. Now, 3 weeks after DH, I and my 17 year old have covid. I'm totally mystified: 3 weeks ago the 10 year old had a day long illness and then a few days later my husband popped up with covid with the same symptoms (10 year old tested negative, but we assumed it had to have been a false negative). 17 year old and I didn't get it (I tested several times). Then earlier this week the 10 year old had a day long "cold" and a few days later my 17 year old and then I got sick with the same symptoms. We were sure we just had his cold since we assumed he'd just had covid a few weeks ago. We tested as a precaution before going out around other people and bam! super positive for both of us immediately. I just can't piece together how it happened. Did 10 year old not have covid last time and it's just a crazy coincidence that he had a very similar illness 3 days before my husband got covid? Did he get it twice in a month?! We'll test him tomorrow, but I'm flummoxed. Anyway, that's all of us now! (assuming at least one of the times my 10 year old had it). So far (48 hours in) I've just got mild cold symptoms. DS17 was a little worse off, with a bad sore throat and headache, but he seems to be on the mend now (knock wood).

I know no one can complain about 98 incredibly productive years, but I'm kind of bummed. It had started to seem like maybe he was just going to live forever.

congrats to him! No personal experience, but from reading the college confidential boards, it seems that some kids do indeed find the overall experience too campy for their tastes. Like the actual music is strong, but the cabins in the woods and swimming in the lake and uniforms and all that bother some kids. It gets compared to Tanglewood a lot, which I gather is more of a college campus atmosphere.

I agree with not putting it on the transcript, but if you're doing course descriptions for college applications, I'd probably fold the reading list in with the description of the other lit class--like write a course description that encompasses the outside class and the reading at home.

Some Hawthorne (Minister's Black Veil and some other short stories). Faulkner's A Rose For Emily. The Mrs. Havisham stuff in Great Expectations is super creepy, but I guess not the whole book. Bartleby the Scrivener has a creepy vibe to me.

My son did Spanish 3 with WTM Academy and had a good experience and has been well prepared for DE Spanish this year.

I haven't read the responses yet. But I went through something similar when I weaned my last kid, right around when I turned 40. I call it debilitating nostalgia now. I was extremely weepy and sad and felt like I had done everything wrong for years and now there was so little time left and my kids were growing up and I couldn't fix anything. Like I would sit around and cry because I hadn't taken my kids to enough movies. Movies are great! Why didn't we go to more of them?! Now it's too late; their childhoods are ruined! Sometimes it was less trivial, but it was a lot of stuff along those lines. I can say that for me I think it was definitely hormonal, and it passed on its own in a few months. Eventually I realized that I couldn't even access those kinds of hopeless feelings anymore; they no longer made sense to me even though I very clearly remembered having them. I'm about to turn 48 now, just missed a period for the first time in my non-pregnant adult life, and am suddenly having a ton of anxiety that hit me out of nowhere...so I'm wondering if this is round two and will pass eventually or if I need more assistance this time. Hormones are a mess. The feelings are both real and not real, you know? I hate it.

Definitely not light. All of my older kids have gone through Jacobs and gone on to do very well with higher levels of math. Varying degrees of mathiness: my oldest is about to graduate with a math major and was very well prepared both for AP calc and DE math and for college classes and is tentatively planning to go into a math phD program after a year off from school. The next two are not nearly so mathy, but have done well post-Jacobs, too. We've yet to find a pre-algebra we like, so I think all three of them ended up starting Jacobs pretty early on but taking two years to go through it, for a very thorough grounding in algebra. After that they did Jacobs geometry and then Foerster algebra 2. My husband is a math teacher, so he's used whatever his favorite pre-calc book is for them all, and so far the first two have successfully gone on to AP calc from there (one BC, AB for the non-STEM bound kid) (next one will do AB next year).

One option is doing AB Calc junior year and BC senior year. That would be the way to do calculus but start it at a slower pace. BC or Calc 1 and 2 at a college are going to cover basically the same material in a year/two semesters. AB essentially covers the equivalent of calc 1 but spreads it out over a year. Some schools offer AB and then BC as a two year sequence and some route students into either AB or BC after pre-calc. My husband who teaches calc thinks most high school students would do better with the BC material spread over 2 years.

He's 10, and he wears the powecom kid-sized kn95s from bonafide. But he's also just not in high risk settings very often, relatively speaking. The homeschool co-op requires high quality masks and vaccines for everyone, and he's only in 2 classes right now, with a total of maybe 6 other kids. Then he has piano lessons with just his piano teacher, and he wears a mask. Then a Spanish class with 3 other kids, which is outside when it's warm enough, and he wears a mask when they're inside. Park days outside. We have done very occasional inside restaurants, but none in the window when he could have been exposed. I mean, it's not unbelievable that he got it or anything...it just seems like anything he did in the right window is stuff where he wouldn't have gotten it in earlier waves. We're definitely not the most cautious people in the world, but we're fairly cautious, and he's the most cautious of us. The stuff that worked for 3 years didn't work this time...which could be luck running out or could be something about current variants. Anyway--I always assumed it would catch up with us sooner or later (and that later (and less frequently) is better than sooner). Thankful that it seems to be have been pretty mild (and that luck is holding out for 2 of us anyway. for now. knock wood and all that).

I agree, but I'm still surprised that in this case we really couldn't trace it to any particular lapses in caution--if the original case had been anyone else in the family it would have made more sense, but my youngest is really just unfailingly careful. I feel like it must be that the current strains are, indeed, more transmissible. I mean, that's what I've read to be true as well. But then that doesn't mesh with how half of the people in our household didn't get it. So...covid is weird, I guess, is what it comes back to.

When it rains it pours. DH had covid two weeks ago for the first time, despite teaching in person throughout the pandemic. We're nearly certain he caught it from my 10 year old, even though the 10 year old never tested positive. Very similar symptoms a few days apart. 10 year old was sick for a day with a sore throat and (mostly) very tired. Low fever. DH had the same fatigue, fever right at 100, sore throat, but his lasted around 3 days with some lingering fatigue after. It's weird because 1. 10 year old has less exposure than anyone in the family (tied with me, I guess). He does a couple small classes at the masks required homeschool co-op....a couple of other small group inside things always masked, and that's it. He's our most cautious family member--we went to Nashville a few days before he got sick, but didn't even eat inside anywhere because he insisted we huddle outside in the cold instead. So no idea how he picked it up. and 2. 17 year old DS and I didn't get it, even though DH initially tested negative and we all spent the first day and a half that he was symptomatic hanging out with him, including DS spending a couple of hours in the car with him. So DS17 and I are now the last ones standing in the family, as DS19 just sent me a picture of HIS positive test. He's in college in another state, so not our fault! This is his second semester of college, and he's a clarinet performance major (i.e. lots of stuff he can't do masked), so it's sort of amazing he made it this far. So far just a sore throat for him. Timing seems a little weird for people to be getting it for the first time so close together but not from each other...but I did read a few weeks ago that THIS is the wave that's going to get most people who've made it this far.

I just finished and enjoyed Pachinko a few days ago. I know I'm a few years behind, but that means I already have the tv show waiting for me. Just started Klara and the Sun and the audiobook of Less Is Lost...because those are the things that popped up on my library holds list.

right?! I do find myself wondering, reading some of these responses, what an appropriate minimum amount of social time is, if hanging out weekly with close friends and doing group activities several other times is not it.

Yeah, they're cute and all, but the actual library (or a thrift store or whatever) works a whole lot better for finding books I want to read.

Mine have all been like that--one or two close friends they see regularly and otherwise they do fine and enjoy group activities but don't seek a lot of contact with people outside of the actual activity time. Two of them have now gone off to college out of state and have done just fine socially. My oldest and most introverted had a rough first semester but then settled in fine, has close friends at school and made good friends that he's still in touch with during his semester abroad and his summer research job as well. The next kid is in his first year and seems very happy with tons of friends. I was pretty much the same way, FWIW--I had a small circle of friends in high school and one best friend I spent most of my time with. College I had a bigger group of friends, because that's easy to do in college. These days I have a couple of close friends I get together with and talk to regularly but otherwise am happy with seeing friends/acquaintances during planned activity type things or wherever I run into them and spending a lot of time at home with family.

huh! And he even teaches in Fulton! disregard then--that's why I added the disclaimer; he doesn't always follow such things super closely until they tell him what he's teaching the next year 😉

He says, "no! actually I don't!" So there you go. I will update if I find out more.

I'm not sure how reliable/complete his information is, but my husband (who teaches high school math) says it's his understanding that Georgia has decided at the state level not to offer AP precalc. So test availability might be even more of an issue than usual for homeschoolers, if a lot of areas are making the same decision.