My oldest is going on his first campus visit soon. He'll meet with an admissions person that will go over costs and financial/merit aid opportunities, then he'll get a campus tour. Due to time restraints, and the fact that he's not sure about a major yet, we opted not to meet with any faculty. What kind of questions do you ask on a campus visit? Is it okay to ask questions like, "Do you have a breakdown of graduation rates by major?" or "How much classroom time do first-year students get with full time, non-adjunct faculty?" Are parents just supposed to be quiet and let the student do all the talking? What are some of the helpful things you've learned on tours? What things have been warning signs of possible issues?

I tried this exact prompt in Google Bard and got a much less flowery description than ChatGPT gave you. And it ignored the request for a one paragraph description and instead gave more of a course syllabus.

Out of curiosity I had Google's AI (bard) do a course description for one of our elective courses that we're doing for this coming school year. What it gave me looks a lot like a course syllabus, with a short description, objectives, requirements, textbooks, resources, grading breakout, and unit names. However, the textbook and resources that it included are completely made up. And the description is so short compared to what I see online homeschool course providers give--it's really more like a college course catalog where they're limited to two sentences or so.

If your friend is okay with christian content/viewpoint, Windows to the World could work. It covers all of that using short stories, which are all included in the student book. It's more of a semester course, but there is a syllabus that adds a few novels to stretch it to a year. As of a few years ago, the year long syllabus was included as a free download after purchase.

My STEM focused oldest is a rising Junior. He'll take two math, one science, and one foreign language via DE this next school year. These will be his first outsourced, non-online courses. I figure that it will be good for him to make sure he has a relationship with the math professors so that he has someone to ask for recommendation letters. The classes will be small (certainly under 25 students, maybe even under 15). Other than using office hours, what are good strategies for him? If the math courses wind up being straight forward for him (math is his strong point), how would he best use office hours? I don't want him to come across as brown-nosing. But I want to make sure that when he asks for a letter, the professor doesn't ask himself, "Who is this?"

You could combine youtube videos on technique (ex: here's a knife skills playlist) with a cookbook that has recipes you will eat. You wouldn't need her to make every recipe from the cookbook. I've not looked at it, but the creator of ELTL has a paleo nutrition book for teens: http://barefootmeandering.com/site/primal-nutrition/ https://www.lulu.com/shop/kathy-jo-devore/primal-teens/ebook/product-19z8rmke.html

I'm curious as to why you think design interested kids should have it. One of my kids might be interested in graphic design, and I'm wondering what the applications are?

I've not looked into which videos they have, but if you have Amazon Prime, you can add on "Great Courses Signature Collection" for $8 a month. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/storefront/?ie=UTF8&benefitId=thegreatcourses

We had those same issues with alcohol burners in a previous course. I know it's less "official science", but I have been glad that our current kit uses a microwave to heat water instead!

He wants to go into STEM. He's leaning CS right now, but is still thinking maybe some type of engineering. Given the competitiveness of these programs, he probably does need a robust science credit. I might need to look into video labs.

Out of 31 one labs, he's now done 11. They have an honors kit with 39 labs, and he's using an honors level textbook, but we decided the non-honors kit was fine. The dumb mistakes are often from trying to speed through to get the lab done. Which is weird, because he also manages to make the labs take forever. For example, I'm guessing it's not supposed to take 30 minutes to dissolve 5g of sodium carbonate into 200mL of water.

We have this kit: https://www.thehomescientist.com/ck01b-main.php Due to my kid being slow while doing labs, they take forever to get done. We're talking needing to set aside 4+ hours slow. So maybe halfway through the year, with only 1/4 of the labs done, I declared labs to be a summer project. Well, it's summer now. And I'm going crazy having to supervise labs. So many labs. Which he keeps making dumb mistakes on and messing up. So, how do I salvage this? How do we get Chem labs done without breaking the bank and without making me want to jump out a window? This last year of high school was a mess. I regret not sending him to public school, and our relationship is too strained now from school to make frustrating labs be a part of it.

I love everything about this photo.

He did a paper PSAT 8/9 in 8th grade. His 8th grade percentile and the practice digital SAT percentile (assuming scores-to-percentiles stay the same) are only off by 1 point. He preferred the shorter overall time on the test. He also liked how the digital platform makes it easy to mark and go back to problems. He was pleased enough with his experience that he didn't even want to try a practice ACT, and our plan is to have him do the digital SAT spring of junior year (rather than the paper one fall of Junior year or the ACT in the spring).

My son has done a practice digital test. On the results page, there is a link to "review test" that shows the question number with the section, the correct answer, your answer, and a link to review. The review gives the question, the choices for the response, and a detailed explanation for why the correct answer is correct. In the reading and writing section, the detailed explanation also lists out why the wrong answers are wrong. Back on the main results page, there is also a link to "explore every question on Khan Academy." As near as I can tell, that option gets you to a second chance to do every problem, along with explanations and tips for each problem.

One of my kids did Jacob's Geometry 3rd edition and it's not nearly that many proofs. I'm pretty sure the reduction in proofs is part of why many here recommend the 2nd edition instead of the 3rd. The 3rd edition is currently published by Master Books; I'm not sure if there are any classes that use this edition, but they do sell a DVD for it.

If there are, I don't personally know of any of them!

Does anyone know what brick & mortar stores sell non-athletic leggings in adult/teen sizes with fun prints? My daughter needs to be able to try clothes on, so she can't get clothes online. She wants leggings with fun prints (or solid colors other than gray/black). We've tried Old Navy (only athletic), Gap (only gray/black in non-athletic styles), and American Eagle (only black).

My daughter has tried three lessons of the Ulat. She's complaining that it's slow. She understands that she'll have to "start at the beginning" of anything we choose, but is annoyed that he spent 30 minutes explaining conjugations. Does the Ulat pick up the pace, or does it stay slower like that?

The normal clinic mammogram room I've gone to has two connected rooms. The first one has a curtained area to change and then you go right to the mammogram room. The cancer clinic I've been to for callbacks has a main waiting room. Then you get called back, change to a robe on top (it's not really a hospital gown, and doesn't gap the way those can) and leave your pants on, and sit in a secondary waiting room before getting the mammogram/ultrasound/whatever. I'm guessing she was at one of those types of clinics.

This sounds like he won't need to have his AP student ID memorized, either?