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SkateLeft

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Everything posted by SkateLeft

  1. Trello! I've always used OneNote, but I added Trello this year and it's FANTASTIC! It's free, and works beautifully across all our tablets, phones and computers. I have a board set up for planning, and separate boards for each kid. I've tried most of the electronic planners out there, including Homeschool Tracker and Homeschool Planet, and didn't care for any of them. Trello is perfect for us.
  2. My youngest son has a variety of issues, including severe OCD. He also has some medical issues, and could have qualified for a service dog through a local organization, but we felt that what he really needed was an ESA. We opted to adopt a puppy and train it to be a certified therapy dog and registered ESA. We have a wonderful trainer who works with my son and our dog. While Marley listens to me, she is totally bonded to my son and is his constant shadow. It's been a lot of work, and continues to require work, but I'm very glad that we did it this way.
  3. Prior to high school, my oldest daughter had taken a considerable number of high school classes through a college talent search program in CA. Then she did full-time college dual enrollment in 11th and 12th grade, and I graduated her at 16 with 60 semester units of college classes. Originally, I had those high school courses taken prior to high school on her transcript, but ended up dropping them off. She didn't need them, and I felt that putting them on there would look like I was padding her transcript. If a student is taking Algebra 2 in 9th grade, colleges will assume that they took Algebra 1. I would not have included those courses in her high school GPA, even if I'd kept them on there. For a student with a lot of units, I personally don't think it's necessary to include courses taken prior to high school. I would just keep the documentation, and make a decision when it comes time to graduate your student.
  4. My oldest used the Houghton Mifflin Math Steps workbooks. I'm not sure if they're still available, but I really liked them.
  5. Personally, we don't do graduation announcements. People where we live now in the upper Midwest usually do them, but they aren't done where we're from, so our friends and family there would think it was tacky. I made a short video yearbook of each of my girls' K-12 homeschool careers, uploaded it to Youtube and posted it on Facebook for our extended family to see. That was sufficient for us. I suspect this just depends on where you live. If your extended family would send you graduation announcements, then I'd think you could go ahead and send yours!
  6. I went through those same feelings with my younger daughter! I even went through periodic freak outs where I'd ordered a box curriculum (like OM and Calvert) just so I could be sure she was working at grade level. In the end though, she was fine. I was more relaxed, she moved at more of a measured pace, but she still got to the same place in the end. I'm graduating her on May 13th. I still deal with those worries. Last week, I pulled out my older kids' 4th grade portfolios to compare and realized that my youngest isn't doing anywhere near the same level of work. He's the baby, so I think I let him off too easy sometimes. And nope. My 5th grader isn't in the logic stage yet. It's just a developmental stage. Some kids will get there sooner and some will get there later. That's okay. :D
  7. I've been trying to find stuff myself. I really want to learn to draw as part of this mid-life "all my kids are getting older and I need a hobby" thing. I have a child that's an art major. She's amazing. I homeschooled her all the way through, but I have no idea how she learned to draw. All I remember is that it involved buying many boxes of paper at Costco. Right now, I'm mainly doing the thing where I buy a bunch of books and supplies, and do lots of research, but don't actually try to do anything yet. I recently signed up to do the trial of Great Courses Plus, and their "How to Draw" course is on there. I added it to my watchlist. Our local art center has an adult beginner drawing class that I'm thinking about signing up for this summer, but my worry is that I'll go in there and everyone else will already be decent at drawing, while I can make stick figures and that's about it. I'll have to check out some of the resources that other folks have listed!
  8. You're not overreacting. My son (Life Scout, Order of the Arrow) is in a moderate size troop that is boy led, but has an excellent team of adult leaders who are great at facilitating without hand holding. Our SMs tend to be with the troop for years, and we've got one senior adult leader that recently received his 70th year in Scouting award. I think long term, stable leadership is a really good sign. My son says that kind of behavior during a guest speaker would be a huge red flag to him, and that organizing patrols by grade level is a horrible idea. His troop is careful to mix the younger kids (first two years in the troop) into patrols with older scouts, so they learn how to do things properly.
  9. I'm not sure which UCs your son is considering. I did my undergrad at UCSB and my husband did both undergrad and grad school in CS at UCD. I know that at Davis, the L&S CS major (at the time at least) was more conducive to double majoring than the College of Engineering major, but L&S had a unit cap that was problematic for some people. My husband had originally started as a musical theater major in a BFA program. When he switched to CS, he had so many units from the conservatory program that his only option at UCD was the college of engineering, because of that unit cap.
  10. My daughter is double majoring in two very different fields, but things are significantly easier for her because she entered with 60 transferable units from dual enrollment. All of her general education requirements were already completed. At her university, students need to be admitted to a major by completing all lower division prerequisites. Computer science and engineering classes tend to be offered on a very set schedule. For example, a class she needs might only be offered in the fall every other year. Art department scheduling tends to be more flexible but there's still some of that also. As a result, her schedule is usually pretty evenly split between CS classes and art classes. This semester was a bit more art than CS, but her fall semester was more CS than art. She has advisors in both departments who work with her to ensure that she's on track. On the other hand, she's not in any hurry to finish. I graduated her at 16, so she started quite young. She has a good scholarship, a solid amount of college savings and she's been fortunate enough to work as a software engineering intern during the summer, so the expense of taking her time is pretty minimal. If she had to be concerned about graduating quickly, she probably would have just picked up a minor in art, rather than a double major.
  11. My oldest is a computer science and studio art double major, and one of her paintings recently received a scholarship award at the juried art show at her university. I have no artistic ability at all. Personally, I don't think expensive art classes are a necessity. My dd never took a lot of art classes outside the home when she was younger, mainly because I just didn't have the time to make the long drive those classes would entail. She took a few classes, but mainly I just let her explore. The best class she took was actually an adult continuing ed class offered by the extension office of the local college of art and design. The teen classes were a waste of time and money for the most part. She was constantly drawing, and still always has a sketchbook with her. She went through reams of paper, along with stacks and stacks of sketch books. (Those are really fun to look through now!) One year, we bought her a drawing tablet and she spent long hours doing digital painting. Now her primary interest is in visualization engineering, which is sort of a marriage of art and computer science. I think working through an at-home art program is just fine. Provide supplies and resources, and let her develop her skills at her own pace. If DE is an option in high school, that might be a good way to get more formal instruction.
  12. My 19yo is wrapping up her third year away from home. She picked up a double major in art, which she's talked about doing for a long time. I graduated her at 16, so she's young and has time to explore her interests. One of her pieces received an award in the juried student art show this year, so that was pretty cool. She worked full-time last summer as a software engineering intern for a company here in the metro, and they asked her to come back this summer, so once finals are over she'll start there again. She was always a very intense, academically focused, introverted kid. She has a small group of friends that she hangs out with, does her art things and her computer things and she's happy. It's all good. :D
  13. I use K12 Science with my kids in elementary. It's secular and covers evolution. It's my favorite elementary level science program. If you're looking specifically for a study on evolution, Build Your Library has an evolution unit study.
  14. I bought a used copy of the high school US history course on VHS years ago. We watched one episode and donated the whole course to Goodwill. We felt it was boring and insulted the intelligence of high school students, with the stupid costumes and fake accents. After a minute, all his accents end up sounding like a muddled horrible fake British accents. I was actually embarrassed for the man. We've loved many of the Great Courses. I have a pretty extensive library of them on DVD and on Audible, but those high school history courses are so cringe-worthy.
  15. Ugh. I feel for you. I absolutely hate cooperative learning, especially when the instructor insists on the same grade for all participants. As the diligent student, I never, ever had a good experience on a college group project, and it never mirrored real world collaboration in anything except maybe my computer science classes. I hope things work out in your daughter's favor. She must be very angry and frustrated. :(
  16. You could try calling ACT and see if they can send a score report to another school code also. We always used the talent search codes, so we were sent copies from the talent searches.
  17. My 14 year old son is using it this year as part of a co-op biology class. My older girls used Miller-Levine, so that's my comparison. They did biology completely at home though, while my son is partially doing biology at co-op, so I'm not as familiar with his text and I am with M-L. I asked him about looking things up, and he says he doesn't really have any issues with that. His instructor has the chapters linked in the syllabus, so he can go directly to a chapter and finding what he needs is fairly quick. He also doesn't have any problem with reading from the computer, though I know that would probably have bothered my oldest, who prefers hardcopy texts. A lot of college classes now use online texts, and it drives her nuts sometimes. My son tends to take a lot of notes as a result of having the textbook on the computer, which was a nice side benefit. He was never really a note taker before. I think it just depends on the kid. We've been happy with CK-12. Each week, his instructor assigns work from the text. They do some labs in class, and are required to complete some labs at home. I supplement with labs outside of class. The text seems pretty thorough though, and covers the same content that my girls covered using M-L. As far as what colleges will think, I don't think that will be an issue at all. We used a variety of stuff for my girls, and none of the engineering schools they applied to seemed to care what texts they used as long as the course content was comparable to what they would expect. Besides, plenty of traditional high schools use CK-12 texts. Here's a sample from my son's class syllabus. His teacher has a master syllabus on her website: Due February 12 – Readings: Cell Membranes Phospholipid Bilayers – read, watch video, and do PLIX including the “Challenge Me†Membrane Proteins Plasma Membrane Fluid Mosaic Model Passive Transport Diffusion – do PLIX Osmosis – do PLIX Facilitated Diffusion – watch the videos Active Transport – read and watch video Electrochemical Gradient
  18. Right now, the Hamilton soundtrack seems like it's on a continuous loop with my boys. My oldest turned them on to it when she was home for a couple of days last month, and they've been listening to it almost non-stop. Otherwise, they listen to a lot of Phish, and a pretty eclectic mix of old (Gene Autry, Skeeter Davis, Louis Jordan, the Ink Spots) and newer stuff. My youngest tends to listen to the same things his siblings listen to, since he emulates them a lot.
  19. The thing to keep in mind with these stats is that often the hospitals with the higher c-section rates are hospitals that take high risk patients and have the NICUs to support them. I've had four c-sections due to complications from a car accident when I was younger. I was a high risk patient and had my children at a hospital with a higher than average c-section rate, but that was because it was where the high risk clinic was located. The other area hospital, where I took my prenatal classes, loved to tout its super low c-section rate, but wouldn't allow me to deliver there. In fact, when I had complications with my third pregnancy, an ambulance took me to the low c-section rate hospital, and the nurses actually said, "Why did you bring her here? We don't have the facilities for this!" They had me ambulance transferred.
  20. Both of my girls did full-time DE in 11th and 12th grade, and neither of them had any issues with universities being concerned about the number of units. Some colleges put limits on the number of units they would accept for transfer, but it didn't affect their status as freshman applicants. Some colleges would not accept any college transfer units that had been used to meet high school requirements. My oldest encountered this with Rensselaer, if I recall. I forget the others. There are some other things to consider though. If a student takes any college classes after high school graduation, but before matriculating at their university, they may be find their status changed to transfer student. That means no CC classes the summer after high school graduation, before going off to college. The other thing is that both of my girls avoided pursuing associate's degrees, because some colleges would have considered them transfer students, regardless of the fact that all the coursework had been done via dual enrollment in high school. As others have said, it's really just best to check with the colleges that your child is considering.
  21. Nope. Doesn't bother me at all. I didn't send my girls off to college with the idea that they were going to meet their future husbands. Gender disparities aren't a factor in our application decisions at all.
  22. My youngest son has motor delays. His OT says to have him do 10 minutes of writing a day. Right now, we're up to 3 short copywork sentences. His OT also has us doing some other things to build his writing stamina. Each day, I schedule an activity that he doesn't see as related to writing, but that will help build those muscles and control, like using Perler beads, Qixels, building with Straws and Connectors, knitting with a hand loom, etc. Even playing board games with small pieces, like Settlers of Catan and Blokus, can help build control. I also have him do a lot of art projects, like drawing, painting and coloring. With all that said, my oldest daughter (a third year college student now) was an advanced reader, and she refused to write for a long time. Part of it was because she could tell when she wasn't doing it correctly, so there was a perfectionist element, and part of it was because it was a challenge, while everything else came easy. Writing isn't a natural act. It's not something that we naturally learn how to do. It takes work, and when a kid is used to picking things up quickly, having the perseverance to push through can be hard. We laugh about it now, but when she was younger, there was a lot of "I'm TIRED!!!" and flailing around in her chair whenever I asked her to write. Once, I even threatened to duct tape her pencil to her hand, because she constantly dropped it on the floor. ;) I knew it wasn't a motor issue for her, and eventually things got better, but it was rough going there for a while. It's great to separate out composition skills from the physical act of handwriting early on, so that kids can build their composition skills without being limited by how well they can form letters. You're doing that already, which is awesome. I kind of messed up with my younger daughter though. She always preferred to play rather than do school, and she complained a lot about writing. I was convinced she had fine motor issues and let her do a lot of things orally because it was easier than fighting with her when I was trying to deal with the other kids too. When she was 12, I took her for an OT evaluation, and the OT told me that her motor skills were just fine. They taught her cursive in 6 weeks. Oops. It really sounds to me like you're doing all the right things!
  23. My oldest daughter, who was always homeschooled, had no issues with transitioning to college life. In fact, she noticed that many of the kids who came from traditional schools really struggled with functioning outside of the controlled environments to which they'd been accustomed. She felt that they were so used to having their time and education micromanaged by others that adjusting to the freedom of college life was much harder for them. In contrast, she'd been managing her own time and education through high school, especially since she was dual enrolled at the community college full-time in 11th and 12th, so going off to university just felt like an extension of what she'd been doing at home. She did have to navigate some roommate issues that would have been challenging to anyone, regardless of how they were schooled. Her freshman year roommate made lots of poor choices and tried to overdose on sleeping pills. Since then, she's insisted on being in apartments where she has her own room.
  24. My youngest son and I start our school day with board games each morning. Sometimes one or both of the older kids will join us if they have the time. Then we usually do some arts and crafts stuff. My son also really likes Tinkercrate.
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