Amscope is a quality and budget conscious option for both dissecting and compound microscopes. You can find decent models in the $200-$300 range. I'm a botanist and use Amscope's at home now that I no longer have easy access to the lab scopes, and I've been very impressed with them. For the compound microscope (the one you use with slides), make sure it has 4x,10x, and 25x power in the objectives and 10x in the eyepiece. Many also have a 100x "oil immersion" objective, but this is rarely needed at a middle or even high school level. I opted for the Amscope trinocular head, in part because I could peak in when DS was using it to make sure it was on what I wanted him to see, and also so I could hook it up to a computer camera (was included with the scope). Also, always get one with it's own light source. There is no good reason to use cheap and old fashioned varieties that depend on a mirror to reflect a light source. Dissecting microscopes don't need slides. You can stick nearly anything small beneath them to view easily. I personally use them for dissecting flowers and plants for identification, but they also work great for petri dishes (ex. bacteria growth projects) or insects. If you go this route, choose a microscope with both a back light and an above light, as some things are better viewed when lit from underneath while others can be seen better when lit from above. A 2x-4x objective range combined with a 10x eyepiece should be plenty. Amscope has some dual powered models that can run off electricity or a battery, which is neat if you want to take a scope into the field or on a camping trip, but it isn't a required feature.

He does! It's so cool to watch, this last year he added two tails to his kite and they swirl every which way as he does loops and swoops. He currently has a two-string delta, but we are giving him a 4 string reflex kite for Christmas (shh 🙂)! Those ones are completely controllable but very challenging to learn, you can make them stop in mid mid-swoop or even walk on the ground. We even go to the international kite festival in Long Beach, WA every year. I never knew there were so many neat kites until the kid got into the hobby. He's a bit bummed because rain season is here which means not a lot of kiting until spring is back.

Thank you for all of these wonderful ideas, there were quite a few that we didn't brainstorm! I'm sure at least one of them will be fruitful! Yeah, a lot of activities are still online only, which I 100% understand but it is frustrating. We're hoping that as the 5-12s get vaccinated, more opens up. He's working through driver's ed right now, but there's no way he'll be going too far out for activities as he's just not a confident driver yet and we are a one car family. We are also the biggest city unless he crosses over into Canada, which isn't a current option but could be in the future. We're kind of locked between mountains and sea, so there's just a ribbon of cities and towns up the coast along the highway, and traffic isn't friendly to new drivers. This did give me an idea though! He's huge into sport kiting and I found a kite group that meets 1 hour away on one of the islands. They meet monthly in winter, then host kiting meetups in spring and summer. Worth checking out and I'm willing to do the drive with him once a month until he is confident enough to take over on his own.

I frequented these boards many moons ago when my kids were grammar stage. Unfortunately, I can't remember my old username for the life of me and I no longer have access to the old email address I used, so I signed back up. The eldest DS21 is about to graduate college and embark on his post-bacc (he's aiming to be a Montessori or Emilio-reggio teacher), and DS16 is working through the rhetoric years. We live in the PNW in a small coastal city now, which is a bit of a change from the larger PNW city we lived in before. They say every kid is different, and boy are they right! DS21 flew through the high school years. He decided to stop homeschooling at 16 and use our state's Running Start Program to earn his associate's degree by age 18. He moved out on his own at that time and is wrapping up at the state college of his choice (full ride scholarships -- woo). He's also been working as a preschool teacher at his university for 2.5 years, which is what helped him find his calling. DS16 is having a bit of a bumpier ride, but we're working through it. A big move and current events have been a bit rough, so I decided it was time to return to the supportive community where our homeschooling journey first began so many years ago!

We moved across the state 2 years ago right before the pandemic, so we never had a chance to settle into and meet people in our new community. DS(16) is shy and introverted by nature, but he always had a couple of friends and participated in several activities. Now that things are starting up again, we've been looking for social outlets because DS is getting very lonely. It seems in our small city that most activities aimed at high school kids are only provided by the public schools. The few homeschool groups we have are for younger kids or are church based, which doesn't work for us. To make it worse, neither of us feel ready to try and start anything on our own (both shy introverts). He's into computers, environmentalism, and sci-fi (but not boardgames/cards/tabletop RPGS). Most groups/clubs/classes outside of the high schools we've found are 18 and over or the all ages groups only have retirees -- not a bad thing but he wants to be around some peers. It's frustrating because my older son thrived in high school without any help from me, but he's an extrovert and he also had the benefit of a few childhood friends that gave him access to larger friends groups as they grew older and some entered public and private schools. I'm open to any ideas, I'm starting to worry about him as he's quite upset over this.