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Momling

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Everything posted by Momling

  1. Thanks, the niche.com one might be legitimate, but so many of the "best online high schools" lists out there strike me as paid advertisements by the schools. The reviews and some of the schools websites sometimes seem so sketchy... all the marketing stuff really turns me off.
  2. We're trying to decide what to do with our daughter for high school next year. I'm homeschooling her this year and it's working really well, but my family feels strongly for the need of a high school diploma and some amount of experiences in high school. I spoke with the local high school counselor and they're willing to let her take classes part time, but will not give credit for anything she does that's not through them or an accredited school. So I think we'll end up in some mixture of part online and part local public high school. I want to leave as many options open, but we need some flexibility because my daughter travels for tennis tournaments and likes to do some training in the morning and plans on a D1 college... so whatever we do probably should be NCAA approved too. I've looked at private online programs like Laurel Springs, but it's too expensive, so I'm leaning towards one of the university affiliated programs that seem to run around 200-250 per class. I'm thinking she might try three classes at the public school and maybe two online (perhaps one over the summer too?) and see what she thinks... We'd like the online classes to be self-paced and flexible on timing - so not requiring logging in at certain times. Anyway... just from poking around on the web, the online high school programs that fit our requirements seem to be: Univ of Nebraska, Indiana University, Univ of Texas, and Univ of Mississippi. (TTUISD and BYU aren't NCAA approved and U of Missouri is twice the price, and Stanford is insanely expensive.) Does anyone have a recommendation for (or against) any of these programs? Other thoughts? Thanks!
  3. I've absolutely had foster kids who've behaved like this and I know how infuriating it can be. One of my favorite approaches is making clear what the expectation is and then not engaging in a power struggle by walking away. So...something like this: "I really want to be able to trust you to be safe and be able to follow directions. But when I call you in and you refuse to come, it makes me think you aren't ready for the responsibility of riding by yourself out here. I'm going to go inside now. If you want to ride your bike again, you'll want to choose to come in now. If you choose not to come in now, I'll assume you aren't ready for this kind of responsibility and are choosing to not ride your bike for a while. I trust you to make the right choice for you." And then (and this is the hard part)... turn around and walk away. She knows what to do and the ball's in her court. If she doesn't come in, just keep an eye on her secretly and when the bike and her eventually arrive, put on your neutral face and say nothing unusual. Later that evening when she's not around, make sure the bike is no longer an option by putting it where she can not find it, locking it if needed. When she gets angry about the bike the next day, just remind her that she chose not to have the bike. And you respect that choice. And you agree that she's not ready. And her safety is so important to you. And maybe tomorrow or next week or next month when she's ready to ride the bike and follow the rules, you'll be happy to get it back to her. And then walk away. When the bike does come back to her, before she rides it, you have to establish in advance what it's going to look like. "I can only let you ride this bike if I can trust you to come right away when I call you. If not, I'll assume you're not ready and I'll put this bike away until you're ready." I'm not a fan of grounding or loss of privileges or time out... it's just that if the you can't trust her with the bike, she shouldn't have it.
  4. When we drove across country from CA to CT, we took a southern route, going through Las Vegas, Moab, and camping in the Rockies... If you have time, you could go to the Grand Canyon or Bryce or Canyonlands.
  5. We love our inflatable kayaks and have had them about 8 years. They're not the cheapies that you buy at k-mart, but are the thick pvc types rafting companies use (duckies). https://paddling.com/reviews/product/tributary-tomcat-solo-kayak/ We've been down class iii and iv rivers in them, but usually just paddle around lakes in the summer. They're easy to transport and fun for the kids. Our family had fiberglass sea kayaks growing up and those were great too but we had a beach and never needed to transport those. In whitewater kayaking clinics, I've also enjoyed the zippy little whitewater kayaks. Super fun to zoom around and easy to transport. Easy to tip, but easy to roll back too...
  6. My daughter started public high school last fall. The school absolutely didn't care at all what (if anything) she had done in 8th grade or earlier. You should obviously not expect any credits to be given. They did give her (and other 9th graders who had come from out of district) a math placement test to decide if they should go into remedial algebra, regular algebra 1 or honors geometry. My daughter placed in Algebra 2 honors. Here's my suggestion: - Find out what book they use for geometry and use it. - Review algebra throughout the year and summer so that your child doesn't forget it and do poorly on the placement test and end up accidentally placed back in algebra 1. - Make sure that the algebra texts you use are aligned with the common core standards. There were a few topics (sequences, function transformations, matrices) that my daughter never encountered in Foersters, but are part of a modern algebra 1 and were on the placement test. We used the district's algebra 1 textbook and iXL online for review.
  7. We've had two golden doodles. Our current dog is 3/4 standard poodle and 1/4 golden retriever. Her coat does not shed at all. She's pretty calm and has a great personality. SHe's great around kids. Our previous golden doodle died of cancer just before her 2nd birthday so that was hard. She was also a very nice dog, though shed a bit more (she was 1/2 poodle, 1/2 retriever). They can be absurdly expensive... I'm not sure why. Both were around 60lbs full grown and really cute!
  8. Math - Algebra 1 using the series our local PS uses (SMc Core Focus on Math) and supplementing with Zaccarro and iXL History - World History with lots of materials including Human Odyssey 2 and Crash Course World History videos English - Rules of the Game 2, Spelling Rules book F, Variety of Novel studies Science - Ellen McHenry The Cell, Botany, the Brain, Anatomy Spanish - Basic Spanish and DuoLingo and supplements Plus fitness training and lots and lots of tennis
  9. I was pretty sure my homeschooling days were over when my older daughter started high school last fall. We'd had a great run and I felt very successful. I sold or gave away almost all of my materials a few months ago. Now my younger daughter who has never ever wanted to be homeschooled has been asking to do it next year for 8th grade. She wants to spend more time training for tennis and has been missing a lot of school for tournaments and she frankly hasn't been loving our public middle school. So I'm happily back on homeschooling duty for one more year. I think it'll be a lot of fun and really good for our relationship and her overall emotional state. She's a very bright kid, but very math and science oriented. I'm looking forward to working on spelling and handwriting with her finally... and also encouraging an interest in reading and humanities.
  10. Also -- he may be waiting for you to say it's okay for him to quit. It was really emotional for my daughter to quit. She needed me to specifically tell her it was okay. She did flounder for a little while following it because her studio was very stressful and it took a while to figure out who she was without ballet. What she got from 7 years of ballet, though... she's incredibly flexible and graceful and has wonderful posture. She can count music and picks up any dance form quickly. She has a high tolerance for pain and can hold her bladder for hours. She knows how to be focused and dedicated and has an incredibly strong work ethic. So regardless of whether he quits now or in a few years, he will take away from his ballet training some very successful traits. One of our jobs of parenting is to help smooth out these transition times as they start new chapters in their lives.
  11. I think his opinion is what really matters. My daughter is a total ballet lover, but chose to quit at 13 too. The favoritism at her studio was just too much and short of having a breast reduction and growing a few extra inches, there was no chance she'd ever have been given better roles. She switched to ballroom dance instead and is so much more happy. I'd suggest you open the doors to other dance forms and see if you can encourage your son to rekindle his love of dance. Ballet gives such a wonderful foundation and he will be so successful in anything he tries.
  12. Apples and Pears has rules and also includes some games (Bingo, crossword puzzle). It's scripted so needs your attention, but it really works.
  13. We *loved* staying at the Beehive hotel (luxury hostel?) near the train station. My daughter and I took a private room, but there were hostel rooms too. It was cool, safe, convenient to the train station, friendly, and had a great café. http://www.the-beehive.com/
  14. No - I don't actually believe in it... but I love the idea! I *want* it to be true, it just sounds implausible.
  15. I like Cocobon red wine. At Trader Joes, it's about 7$/bottle.
  16. My daughter had one, but I wouldn't recommend it without training. Actually, I wouldn't recommend it at all... it doesn't really encourage good form and it's not natural to turn with your whole foot flat on the ground.
  17. It's true. My daughter gave up trying to find kids her age to hit with. She'll take on anyone who's willing to play with a 12 yr old girl.
  18. Our town has one tennis club which is constantly on the edge of failure. It's been on the market for a while. Local outdoor courts are available but only an option for half the year. As for tournaments, my wife and I play with mostly older ladies on a 3.0 team, but the next nearest team is 4 hours away so it always involves a hotel stay. There are a few local (non team) tournaments too. One is USTA sanctioned and one is a local thing. Privates here are around $50/hr. When I took my daughter to a national tournament in L.A., parents were talking about paying $100-120/ hr. Also one hour clinics are $15 drop in here and were $45 there. Junior tennis is definitely down in our area. 5 out of 6 of the USTA tournaments scheduled this year in our area didn't have enough kids to run. The one that did could only run a round robin draw for 14s and 18s in boys and girls. Bigger cities seem to be doing well but I'd love for there to be more kids for my daughter to play with.
  19. I know I wrote on this thread earlier this year - but my daughter had another great two weeks at Concordia. She's applied for next summer for the Rotary Short Term Exchange Program. It's for high school students. Kids go to a foreign country for a month to stay with a family with a similar aged child. Then both kids return back to the first country for a month. I'm excited about the idea of both my daughter traveling to France and of hosting another child. The costs are totally reasonable (just a $300 application fee for background checking and matching families), otherwise families just take care of their own child's travel expenses and the extra child for the month. Unfortunately, there are like 30 kids applying for only 5 spots with our local Rotary club, so she probably won't get it... but I think it sounds like a great idea anyway!
  20. Southern Oregon University has a pretty campus. I adjuncted for a little bit there and am not a huge fan of the administration in the department I was in, but the kids there wouldn't ever come into the same contact so it's totally irrelevant. Ashland is a progressive, theater town in a beautiful location. It attracts a lot of tourists and has low crime. People are very health conscious and there are lots of outdoor activities - hiking, rafting, skiing... I think the quality of education will be comparable to the other state schools you mentioned, but I prefer the small town vibe of Ashland over Portland or Salem.
  21. We've stayed at Honeyman state park in Florence. It was nice and there are dunes and a lake that you can rent boats on. I don't know how it compares to other places. There are some pretty economically depressed towns along the Oregon coast. But it's still a beautiful area.
  22. I would dump a bunch of oxi clean in warm water and have them soak overnight. I once did that with some poopy cloth diapers and the next day the water was clear and the diapers smelled fresh. It's perfect for food/organic type messes.
  23. In my family, we would cut the buttered toast into bite sized squares in a bowl and pour/scrape the hot soft boiled eggs over the top. We added salt and pepper and mixed it all up. It never looked particularly fancy, but it is my ultimate comfort food.
  24. I just improvised with cream soda flavored with butterscotch and whipped cream. It was very popular. Ice made the sweetness less overwhelming.
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