We just moved from there this week. :D The area is beautiful (nature wise) and the people are great. There is very little going on as far as a homeschooling community, but the county is very homeschool friendly. There are no cultural activities. But if you don't mind the hour drive there is quite a bit in Tampa and St. Pete. We are water people, so Spring Hill was wonderful for us, right on the ocean with the bonus of one of the clearest rivers in the state.

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Kolbe Year 9 as the spine with TC Lectures and a semester of an online Great Books class to fill it out.

A bit of a hijack, I don't know anything about Apologia, but why graduate him in three years? Why not do more APs the fourth year and reduce college costs even more? I know schools vary, but my kids will likely attend the local state school (UF) and they accept 45 hours of AP credit. Or will he likely already have that many AP credit hours in three years? I'm really just curious, as we are currently trying to make the decision on three or four years of high school. In FL there is a three year graduation plan in the public high schools, so it wouldn't look strange for dd to graduate in three. We are just trying to weigh the pros and cons.

That is unfortunate. Those fees are really high. For us, the fees are also waived. We will have to pay $15 for a student card and books ($60 for two classes this fall.) The books could be free if we were willing to register dd as a public school student working from home rather than a homeschooler - but we are not willing. :)

Our doctor's office is called Abra-Kid-Abra - sometimes written abraKIDabra. :tongue_smilie:

We pay $50/month for 1 hour/week at the YMCA, as non-members. I think it is $30/month for members. The price is the same for all levels. The instruction is actually very good, but there are usually three or four students at a time. The same instructor also teaches once a week at a local school and gives private lessons for $23/30 minutes at a local music center.

We generally do LOF 1 day per week, usually Monday or Friday. 1 lesson per week in first, 2 lessons per week in 2nd and 3rd, 1 lesson per week in 4th. After that my kids decide when they do their work. I have it divided by lessons needed to be completed per month.

Here is how I've lined them up for my younger two, now that the elementary books are out. If they start to struggle we will slow the sequence down, but the line-up will remain the same. K - Saxon 1 1st - Saxon 2, LOF A, B 2nd - Saxon 3, LOF C, D, E, F 3rd - Saxon 5/4, LOF G, H, I, J 4th - Saxon 6/5, LOF Fractions 5th - Saxon 7/6, LOF Decimals and LOF Physics 6th - Saxon Algebra 1/2, LOF Prealgebra A and Prealgebra B 7th - Saxon Algebra 1, LOF Beginning Algebra 8th - Saxon Algebra 2, LOF Advanced Algebra 9th - Saxon Advanced Math, LOF Geometry 10th - Saxon Advanced Math, LOF Trigonometry 11th - Saxon Calculus, LOF Calculus 12th - LOF Statistics, LOF Linear Algebra

Thanks for the information. So, 5 Steps and Princeton seem to be good and Barron's might be too wordy/difficult. I'm going to try and wade through the Amazon ratings tonight.

I would like to purchase a prep book to go along with each of dd's AP classes this fall. She is taking the classes online and they have no recommendation as far as which would work best with their classes. Sadly, we do not have a single bookstore in this county and our library is small (actually tiny.) So I want to order from Amazon this week. Which have worked well for students? The classes she will be taking are AP Human Geography and AP Art History.

Those are exactly the things I remember. It sounds like we will be schooling about town more once we move. I'm sure the kids will vote for McDonalds since they all have free wifi. :tongue_smilie: I suppose I had better start looking into the locations of any local libraries.

We are moving in two weeks and only have satellite (and dial-up) internet available to us at our new home. :glare: We've used satellite internet once before and it was a terrible experience. It was slow, very expensive and didn't work when there was so much as two clouds in the sky. It was several years ago though. Does anyone have a satellite internet provider they are happy with? We have a bunch to choose from here, all the well known providers.

I'd go with Night.

It's available to everyone that purchases through them. I would call or email. They are generally helpful and quick to respond with information.

I would love suggestions as well. We are doing AP Human Geography this coming year. I have a running list (but they are not really suggestions, as I haven't read them all yet.) Opinions on the books listed or other book suggestions would be appreciated. :) Primary Material World - Menzel Hungry Planet - Menzel Why Geography Matters - de Blij Power of Place - de Blij Guns, Germs and Steel - Diamond Collapse - Diamond Secondary What the World Eats - Menzel What I Eat - Menzel Omnivore's Dilemma - Pollan The Birds of Heaven - Matthiessen Snow Leopard - Matthiessen Teaching a Stone to Talk - Dillard Mirage - Barnett Blue Revolution - Barnett The Boy Who Harnassed the Wind - Kamkwamba They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky - Deng Wild Swans - Chang Iron and Silk - Salzman The Kite Runner - Hosseini Longitudes and Attitudes - Friedman

Also, a few of the professors have textbooks out. I know I have a textbook by the author of one of our geology couses that matches up with the lectures nicely.

The national average score was 21. In Florida, a 26 gives you a partial scholarship to state schools while a 29 gives you a full scholarship. I would imagine one would need something above 32 (or 99th percentile) to have a chance at some of the more competitive colleges in the nation.

My dd needed to raise her math score two points - she raised it four! :party:

We are still under a tornado warning, but it should end soon. There was some minor flooding along the sea wall in the late afternoon and our roof is leaking a bit in the living room. But the storm seems to be passing now and no major damage in our area.

In that case I would do it. It seems fine for jr. high and it would be especially good for you. You can practice how you would like to pull things together, prepare descriptions, assign credit, etc. if you plan on adding some out-of-the-box electives to his high school transcript. You will probably try a few different ways and finally settle on a system you are comfortable with and can utilize again for some of his high school credits. I've found it very useful using the jr. high years to experiment with how we want things to go in high school.

Do you submit a 7th grade trascript to someone?

If you are planning to enroll him for next fall, there are no more ACT or SAT exams offered before the fall enrollment period. At our local CC you can stop by and request a study packet that provides practice tests and study suggestions for the college-offered entrance exam (could be PERT, I don't remember.) You can take the college entrance exam more than once, so you may want to have your son take it and then meet with an advisor (we have a homeschool liaison) to go over the results.

AP also offers Statistics. My eldest dd currently hopes to skip math in college by taking AP Calculus BC her junior year of high school and AP Statistics her senior year. I agree that it would be best to make that decision based on future plans. Dd already knows where she plans to attend college and checked with them on the best route to take. Her plan will cover all of the math she needs for any of the degrees she is currently considering.

Hi, I'm Melissa. We've been homeschooling for 8.5 years, since pulling our eldest dd out of kindergarten. I've been on these boards about 8 years. I have four kids listed below. We will be moving to the outskirts of Gainesville, FL in four weeks. I consider us to be culturally Catholic, my dh prefers agnostic. We homeschool for academic and family unit reasons. All of our hobbies revolve around the water - boating, canoeing, swimming, snorkling, etc. Dh is a 4th generation Floridian, I'm a yankee transplant that made plans to move here at the age of 10 and did so at the age of 18. We love Florida and have every intention of being here the rest of our lives.