This is the book we used: http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Graphical-Numerical-Franklin-Demana/dp/0201324458/ref=pd_sim_b_3 It gets so-so reviews, but if you throw out the ones from high school students who just hate their calc class, and the ones from the people who think you can't have a calc book without tons and tons of proofs, the reviews aren't so bad. The thing I liked about this book is that it was very trimmed down. Not too many confusing proofs and it only really covered the topics that were going to be on the AP test. If your goal is the AP test, a stripped down, not so distracting version might be what you'd want. Also I liked that there was a solutions manual rather than just answers. (We also have the test bank book which is really fairly useless.) My daughter used this one for the AP test, placed into Calc III in college and got one of the highest grades in her Calc III class. I figured that a less comprehensive book would probably be a good way to start. For myself, I can never understand proofs until I know how to work the problems anyway, so there's not much point for me (or my kids) to try to "learn" the proofs until we actually understand the workings of things. This may rub math teachers the wrong way, but I've also seen that those students who "know" the proofs on their first go-round tend to only be able to regurgitate the steps. However -- my take on most calc books is that they're all pretty much the same, when you get right down to it. If you get one with a good solutions manual, you'll probably be ok.

I know several people who were studying violin (actually they were already working as professionals) who ended up with such severe nerve damage that they had to give up their career. They were practicing too much. And maybe didn't know which things were causing them problems until it was too late. You might want to talk to your teacher about how much practice is too much. Also, it may be helpful to spread your practicing out over the day and to build up gradually. I wonder if there are discussions on the web about this issue. I think these folks may have been practicing 4 or more hours a day. Also, you shouldn't practice any longer than you can concentrate. After that it's probably just wasted effort. This is another reason for spreading practice sessions out over the day. Damage can happen with just about any instrument, so it's worth thinking about. That said -- I've known violin players who got pretty good with only about 20 minutes of practice a day. The key is that they played pretty much every day, and that they were thinking about how they were playing the entire time.

I just remembered that a lot of the vocab books that I've seen have "tricks" for learning the words. They seem to focus on making associations between the sound of the word and something else that then leads one to the meaning of the word -- this really didn't work for me either. I just had a list of words and meanings and memorized. The tricks I've seen just seem to add an extra step and more possible confusion.

I think memorizing word roots may just be confusing for the SAT. It might be the best way to become educated, but may not help much with the SAT. When I took the SAT, I memorized a very long word list of words that were known to show up frequently on the test. I know that I got about 5 more words right on the test because of this. I don't know how much that bumped up my score. I only did this in the week before the test. I'm not sure that a full six months of drilling would have been any more helpful. However, I probably would have scored reasonably high without memorizing that list. If a student knew a lot fewer words than I did, the memorizing might increase their score more. Or they might find it harder to do this brute force memorizing because they didn't have as much intuitive framework to hang it on. ETA- I guess what I'm trying to say about the word roots is that when either I or my kids have tried this approach, we haven't found that it increased our ability to figure out what words are. It's definitely interesting and worthwhile, but I never saw any reason to do it for the SAT. We had better luck with reading -- and I personally had better luck with brute force memorization of English words, but brute force memorization has not worked for my kids. These are the 100 top words: http://www.yourdictionary.com/dictionary-articles/100-most-common-sat-words.html but I know I had a much longer list. I found this one by googling. If you google you might get longer lists. However, my daughter refused to memorize any words. Well, actually, she tried, but they just didn't stick in her head. (She did ok anyway.)

I haven't been getting much sleep. I thought the "Does your homeschool have a motto?" thread was really "Does your husband have a motto?" And then I wondered what sort of motto a husband might have. I think my husband is a bit motto-less.

So far for us Thinkwell biology has been "ok". Not great. But it beats having to slog through a textbook. It hasn't so far struck me as being terribly rigorous -- except now and then, but then he doesn't really go into the depth I'd think you might want for, say, an AP level class. You'd probably have to go to a book for that. The lecturer is mostly pretty engaging, so that is an advantage. We're only finishing up the biochem part, but so far, the end of lecture questions are pretty awful. Either there was no preparation for them in the lecture or they were silly questions or they had wrong answers. If you want reinforcement with study questions, or if you want tests, I wouldn't recommend these for that. The difference I think you'd mainly see in AP vs regular bio is just that less stuff would be covered. You'd probably spend more time on each topic on the assumption that the student hadn't seen it before, and/or you wouldn't go into each topic in such depth. There'd also be a lot more leeway in what you did cover in "regular" biology. In AP, you'd have to follow the topics the college board has laid out. Also, AP bio assumes a chem background, so if you did "regular" bio you might go a bit light on some of the biochem. We're using Thinkwell as a 2nd yr of bio, but I don't think we're going to do the AP test. The college my daughter wants to go to doesn't accept the credit anyway. I've been fairly impressed with the chem lectures that Gordon Yee does (in the chem Thinkwell), although not with the other guy who lectures in that series. The sample calc lectures I've seen also look ok (although, once again, I'm less than impressed with the after-lecture questions. I think I'd need to use a book for that.)

My freshman daughter is living at home. This is SO much better than having her in the dorms, because of her food allergies and sleep needs. Also, she's just more comfortable having a place where she can go to get away from it all. Although, the truth is, she's mostly NOT home. She's about as involved in college life as any student could possibly be (probably a bit more than she should, to be honest). Living at home certainly didn't stop her from participating. (And her grades are fine too, which I have heard is sometimes a concern.) About the only time I see her is when she wants help with her homework. The college is about 20 minutes away by bike, 10 by car, so it's pretty easy for her to get there when the weather is good. With ice, she now needs a ride (one of these days, she will get her license!) but it's not a big deal as we're usually headed that way anyway. The college has a number of lounges where she can hang out, in addition to the library. And they gave her a locker, so she can store most of her junk. She went to a college sponsored all night party this weekend and was even more firmly convinced that she doesn't want to live in the dorms. Anyway, most of her friends don't live in the dorms because she's mostly in sophomore/junior classes. And there is a huge financial savings.

Thanks for the advice (and the coupons!). As it has turned out, the prescription didn't go through properly to the pharmacy so it looks like we're waiting until Monday anyway. I'm planning to call the dr back to discuss this. The things I have been reading seem to suggest that Advair is indicated for somewhat more severe cases than what my daughter has. Also, my husband has found that he does well with just the steroid and no albuterol most of the time, so I'm thinking that might be a better choice. Can't do much about it until Monday, though. I'm just glad that I actually have this question. If they had more severe asthma, I don't think we'd be pondering the decision. Oh, and we need to do a good search of the basement for mold, which might explain why this came on suddenly.

For a number of years, the school district here had both a traditional US math sequence side by side with a spiral approach. Different kids took different tracks. They did end up in the same place. They ended up dropping the spiral track a few years back. I don't know why. Doing both was probably unsustainable in terms of the number of teachers needed. It did seem to me that the kids in the spiral approach just weren't as good at math, and that kids who were good at math that had started out in the spiral approach tended to switch to the traditional sequence sometime in high school. It is possible that the spiral program they were using just wasn't very rigorous. However, it has always seemed to me that most math tends to review what came before -- it's all a spiral approach by its very nature. Geometry needs algebra I, algebra II needs geometry, trig needs algebra and geometry. And even the "traditional" US textbooks have lots of review and cover the same topics year after year (each time in more depth), so I've never seen that there was that huge of a difference between the two. I've used both traditional US materials and MEP math (which is more "British" in approach?) with my kids. I don't think my kids noticed they were switching systems as we meandered back and forth. So I agree with Heigh Ho -- it may not be the spiral vs US breakdown of math, but the actual method in which the math was taught.

The dr just prescribed Advair for my asthmatic daughter. I'm kind of new to dealing with this. Is Advair really the best choice for a mildly asthmatic patient? Would she be better off with a steroid alone? If so, what steroids have people had success with? Are some better than others? Are some cheaper than others? At first I started trying to find a cheaper alternative to Advair (I knew I was in trouble financially when the dr prescribed something that is advertised on TV). But then I started to run into descriptions of what Advair actually is (a steroid plus a bronchodilator -- and I'm not sure I want her on a bronchodilator all the time if it's not needed), so now I'm not so sure it's the best drug for her. For her situation, it seems like a steroid all the time and then a bronchodilator only as needed would be the way to go. The bronchodilator seems to be less safe than the steroid, and anyway, the bronchodilator she's currently on (as needed) keeps her up all night. But maybe I'm missing something? Any advice?

When I took AP English we read: Tom Jones Wuthering Heights Invisible Man Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Waiting for Godot King Lear As You Like It a few poems that I can't remember a few short stories (not that many) That was a full year course. We wrote a 1-2 page paper on most things we read, but not all. I also took a full year American Lit course: The Scarlet Letter Huckleberry Finn Sister Carrie Our Town Babbitt selections from Walden We wrote a paper on each thing we read for that course. So that gives you an idea as to what AP/honors courses might read in one year. It's not that much. You could do a full year course that only reads 6 things and call it a full course. (These days, I'm hearing from ps kids that a full year course might only be 4 books and 4 papers -- although I would imagine they're reading some other things like poems and plays and short stories.) Whether you would want to do that is another question. When I made a transcript up for my daughter to apply to college, I was listing about 6 books for a semester course. I thought that was maybe on the high end. She'd probably read a lot more than that, but she hadn't written papers on all everything. (And I'm not sure that writing papers on each and every book is really necessary, as long as there's discussion on the book.)

My daughter did NO volunteer work. She had NO leadership activities. They just weren't her thing. She sang and acted and did other things that were her passion, and I fretted about how she wasn't going to look good to colleges because she'd never been team captain or any of those other little boxes that show up on the college applications. Then she went in for a scholarship interview and we were glum about how she hadn't done any volunteer work or "leadership" activities and how that was going to cost her the scholarship. But the interviewing committee actually pointed out to her that every time she cantored at church she was both volunteering AND leading. Funny, she'd always seen that as being "allowed" to do something she loved to do -- singing. Moral of the story -- let your kid do what they love. Don't force them into volunteering or leadership or anything else that colleges "want" to see. If they do what they love, they'll have something to talk about in the interview. If they just volunteered so they could check off that box, they'll come off looking like a really boring person. And if your child doesn't go to college, at least they will have done something they really enjoyed.

My daughter eliminated most of her migraines by avoiding yellow #5. Unfortunately, smoke seems to be her other trigger and she often can't avoid that in the fall. If you have a trigger and you can figure out what it is, that may be your best bet. Other people I know say red wine gives them migraines. I have never figured out what my triggers are, but I get migraines so rarely it's not a huge issue (well, until I get one).

If she actually understands the material through chapter 3, she's making ok progress. I looked at the list of topics for Chalkdust precalc -- honestly, a lot of schools would probably skip many of the topics in the later chapters. And a lot of schools might put the trig chapters in Alg 2, or even a separate class. This would mean that the precalc course you're looking at might reasonably take a year and a half, if you did all the topics, and that only getting through 3 chapters in a semester is just fine. If she hates Chalkdust and you can find something better, that's another matter. Or if she's not even understanding the material as she's doing it. But I wouldn't worry too much if she just seems to be going slowly. As long as she eventually gets the concepts, the speed is not the issue. As precalc covers a lot of material that's fundamental for moving on to calculus, I wouldn't be in a big hurry. Both my kids took a year and a half to get through all the precalc topics -- although we didn't use Chalkdust. I also found that my kids always forgot just about everything from the last chapter just as soon as they moved onto the next. This seems perfectly normal -- they haven't really forgotten it. They just can't dredge it up out of their memory. But each time they relearned the topic they picked it up faster. Another advantage of dragging it out is that it gives the brain a little more time to mature. And my daughter who took "forever" at precalc is now doing very well in college as a physics major. Taking a lot of time on the basics does pay off. (And she did have to relearn every single precalc topic when she did calculus -- as did many of her fellow students.)

Yes and no. We've skipped formal science, but we always had informal stuff going on such as videos and books and reading science articles on the BBC and whatnot. For your younger kids, I wouldn't worry too much. Just get some library books and videos and go with that. For the older kids, if they have any inclination at all to go into the sciences, I would try to make sure they at least got in biology and chemistry and physics in the high school years. You might have to double up in future years if you don't get any science done this year. On the other hand, my daughter waltzed into college physics with absolutely no high school physics at all and did just fine. She'd had a lot of math, though. That's essential.

Spices have dates on them? I know we have some caraway seeds that my husband bought in the early 80's. We have some other spices from his bachelor days as well.

Did anyone post this site already?: http://classes.berklee.edu/et/ It's ear training supplemental studies for Berklee music students. I didn't find answers, but with the early ones, at least, it's fairly easy to see if you've written down the right notes if you play back what you've got and compare. I was looking for something that had harmonic ear training exercises in addition to melodic exercises -- maybe some in the later "grades" are this sort. I'll have to look.

I think we need to cross reference this thread to the Tiger Mother thread. A Yale law professor who somehow has time to sit all day with a child and force her to practice for hours on end? Um, really? Or are we looking at another mom who can't quite tell the truth?

We have no rules. That sounds pretty undisciplined, but education and family life here seem to be more of a partnership than having someone in control. That said, we do a lot of talking about educational goals and how to handle difficult peer situations and making sure no one's having to do all the housework alone, etc. It's worked out well. The house isn't totally clean, but the kids are very well educated.

I know it's not what you're looking for, but this version of Antigone was pretty good: Antigone [videorecording] / a BBC TV co-production in association with Bioscope, Inc. ; producer, Louis Marks ; directed by Don Taylor. But I've had trouble finding any Greek tragedy at all. We found this at a local college library, and were glad our VCR is still operational. Greek plays don't seem to have made it onto DVD that I can find. I'm still hoping to find a Greek comedy. My kids also enjoyed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which was put out as a movie in 1990. I can't remember if it's in WTM, but it is a sort of classic. We've also tried some Chekhov plays, but they weren't such hits here.

Wheelock's is pretty hard, and it's not just because you're already supposed to know grammar. By about 1/2 through, Wheelock's just stops explaining what it's doing. And there aren't enough exercises to make things clear or give enough practice. It also gets really ambiguous about what the right answers are. I know that there are accepted answers for the exercises, but they seem to still be a matter of interpretation. The colleges around us dropped Wheelock's awhile back. They've found better books. I suspect Latinstudy probably keeps using Wheelock's because it's in an easy format for the way their groups work. I dropped out of several of those groups. I went back to Cambridge several times to learn the material, then came back to Wheelock's to review using those groups. Wheelock's is still useful, but I'm not sure it's the best book to learn the first time through unless you have a teacher who is providing explanation and lots of supplemental material.

An artist's conception of biology: http://www.amazon.com/Way-Life-Works-Mahlon-Hoagland/dp/0812920201 I didn't find that my kids could learn biology from this alone, but it did give them some different ways of looking at things.

But you could try Pimsleur. I took Chinese in college and was brushing up with the Pimsleur CDs recently. Learning the tones seemed like it would be about as easy on the CDs as from the native speakers I had as teachers in college. I might have had an advantage from my previous experience, but it might be worth a try if you have no other option. I wouldn't buy Pimsleur, though. You can usually get it from the library, at least through interlibrary loan. It's pretty expensive otherwise. And it is possible that the restaurant lady has a pretty good command of Mandarin, but it might depend on how old she is. Cantonese seemed to be the language that most Chinese immigrants spoke a number of years ago, but that seems to be changing. When I go into restaurants around us now, I mostly hear Mandarin. It might be spoken with an accent (I wouldn't know - my Chinese is not that good), but they do seem to know how to speak it.

He should do just fine on the SAT, then. I'd get some SAT practice tests and see how he does. The SAT doesn't ask any of the things that he's having trouble with, and knowing them won't help one bit on that test. The best thing for doing well on the SAT is just to read decent, modern writing. Older writing isn't quite so helpful because the rules have changed to some extent.

Use it. But with pumpkin, I always check that the can "sucks" when I open it. I've had cans of pumpkin (not even expired) sort of explode when I opened them. The cans weren't swollen.