When my daughter was studying for the AP US History test she mostly wrote a ton of essays (from AP prep books). She researched from the web (wikipedia) and her textbook. But she had trouble getting anything out of her textbook if she was just reading it. She needed a question to answer or none of the information would stick. I know that we also got a lot of essay questions on the web by googling ap us history. Lots of teachers put their materials up on the web for these courses. Unfortunately, I don't have those links anymore because that computer died.

I wash ziploc bags instead of throwing them out.

I posted another response to this kind of question on another thread. What constitutes a good score (ie -- making the cutoff) varies by state: http://www.fairtest.org/files/National_Merit_2010_Semifinalist_Cut_Scores_by_State%283%29.doc.pdf If you think you know where to improve and think you can bring your score up within the level of what is required for your state, then yes, it's worth taking it in 11th grade. Your 10th grade score won't count for the scholarship program. We found no additional benefit to being a commended student (except for the case if one of your parents happens to work for a company that gives out money based on this). As I said in the other thread, even if colleges say they give out money based on the NM competition, the reality is that they will give a lot of money to any applicant who scores this high on any test. It doesn't need to be the PSAT. And someone who is a commended student generally looks real good otherwise, so the commended status is of somewhat limited value. In other words, I wouldn't get too upset if you can't take it, but I'd probably see if I could swing it somehow. ETA - my NON national merit finalist daughter got about 90 percent of her tuition offered at several schools. I don't even think those colleges knew she was a commended student. I was a national merit scholar. I actually got an award from the NM corporation. It was 1000 dollars. These days, it's 3000 (last I checked). Yes, some colleges give out NM merit money, but they generally give out about the same amount to other kids who didn't happen to make the cut off on the PSAT.

FWIW, I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the PSAT. Only a few kids qualify for the National Merit scholarships. My daughter missed it by a few points, but what we discovered is that most colleges pretty much gave her what they would have given a national merit scholar based on the rest of her record. The NM program itself only gives a few thousand dollars per awardee (if they give anything). With the school my daughter eventually decided on, this would have been subtracted from the aid they gave her and she would have ended up the same anyway. To be honest, this test seems to be a way for the college board to gather a mailing list of students colleges really want (whether they score up in the NM range or not). They make a lot of money selling that list. That was our experience. That said, though, I'll still run my younger one through the test, just in case. If you or your spouse work for a company that gives out national merit scholarships to employee children, this may be a different story. Back when I was in high school, some kids got a ton of money this way, and didn't even score in the NM range, while most of those who were national merit finalists got nothing. I've known kids here in the midwest who scored high enough to be NM scholars, but who never bothered to take the SAT to finish the "application". They'd already taken the ACT and frankly just didn't see the point of having to go take (and pay for) the SAT as well. The amount of money wasn't big enough, and the chance they'd get anything was so small, that they didn't want to do it. And colleges never ask for the PSAT scores.

There may be a number of schools that accept Latin for entrance, but want a living language for graduation. One would have to check on that. A lot of schools may not have the facilities to have you test out of certain languages, and Latin may be one of them. If they don't offer Latin at the college, they may feel they have no way of assessing the competence in Latin and might insist that you take another language to fulfill the graduation requirement. Unless you had AP credit or something like that. I'm just guessing. A lot of colleges that we had contact with seemed pretty willing to work with a lot of different scenarios, so I guess it's just not something I'd stress a lot about. Worst case scenario is that the student would have to take 2-4 semesters (depending on the college) of a language they hadn't done before. If it were me, I'd just be thinking cool, I get to learn another language. And I suspect a lot of the distrust colleges have for Rosetta Stone is that the old version, at least, didn't really constitute a language course. In fact, we found that we didn't learn much from RS when we tried it, so I'm not too surprised a college wouldn't take it. It's a nice supplement, but not a course, and colleges must be coming to that realization. If someone is using RS, I'd suggest adding another component for reading or grammar or some such (or conversation) so the college you're applying to doesn't just discount your language course. (Come to think of it though, if you've added components of reading, grammar, and conversation, you won't even need the RS. I guess that's why we gave up on it.)

In Minnesota, they sculpt the heads of the dairy queen and her runners up in butter (Ok, it's not the dairy queen, it's princess kay of the milky way). Then the girls get to each take their own head home and put it in the freezer, I presume. Scary to think of that staring at you when you go to get some midnight ice cream when you can't sleep.

Now that my daughter is entering college, I've looked into CLEP for her. What I've discovered is that she's already gotten past just about all the courses that CLEP would have been good for -- or else they are courses she doesn't want to get out of (such as the honors courses). So I'm glad she waited on doing any CLEP tests. They wouldn't have done her any good. However, I do know a few people who took a lot of CLEP tests as they entered college and got some courses out of the way. It was good for them. I do kind of agree with the comment that a lot of kids need to be in those early college classes before moving up. There are a fair number of them who don't have the maturity to be in the upper level courses. However, if a kid is able to self study for the CLEP (or AP -- or do dual enrollment in high school) they've probably got the maturity to take the higher level classes. When my high school senior daughter was taking sophomore engineering classes at college, she did find that a lot of the kids didn't really have the maturity to be thrown into even the lower division classes -- and she was a couple years younger than them. So on average, yes, but the decision has to be made for each student individually.

Some community colleges have a guarantee that you will be able to transfer certain courses to certain local 4 year colleges, so you don't feel like you're limited to either getting a 2 year associate's degree, or else wasting your time at cc and having to repeat everything at a 4 year school later. If you have a cc near you, you might look into that. And I get the feeling there are a lot more distance learning courses opening up, even at cc's -- so many people are going back to school right now there isn't physically room in the buildings for them all. Even here in the big city where we are, there are people I know doing courses online at very close cc's. BTW -- many cc's are great. Some may not be so hot, which is where a lot of the overall bad reputation comes from, but if you've got a decent one near you, it's definitely worth looking into.

2 years of one language is often acceptable, but it really depends on the college. I've seen 3 years of one language required (at a top tier school) and I've heard of 4, although not seen it for myself. I've also had colleges tell me they don't really care, as long as the student is strong in other areas. My oldest ended up doing 3 semesters of college ASL (which would count as 3 high school years) and 3 years of high school Spanish. This satisfied all the colleges she applied to, but she wasn't interested in big name schools. However, if the college has a language requirement for students to graduate (not just be admitted) you might find that your kids will save time in college by getting through that in high school and then testing out when they get to college (or even doing it dual enrollment while in high school). This is what Harvard "suggests": "High School Preparation Are there secondary school course requirements for admission? There is no single academic path we expect all students to follow, but the strongest applicants take the most rigorous secondary school curricula available to them. An ideal four-year preparatory program includes four years of English, with extensive practice in writing; four years of math; four years of science: biology, chemistry, physics, and an advanced course in one of these subjects; three years of history, including American and European history; and four years of one foreign language." But note that that's just a suggestion. It could be they'd be just as happy with 2 yrs each of 2 different languages. What they're really looking for is kids that stand out, not kids that all fit the cookie cutter mold. And if you don't care about getting into Harvard, this is irrelevant anyway. (And, honestly, after seeing Ivy league and Berkeley lectures online, I'm just as happy having my kids go to a smaller college with professors who are just as good (maybe a lot better when it comes to teaching) with smaller class sizes.)

My niece had similar problems while in public school. The priority was put on solving her problems with eating, not with her school work. She did do some school work, but it was probably more to retain normalcy in her life than anything else. She's now a successful lawyer. Your daughter can pick up the end of world history some other time. If she's suffering with an illness now, that should be the priority. FWIW, my niece was in a boarding treatment program. I don't know if that would be an option for your daughter, or if she'd even benefit from that. Are you getting any help with this or trying to deal with it on your own? I know it's so easy to fall into thinking that our kids are manipulating the situation so as to get out of doing any work -- I know I've been there. And then I do dumb things that are of no help whatsoever. I'm hoping you can find the space to think so you can figure out the best way to help your daughter heal. :grouphug:

Our yard, yes. Our block, yes. We know lots of people who would help in an emergency, so even when the kids were young that didn't really bother me. I didn't let them play in the street, though. That just seemed dumb, given our street, despite how lots of other little kids did it. But the first time my daughter rode her bike with some friends to the park, she had her bike stolen right out of her hands. It was fairly traumatizing. We got the bike back (thanks to the police), but she wouldn't go anywhere without an adult for a long time afterward. As that kid who stole the bike was finally jailed for murder a few years ago, I suppose maybe the neighborhood is a little safer, but there's always the chance that some new kid will be growing into that role. Now that my kids are in their teens, they're more likely to go places alone, but at night, we're all still a little leery of being out alone. Maybe it's just our area. We don't watch much TV, by the way. And I didn't let them go buy milk at the local store until the house of prostitution across the street was finally closed down. There were too many guys out propositioning females of all ages, even moms pushing strollers. Things have gotten better, due to a lot of involved neighbors. Actually, we now live in what's considered a nice, "pricey" neighborhood, but there's kind of a steep gradient of respectability around here, and a lot of vestiges from a time when this neighborhood was filled with a lot of rental properties and don't-care absentee landlords. (Fortunately, we bought our house before it became upscale.)

My daughter used her YWCA card for the PSAT and AP tests. For the ACT, I believe she used her college ID (as she was a dual enrolled student). I'm not sure because I was out of town at the time with family issues. She now has a state ID card (which she needed to get on to planes, anyway, seeing as she still doesn't have a driver's license). Do your kids not have driver's licenses yet? If and when they do get them, those will be state IDs and valid for getting into the tests. Otherwise, I'd try to find out from the site where the test is what's acceptable. Then you won't run into surprises with how the proctors at that particular site interpret what the College Board says on their website.

I haven't looked specifically, but I would suspect the AP book would cover the basic chemistry. Those are things the students need to know and everything builds on that. It would be difficult to leave it out of a book like that.

Ticonderoga pencils. Prismacolor pencils for artwork.

Just out of curiosity, anyone know why My Antonia at the Angelicum site is 109 dollars? Is that just a misprint, or is there something really special about it?

We were supposed to do a year of Am history in 8th and 10th grades. They were each supposed to cover the entire thing. The first time through, we got to the Civil War. The second time, we almost made it to WWI. The local AP course only gets to the Civil War. If the students want to do well on the AP test, they need to study the rest of it on their own, usually at the last minute. If you're bored with US history, you may just be using the wrong book. You might be happier finding different resources. Are biographies your thing? There should be a bunch at the library. You might ask for ones that people recommend. If you want something kind of different, you might try Assassination Vacation or Lies My Teacher Told Me. They aren't complete, by any means, but they get you thinking more than a textbook will. My 9th grader is finishing up A History of US by Joy Hakim. It's "supposed" to be for earlier grades, and there is a lot of talking down, but it's been more interesting than a typical text, and it gets the job done. I know there are a lot of people who can't stand this series of books because they claim it pushes a certain agenda (as does Lies My Teacher Told Me), but that's kind of what history is: interpretation of past events. The job of the student is to read various interpretations and compare them. For ancient Rome, we watched parts of HBO Rome (until we got bored with the violence and the gratuitous sex) and I, Claudius (also violent, but more watchable). I've also listened to the lectures by Isabella Pafford at UC Berkeley: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978539 (which is much more understandable if one has just watched I, Claudius) But all these resources cover imperial Rome. I've been looking for something else that covers before and after. We've also read a couple chapters in Spielvogel's Western Civilization. Fiction about Rome that I've read or had recommended: Lavinia The Eagle of the 9th (and other Rosemary Sutcliff books about Rome and Roman Britain) The Silver Pigs Steven Saylor mysteries although, for myself, I found the last 2 on the list hard to get into. The only one I read of Steven Saylor (Roman Blood) kind of bored me. Too much sex and violence, not enough plot and characterization. And then a huge, indigestible chapter that seemed to be copied right out of his Ancient Rome freshman history course notes. Still, they might be great for someone else. And you could always read The Aeneid.

Fill me in -- have I missed something? Did she write some books for high schoolers?

We used Pimsleur for awhile, then moved to Destinos. Pimsleur is expensive but we have gotten it from the library. It's good for starting out. Destinos has a lot of grammar in the text book, as well as a lot of listening practice in the videos. After these 2, I'm understanding quite a bit of Spanish. My daughter got through about 1/2 of each (or 2/3?) and placed into the 4th semester of college Spanish. We have tried other books on occasion, but they've never held my kids' interest long enough for them to learn anything. Straight grammar books didn't do much for them. RS was pretty much a bore for them, although they did learn a bit of vocabulary (not much grammar, though). The Destinos videos are free online: http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html

Macalester College (which is a highly selective school) requires: " Secondary School Preparation Macalester expects applicants to have completed (at a minimum) a secondary school curriculum consisting of: four years of English; three years of history or social science; three years of mathematics; three years of laboratory science; and three years of foreign language. In addition, Macalester expects its applicants will have taken at least some of the honors or advanced courses available at their secondary schools. Macalester uses no minimum grade point average as a threshold for admission, and no applicant will be disqualified for lacking a particular course. " That was just a random school I looked at. Note the last line -- you really don't have to have everything they ask for, as long as you shine otherwise. And they're only looking for 3 years of a language. Check with schools. I think you'll find things are not as cut and dried as everyone believes. Nor do all that many schools require 4 years of a language. As far the Italian goes, I wouldn't worry about doing a 3rd year as laid out by some prep school or other fancy place. I'd start where you are (because you already officially have 2 years) and just do another year. That makes 3 years. That doesn't mean you need to get all the way through "Book 3" of whatever course you're looking at. It means you should figure out what "book" you're in and do a year (or two, if you want a total of 4 years) of solid work. If I were in your place and wanting to do Italian, I'd probably line up a lot of reading. A lot of this could be on the web, so it would be free. I'd get a good dictionary and a good verb book, and I'd work through some grammar. And that would be all I'd do. (Although if your library had the three levels of Italian Pimsleur, or something similar, I might spend time listening to that.) I wouldn't worry about what level I was at. Schools vary so much in how much they teach in a given year, all colleges know that levels are pretty much worthless to worry about. My third year of high school French was grammar (and we didn't get through that much), reading several short stories, two novels, and a play. We made one oral presentation. Probably we did a bit of writing. I remember a lot of quizzes. And looking back on it, I've realized that they expected a WHOLE lot more out of us than the French 3 courses I see in the high schools around here today. That would have been more like French 5 in the local school these days. (They do the AP test after French 6) So if you want to do Italian, I wouldn't worry too much about where you "should" be after 4 years. Just do another 1-2 years, and don't buy books until you're at the level for needing them. That way it won't be so much money. BTW, Latin at our local school uses the first year Latin book for 2-1/2 years of Latin. That gives you some idea of what "4" years of a language in high school may amount to. Latin 4 (as far as they go) only gets through book 2-3, depending on the student. They spend a lot of time on word roots, English vocab derived from Latin, reading about Rome (in English) and "authentic" Roman parties. (I suspect they aren't too authentic, seeing as this takes place in class.) This is a lot different from foreign language classes that I took, but the colleges are probably not expecting what they saw a generation or two ago. Oh, and I got in to college with 3 years of a language. My daughter also had 3 years of Spanish. She got into all schools she applied to.

A lot of our relatives quiz our kids. The worst is my mom. My daughter used to write to her all the time. Then one day, she made a spelling mistake in the letter. My mom wrote back that she would pay my daughter a whole dollar if she could write a letter without any spelling mistakes. My daughter didn't write to her for a couple years after that. Since then, they've gotten back to writing, but it's not as if my daughter has forgotten. Every time my mom makes a spelling mistake, my daughter suggests writing to grandma and offering her a whole dollar if she can send just one letter without a mistake.

All we've done all week is clean. Guess we'll have to get back to one thing a day sometime soon (maybe after my mother's visit is over).

We get letters from the local school district specifically targeting homeschoolers -- they want us to use their online classes. They've even had special "for homeschoolers" meetings to tell us about these classes. They call on the phone to try to get us to come. But they've rescheduled these meetings several times due to lack of interest. I can only assume they need more warm bodies to make these classes financially feasible. These classes seem to mainly be for the public school kids, so it's not as if they're solely targeting us, but they must have other ways of advertising to the school kids. We couldn't be bothered, as my kids were already past all the courses they're offering.

My husband did the same thing -- from diet to regular. Then he cut out the regular by replacing with water, and juice mixed with soda water. He had a suspicion that he was actually somewhat addicted to the aspartame as well as the caffeine so he was only breaking one habit at once. I don't know if there was any truth to that. He was pretty headachy and crabby, though. Actually, he still is. I'd plan for a lot of walks and naps. Don't have anything during that period of time that you really HAVE to get done. You'll notice the lack of caffeine even more if you've got deadlines.

My husband already ran through his deductible this year with one ER visit, so now everything for him is paid for. Through the end of this year. So, on the bright side, maybe he'll make up his mind to go in for the surgery that's supposed to end these ER visits he keeps having to make. After all, it will be "free" this year. But we knew this was a possibility when we went to the cheaper plan with a high deductible. We made the decision to save the money we wouldn't be spending on the insurance in case we needed to pay the deductible. It's generally worked out to be a savings for the rest of us. It's just my husband who's expensive. A lot of these plans do pay for preventative things like physicals, but that doesn't mean they pay for other "little" things like ER visits.

Thanks for the ideas -- it just occurred to me that I might be able to "borrow" one from the church rummage sale for a week. I'll see if there's one up in that pile of junk. Otherwise, that coffee press sounds interesting, although it's not as if we need more unused junk around the house (I was just reading the decluttering thread). I won't even use it for company as I'm allergic to coffee. For my mom, I have to make an exception, but I wouldn't for anyone else.