It's not crazy at all. Is there any career counseling near you? If you're thinking of a cc, they might have someone who could talk to you about what their 2 year degrees would prepare you for. When my youngest turned 5 I just HAD to get out of the house. For fun, I took a class in physics. This led to more... Now I'm working in physics research.

I went to buy an ipod yesterday. But I came home with a Sandisk instead, because it was so much cheaper and came with an FM radio. However, I was reading reviews of them on the web and there are lots of people complaining about the failure rate of these. Probably people are more likely to complain if it fails, so I'm wondering if anyone here has one of these that DIDN'T fail. Anyone have an ipod that failed? I still haven't opened the package yet, because I'm still trying to decide what to do.

And a solutions manual that only had worked out solutions for the odd problems would probably be fine -- I just like having them all. But I think I would have had trouble helping with my daughter if we hadn't had any solutions. And I've had calculus fairly recently. They aren't always obvious solutions like they are in algebra and geometry.

The schools around us all do the BC calc as the 2nd year of calculus. There aren't that many kids that take the BC test, as a result, but I suspect it may work better for most kids. They've usually got a lot of other things going on in high school and don't have the time to do the BC all in one year with no AB before hand. (Although there are a couple schools that do all of AB in one semester -- on a block schedule. I've heard mixed reviews of that.) I have seen syllabi for AP Chem that start the summer before the class -- the kids are expected to cover all of the first year of high school chem on their own before the AP class actually starts. Now many of these kids are just reviewing because they already had a year of high school chem, but it gives you some idea of how much material might have to be covered. (I've seen this for AP US History as well although I don't quite see the rationale.) For schools that start in late Sept, it can be particularly hard. It really depends on your student which pace you should do. We took more time, missed the AB test, came back for the BC test and didn't regret not having done the AB test. My daughter got a lot more time to figure things out on her own, so it all stuck better than if she'd been blasting through it. A lot of kids find they really need some refresher of algebra/geometry, even if they did very well in those classes. So it often makes sense to take more time.

Thanks for all the resources everyone has posted! I finally figured out how to search for a particular publisher at our library (it's a convoluted process involving searching interlibrary loan so as to get info on our library that doesn't provide the info to us directly). It turns out they have a lot of books put out by Hachette, I just couldn't find them before. They do not have the textbooks, but just getting access to the other books is good.

I just went to get one for my daughter a couple days ago. They had spelled her name wrong originally, so this wasn't actually a name change. They wanted to see her ID card (it's a driver's license but without the driving privileges). I had brought her birth certificate as well, but now I can't remember if they looked at it or not. It was THEIR fault, not a name change, so that might be a different situation, but we did wait 18 years to get it fixed. They seem willing to work with you to get the required documents. We've lost my other daughter's SS card. Oddly, they wouldn't take her birth certificate to give a replacement, but they told us that we could get a signed statement from her doctor saying that she is who we say she is. WHY a doctor, who she has seen maybe 10 times in her life is a more trusted entity than her parent or her official birth certificate is beyond me, but if it makes them happy...

We used Calculus: Graphical, Numerical, Algebraic (Finney, Demana, Waits, Kennedy). My daughter took the BC test last year and did fine. However, I suspect a lot of texts are comparable. It was an edition that seemed to be specifically for high school AP courses, so it didn't have a lot of extraneous material (which could be good or bad, depending on your objectives). I don't recall it covering anything in multivariable calculus (but there are editions of these authors that do, I think). If you were to end up with the bigger edition, you'd just ignore all of that. >>>****We had a full solutions manual, which was extremely important. This isn't just the answers, but the worked out problems. If you expect a student to learn on their own, they likely need this (unless they're some sort of genuis). Although I'm pretty mathy, I found I didn't need to help all that much because of this solutions manual. I wouldn't choose ANY book that didn't have this available if you plan to do this without a teacher. If you're doing the AP test, you also want to be sure to get recent prep books. I forget which one we found best (maybe it was Princeton? but maybe not?). Just knowing calculus backwards and forwards isn't enough. You need to know what will be on the test and how it will be asked. Get recent prep books because the test keeps changing. The college board also runs some message boards for AP teachers but I can't find the link. I can't remember if I got booted off that board for not being a teacher (yeah, right), but I do recall that I ran into some mirror site that seemed to be posting all the messages anyway. However, I've lost my book marks. It took my daughter 1-1/2 years to get through the BC material. A student could do it in a year if they were motivated and put a lot of time into it, but it would be a big job. (My daughter was just not that motivated about calculus) It would be like taking a full year of college calculus (the AP tests usually take a full year to do one college semester). My daughter just took a semester of Calc III at college and it was a LOT of work. She heard that the 2 semesters before that were just as hard (although she had skipped them because of her AP score). If you only have a year, you should probably consider doing the AB test. However, if you have the time and a good student, the BC test is the one to take. It gives a score both for BC and AB, so you don't lose out on getting an AB score, even if the BC score isn't very good. The college board expects a BC course is the end of a 2 year high school sequence. The AB test only gives credit for one semester of calculus. The BC test gives 2. Our experience with getting AP credits accepted is that the calc test is generally the one that's accepted the most. Sciences, not so much. BTW, I think my daughter ended up using the Stewart text for her Calc III class. She didn't like that nearly as well. It has a lot more proofs, but that seems to be at the expense of more worked out examples. Proofs are fine, but you really need those examples. The Finney et al book that we used was a bit thin on proofs. I imagine this would disappoint mathematicians, but I suspect it helps with the presentation. My theory about proofs is that they're a lot more understandable AFTER you've learned how to work with the material. OK, this turned out to be rather long. Sorry about that.

Our experience with "very good but not ivy" schools is that above about a 30 on the ACT gets the student into the higher ranges of merit aid. That's the 96th percentile (composite). Above that, I'm not sure it makes much difference. They probably have the same cut off for the SAT. There seemed to be two types of merit aid: what the college just gave automatically (depending on the ACT score) and what they (or depts within the college) decided to award competitively based on further application materials. The high ACT score just gets you into the running for this 2nd category (as will a good GPA -- and it doesn't have to be both. You could have one or the other.). After you've been invited to apply for these further awards, they look at things other than test scores. A 36 vs a 30, therefore, probably wouldn't make any difference on this second round of awards. I would suspect the ivy league schools do things similarly. A high enough score just makes them look. If it were me or my kids, I wouldn't redo the test. It's probably a waste of time and money, not to mention really nerve wracking. A 100 %ile is an impossible score, BTW. It would mean that you did better than 100% of the students, which would mean you'd have to do better than yourself, which is impossible.

At 11 or 12, my kids were probably "ready" for college, in that they could have managed just fine. They had the skills in math, reading, and writing that an "average" college student might have. If I'd really been into acceleration, we could have figured out some way to get them into college then and they'd have advanced degrees by now. BUT -- I notice that on the Swann page that someone linked, none of their kids were in math/science fields. It's easy to accelerate in some areas, but the math just takes a lot longer. And another BUT -- my kids are spending their high school years with music and theater and art and numerous foreign languages, as well as doing a lot of advanced math. I think they're much happier with that than with getting a master's degree at 16.

If it were me, I'd chalk it up to allergies. And I would suspect there was something common to those supplements. They might all have the same inactive ingredients such as corn starch, microcrystalline cellulose, colorings, natural flavors, etc. Do you have the same reaction to other drugs which might have the same fillers etc? My guess would be that the whole foods are a better bet healthwise anyway.

So, how many kids using these textbooks are actually going to read and remember anything that's in them? That's the real question. I remember there being brouhahas over the textbooks I used when I was in school -- over similar issues. But honestly, the books were SO dull that I never actually read them. Oh, sure, we "read" them in school, but that consisted of going around the room, each student reading a paragraph (very badly -- despite how we were all in the highest "track"). I would figure out which paragraph I was going to have to read, put my finger on it, and then check out until the teacher looked at me. No wonder kids hate history.

So were you using something for these subjects this year? I'd be interested in hearing what you liked. BTW -- at one point, someone suggested Les Malheurs de Sophie. I finally got a copy. I'm liking it a lot -- although I'm glad she's not my child. Emu

Is the Ultimate French Review the one by Stillman? Thanks Emu

My daughter will graduate a year "late" (although she'll still be 18 when she graduates). It's been fine. Colleges haven't cared. However, we never repeated a grade, we just did more along the way. She eased into college classes. She's been doing 2 a semester the past couple years. She's doing 3 this semester. Next year she'll be in college officially. She did enough college classes as a high schooler that she'll be a sophomore when she enters anyway, so it really didn't make any difference. She just didn't get pushed before she was ready. I'd just do whatever your son is ready for right now and make the decision later. The only time it's going to matter is deciding when to be "11th" grade for taking the PSAT for the National Merit qualifications and when to apply to college. And he may surprise you with a lot of emotional growth in the next year.

My experience with Pimsleur is that it prepared me for doing a reading/grammar approach. When I tried the textbook reading/grammar first, it was pretty difficult. After Pimsleur it was fairly easy. So I wouldn't discount Pimsleur as a quickie starter program. It might also work well concurrently. It's a bit pricey, but you might be able to get it from the library.

I don't know that finances are why colleges are headed this way. Most kids take 4 years at college no matter what credit they bring in. A few might graduate early, but probably not enough that it is a big drain on the college. I think what these colleges are noticing is how AP credits may not amount to much. I'm not sure it takes all that much to get a 4-5 on most AP tests. There's a pattern to the way they ask the questions, and a student can do pretty well by just mastering the prep book. Does the prep book provide depth and understanding? Well, not really all that much. A good class would provide more. And once a kid takes a few AP tests, they kind of get the knack of it. It gets easier to do well without learning as much. My daughter took a few APs and a number of college classes. A few of those college classes weren't all that challenging -- they probably were at an AP level. The classes that were better exceeded the APs in learning opportunities. From what I've heard from people, it's the faculty that are not wanting to give out too much AP credit. Their reason is that the students who they've given AP credit to in the past really didn't know the material the way the students who had taken the college class did. It caused problems later on. And as for the idea of giving the AP test to students who have just finished the college class to calibrate the test -- that is what the college board claims they have done. (However, I suspect these kids must have been prepped for the AP exam in particular.)

We're using Pimsleur and Destinos. We get Pimsleur from the library. Our library also has Destinos, but it's free on the Annenberg/CPB site. We got the text for Destinos, so we can also incorporate some reading and writing. We have the workbook as well, but you probably need the tapes for that (the audio is on the web somewhere, for free - just not sure where) My daughter did about half of each of these and placed into the 4th semester of college Spanish. For whatever that's worth. (Course, she did one semester of college French and then placed into the 3rd semester of college French.) We used Rosetta Stone for awhile, but it seemed to mostly be vocabulary without much focus on actually saying anything useful. It's fun for a bit, but my kids got bored quickly. I've heard the new Rosetta Stone is different and better, but I'm not willing to fork over the money to find out it's the same old thing. Actually, I'm not ready to fork over the money even if it's improved, because the two programs I mentioned above are much cheaper and have worked fine for us. Tell Me More -- I keep trying to get to it, but I never seem to have the time. It doesn't really draw me in. Maybe if it was all I had, I'd use it. However, I find these computer based, interactive programs to be a little annoying. They don't allow me to do anything else with my hands, and I get bored having to continually be clicking on things. That might be a good thing for someone else who had trouble staying on task, though.

If it really only has one set of wings, it's a fly, not a wasp -- but it's often difficult to see the second set. They can be tiny.

Even the non drowsy Dramamine eventually knocks me out. It just takes longer. And it doesn't work all that well for me. It will keep me from throwing up on a plane, but just barely. The only solution I've found for my own carsickness is to be the driver. I try not to fly. I do tend to get more sick in cars that are leaking exhaust into the car. We may not be able to smell it at all. I usually ride with a window open, even in the depths of winter (20 below 0 F ). Air conditioning is a really bad idea for me (and my kids). As a kid I just threw up all the time, until we got a new car which we drove for 6 months. I was just fine -- until we got back our old car. I was sick the first trip out. I assume our old car was leaking something that no one had found.

I wasn't impressed with Jacobs. It just seemed like another algebra text to me. We've done better with more meaty algebra texts than that. In your situation, what you probably want is a lot of worked out problems -- both example problems in the text and worked out solutions to the problem sets. I'm not sure which programs offer that but if I were in your position I wouldn't use any program that didn't.

Someone used our phone number to sign up for an internet download site. They were charging us every month on our phone bill. At first no one was interested in taking these charges off, as we obviously were "enjoying" the service. Apparently, all one needs to do to sign up for these things is give a phone number -- anybody's phone number will do -- and then you can use the service for free. I imagine there are a fair number of people who don't check their phone bills every month who would miss this and be charged for a long time.

I'm getting close to finishing up the Spanish Pimsleur CDs. I'd like to find something else that's easy in Spanish that I could listen to. Does anyone have any ideas?

My kids are both like this -- can't fall asleep until after midnight on a GOOD night. Usually it's later. When my daughter had an 8 AM class 3 days a week, she was just a wreck. She could not adjust, no matter how disciplined she was. She can be dead tired but she just lays in bed unable to sleep until her body decides it's the right time. This gets even worse if they've eaten anything they're allergic to. We've had them stay up very late, then try to cycle their clocks back around to the "right" time, but even that didn't work (despite how experts will tell you this will work.) For some kids, it's the distractions that are keeping them up and they need to just give up the texting after midnight. For others, there seems to be some deepseated biological cause. This is the major reason we pulled our eldest out of school in the first place. She had to be on the bus at 7 AM every morning. She needed 12 hours of sleep a night. We had her going to bed before my husband got home from work. She never saw him. And this only worked through 1st grade. By 2nd grade, she just wasn't sleeping. She'd lay awake until after midnight, and then go to sleep, only to be dragged out of bed for the school bus a few hours later. She couldn't even stay asleep after awhile because she was too tired to sleep. I couldn't sleep because I was always half awake listening for her to start running around the house with sleepwalking/night terrors. We were afraid she'd run out of the house and end up who knew where. Everything got better when we just let the kids sleep when they needed to sleep. And they still need about 12 hours of sleep a night. Our decision was to skip the school thing. And yes, our relatives are appalled. Now I understand this from my side of the family, where everyone is raring to go at the crack of dawn. But my husband's family are usually up til all hours and complaining about how little sleep they got.

Well, when our neighbor burns his trash, my daughter gets a migraine. If we only had some way of getting him to stop this, short of calling the fire dept out... (It's not like what he's doing is legal.) Oh, and yellow #5. Which would be easier to deal with if it were labelled as the law requires. Come to think of it, if people would just obey the law, she'd be a lot healthier.

I've read Punished by Rewards and The Case Against Standardized Testing. The first was interesting. He reports on a lot of research, which is the best part of the book. It does tend to be a little "overwritten". You can read the first part of each chapter and get the gist. The one about testing was also interesting, but I don't remember too much of it, having read it a long time ago. He has interesting ideas. Just because you might not agree with them all is no reason to skip his books. I did get the sense from Punished by Rewards that he probably isn't a stay at home parent, but I did find it helpful to read all his research into current work on Skinnerian psychology. I'd always felt like I was falling down on the parenting job by not providing a lot of rewards. In fact, if the more recent research is to be trusted, B. F. Skinner isn't to be trusted. Reading this book brought back memories of reading Beyond Freedom and Dignity (or was it Walden 2 that I read -- can't remember now). It seemed at the time to me that the ideas Skinner was proposing kind of went against human nature, but he was the authoritative psychologist...