Completely normal, and expected. That's why math classes do so much review. My kids couldn't even remember when they'd covered a topic before ("Mom! We have *never* covered that!). But I noticed that they learned it the second time a lot quicker than the first. (And even quicker the third and fourth time.) In higher level math, we've found it doesn't really do that much good to just keep going (ie, through the summer). The kids have a better attitude towards it if they have a break, but more importantly, there is often a big gap before the same topic comes around again. With those gaps, the kids would forget one thing while they were learning another anyway, so just keeping on with math isn't often a huge help in keeping "fresh". One of the things that would benefit from keeping fresh are solving simple algebra equations, but I've found that once that sinks in (probably after the 10th review or so) it becomes somewhat second nature and it isn't necessary to keep at it over the summer months. The other reason for taking breaks is to let the brain mature.

I second this. I don't think it will hurt you to take an extra year. Even if you flop around and do nothing, colleges won't hold it against you. They'll just figure you took another year to mature. Lots of kids take a year off to work, make money to go to college, pursue an interest, or just get their act together. If you have enriching things to keep you busy, you'll look even better. It could be that you will find that you still can't get through the science on your own. If that's the case, just move on to college and don't worry about it. If you have a lot of volunteer work that year, that will be way more valuable than getting through chemistry. You can pick up the science courses once you get to college. But you probably want to apply during the regular application season. There are deadlines to meet in the fall if you want to be considered for financial aid.

If you haven't used Ambleside before, I'd suggest not using the level that corresponds, number-wise, with your grade. There are lots of really good books in the lower levels that high school students would want to read. (And the upper level ones are generally really hard reads that most people do in college -- not to say you couldn't do them, but if they strike you as overwhelming, that might be why.) I've actually never used a real level. I've just used it as a reading list. If you just started at the beginning and picked out all the books that looked interesting and at a high enough level for a high schooler (which is a LOT of them in the early grades), you'd have a pretty full plate in literature. Maybe you could pick out the history readings from the higher levels. The primary documents have always struck me as the most interesting from those lists. I've used them for history and literature selections. We always did something else for science. The Ambleside science selections tend to be more history of science than the actual science you'd want to put on a high school transcript for college applications.

I found that as long as I explained what I was doing, the colleges were pretty open to just about anything. A couple of explanatory footnotes might be all that you'll need. I had a separate section of "courses taken before high school" where I put the beginning foreign language courses that my daughter continued into high school and the beginning math (Alg 1 and 2, Geometry) because I thought it might look funny to NOT have those on the transcript. I didn't list anything else she did before, even if they were high school level. She had enough other stuff in the 4 years of high school that it wasn't necessary. I ended up not listing the Latin she had done before high school, even though it really could have counted for a year or two of high school. She didn't go on in Latin, so I didn't feel we had the "support" for listing it. Also, she had three other languages, so I didn't feel the need. I also listed everything by subject (it was more compact), so it made it easier to nudge a couple classes into high school when they were really at the end of 8th grade -- at least, that was my intent. But when it came time to make up the transcript, I found I couldn't get all those classes onto one page, so the 8th grade classes got dropped anyway. You could just give her one year credit (the high school year). If she accumulates enough other credit, it won't matter. I suspect that this happens in many ps schools as well, where students start in middle school on a subject and then finish it up in high school. I had this happen myself with a science course. As far as I know, the middle school part of it just never made it onto my transcript. The general rule of thumb is that English and social studies classes from middle school do not go on the high school transcript, even if they were high school level. The assumption is that the student will go on to do even higher level work in high school, where it will be obvious that they are advanced, so reporting the earlier work is kind of irrelevant. It would only be necessary if the college had some kind of US history requirement that your daughter had already fulfilled in 8th grade -- but if she has a full year in high school, that probably won't be an issue.

Also this thread had some advice and links: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=201657 http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/forums/6/1/Digital%20Pianos%20-%20Synths%20&%20.html http://www.pianobuyer.com/

Do you think you need a full piano, or will a smaller keyboard work? There are big differences in price, and a beginner may not need the full 88 keys. You might ask the teacher what they recommend. These are a couple review/advice pages I ran into while searching for full digital pianos: http://www.allaboutpianos.com/digitalfaq.html http://www.ukpianos.co.uk/digital-pianos-which-brand-should-i-buy.html http://www.read-and-play-piano.com/kawai-digital-piano.html I'm not sure how old these reviews are (whether these models are still available or if the issues noted are still a problem) but they gave me some good points to think about. My SIL has a Clavinova. She likes it, but claims the tuning of the fifths gives her a headache. I haven't played one long enough to understand what she's talking about. She uses it to teach piano. There are a lot of gimmicks on the Clavinova that really impress her students, so they often prefer to play that over her grand piano. Despite that, she does seem to think it's a good piano. I also read another review that recommended Kawai over Yamaha, but I'm having trouble finding that one. We also have a weighted key piano keyboard that isn't nearly as expensive as the full digital pianos. It has fewer than 88 keys, but for a beginner, those really aren't needed. I think we paid about 150 dollars new for it. I can't remember the brand, but it does have weighted keys. It's perfectly functional and probably great for a beginner. I actually like playing it. Does your teacher have an opinion on what would be best? (My only advice would be to make sure you can position the keyboard at the right height --either with a purchased stand, or with a table that happens to be the right height. You might need your teacher's advice for that.) If you want to order one online, I've had good luck with Musician's Friend -- although for items that were considerably cheaper. Sometimes they have used instruments, which might be worth looking into. Alternatively, for the short run, you might be able to find a cheap -- or free-- upright acoustic piano. (My neighbor was just giving one away last week.) The digital piano would likely be a lot more rewarding to play than a dead acoustic piano, but for a beginner, for awhile, a crummy acoustic might be just fine. (Of course, if you had to pay to move it and tune it, you might be better off, financially, with the digital piano.) I'd be wary of buying an acoustic instrument online without being able to try it, but a digital instrument might not be as dicey.

Nova (PBS) did a series called Evolution. The one we found most interesting was Darwin's Dangerous Idea (but the others were also good). Our library has the whole set, but if you can't get it there, much of it seems to be on youtube. Here's the first part of the Darwin episode: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9073555471451092793 Here is the Nova resource site: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/overviews/0000_evodarwi.html And here are a number of other Nova shows on evolution: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/ Also, these videos put up by the anonymous "potholer54" are actually pretty good (my college biology teaching husband has actually used a couple in his classes): I haven't found a website that just has these videos, so you'd have to hunt around youtube for the rest in the series. You'll also see a number of uninformed comments on these videos from people who obviously didn't watch them, or chose not to get the point. (Although this guy originally put these up anonymously, he doesn't appear to just be some crackpot. He recently "came out", as it were. I think he's a professor somewhere. I forget the details.) If you want to spend a lot of money, you could get access to Thinkwell's Biology which has a lot on evolution. A lot cheaper would be getting any decent college general biology textbook and reading the chapters on evolution. A local library might have such texts. Or you can buy them used on amazon for a couple dollars (if you get an older edition which will likely be virtually identical to the current edition). Campbell and Reece is a standard text (if you need a name), but most texts used in college courses would do. ETA -- if you're looking for evolution vs creationism you probably won't find much of that in standard science texts. They're written to teach the science. To them, creationism is just an odd blip way out there on the landscape that doesn't amount to much. If you're mostly looking for the debate between them, from the evolution point of view, probably the potholer54 youtube videos are your best bet.

Two. It's a lot easier to read. I know copy editors often insist one is the "standard", but I think they're just repeating a rule they heard, rather than putting some thought into what reads better. If typesetters have a problem with that, they can take out the extra space. It's not that hard to do. But while one is working on the draft, it really makes sense to leave the double space in.

I missed posting this on the Ugh thread before it was closed: This guy lives in a 96 square foot apartment. Good thing he doesn't play piano, I guess. Or string bass.

If you really want to compare scores across the decades, look at the percentile rankings. If your percentile was the same as your son's, then you scored about the same, regardless of the numerical score. This is assuming about the same population took the test, which might not be completely true. There may be more kids taking it now as more kids might be applying to college. Also, the test might be testing somewhat different things, although the basic math and reading tests are probably fairly similar.

I did not weight grades. There was often an option to check whether the transcript GPA was weighted or unweighted on the college admissions forms. I was also careful to note on the transcript that the GPA was unweighted. I also made sure to point out if she'd taken an AP test following a certain class, although I didn't call the class AP. I didn't list anything as honors. I figured the class list spoke for itself. As far as giving grades -- I didn't want to, but every college my daughter looked at insisted on grades and a GPA. Initially, I just gave her all A's and made a note that "we teach to mastery" or some such thing, which gave a basis for why they were all A's. But then she started taking outside classes and getting all A's anyway, so I didn't bother with the mastery note anymore. I sometimes wonder if my giving her all A's gave her something to live up to. But, as I asked my husband when we were discussing this and he thought a straight A transcript might look fishy, WHICH class did he propose to give her a B in? At what point could he honestly say she hadn't done A work? Anyway grading on a strict numerical scale is just silly. 90 percent does not mean an A -- it just means that's the the numerical score that students reached when the teacher/professor thought they knew the material. In some classes, that percent might be as low as 50 and the student might still get an A. A grade, no matter how you package it, is still just the teacher's gut reaction on how well the student knew the material.

We've used Pimsleur. It was good, except now we're done with it and we're not sure what to use next. I think we really need a tutor at this point, but we don't really have time for one more outside activity. With Pimsleur, we got to the point where we could understand a fair amount of spoken Spanish, and reply appropriately if we thought about it a lot, but we're not fast enough to carry on an actual conversation. (We checked Pimsleur out of the library.) My kids didn't get too much out of Rosetta Stone except vocabulary. We did kind of like it when it was free at the library, but it didn't seem to teach enough to justify spending anywhere near the kind of money they're now asking for it. You might also try the Michel Thomas CDs if your library has them. They don't do nearly as much as Pimsleur, but they're a nice intro that lasts a week or so. I wouldn't buy them, though. They're a bit pricey for what they are. You might also try watching Destinos at the Annenberg site (where the videos are free). The people who did Destinos also put out Sol y Viento (?), but we found that we could only understand Sol y Viento *after* doing a good chunk of Destinos. I think the later program maybe is just too much immersion without explanation. Sol y Viento has been put up on youtube by various people, sometimes with Spanish subtitles, which is a big help. BTW, the guy at our college who does the study abroad programs in Mexico (Spanish is his second language, but he's pretty proficient) also recommends Rosetta Stone, but he didn't learn his Spanish from that program. I think it might just look really good to someone who already knows Spanish. The audio is clear (which is a big difference from some other programs) and that may be swaying people's opinions. I didn't find that I learned much Spanish from Rosetta Stone alone. I started using Pimsleur as a supplement. And then I didn't see the need for RS anymore.

But you can compare translations! Looks like a grad school level class to me.

It seems to depend on the violin. I've got one violin that doesn't really take to the Dominant E string, but another that does just fine with it. I think the E string tends to be the least pricey of the set, so it's not as gut wrenching to experiment with it: http://www.johnsonstring.com/cgi-bin/stringsearch/stringsearch.cgi http://www.johnsonstring.com/Choosing%20Strings.htm I know a lot of people put Dominants on the 3 lower strings and go with something else for the E string. But it could very well be playing technique that is the problem, and that changing the string won't make much difference.

I got the invite (Thanks!), but they're asking for my phone number for "verification". I'm less than thrilled about them selling this piece of info to anyone who feels like trying to sell me something. Did everyone else have to give their phone number? If so, did you get unwanted calls following that?

I harvested a bunch last year -- but we'd already had a hard freeze, so I just threw them in the freezer as is without blanching (and without letting them thaw). They weren't quite as tasty as fresh, but I thought they were still edible. (My husband refused to eat them, saying they had an off flavor, but as he didn't even taste them, I'm not sure how he came by this information.) However, those ones that were frozen, I should point out, had probably been sitting on the plants a little too long, so it's hard to say why they were of somewhat lower quality. And I can't remember now if they were still firm enough to roast. The frozen ones I've gotten at the store have been AWFUL. The ones that froze in our garden were better. You might also just consider storing them in your vegetable drawer for awhile. We had them in there for a number of weeks one year, and they were actually better than the ones that got frozen. We ended up eating the last of them on Christmas. I think we'd picked them in early October.

Try this link: http://www.lalibrairiedesecoles.com/librairie/histoire-geo,4 and scroll down to get to the things that are free online (or at least some of them?) I couldn't find whole books, but maybe I'm missing them. If clicking on them doesn't work, you could try signing up by following this link: www.lalibrairiedesecoles.com But it took some poking around to get into things. I think I clicked on a button that said something like "creer un compte", but now that I've signed up, it won't let me back to that page to check on what it was. ETA: ok, maybe this will work: http://www.lalibrairiedesecoles.com/inscription

Is there some trick to getting on to Google + ? When I've tried, they've told me they've exceeded their capacity.

There's a lot of stuff that's out of copyright that's online: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/ Ambleside Online has links to many of their suggested books that are online: http://www.amblesideonline.org/06bks.shtml I linked just one of their years. You might search the others as well.

Around us, I think they have changed the criteria for poor air quality. As a result, we have a lot more of these alerts than we used to. So it could be that you've experienced these days before without incident. You likely won't know how it affects him unless you give it a try. If it were me, I'd try to have an exit plan just in case, but I'd probably go ahead with the activities. However, I might not want to have someone with asthma planning on anything really heavy. So putt-putt golf might be fine, but running a race, maybe not. My daughter's asthma doesn't seem to be all that affected by what the general air quality is. She's more likely to react to local air quality -- campfires nearby, woodstoves, high chlorine content in the pool, etc.

The schools around us do Unit 1 over one year -- or even over two. I think they spend a lot of time on word roots to fill out the year. My take on it was that Unit 1 and only part of Unit 2 would make a year. I think completing both in one year might be rushed.

I would freeze it in half cup increments, or whatever you use most commonly. Actually, when cream goes on sale, I freeze it as 1/2 cup cream with 1 cup milk and then I can just pop it out of the freezer whenever I want to make ice cream. Or you could make a cream filling layer for a cake.

Yeah -- "this is just a courtesy call." Um, no it isn't. As we're on the do not call list, I'm guessing that all sales calls we get are illegal. When I point this out the them, they usually tend to hang up in a hurry. But I'd rather scream at them. Really. I know jobs are hard to come by, but I wouldn't think anyone would really want to be involved in illegal activity. And we are now getting those automated "we can lower your credit card rate" several times a day. I don't answer the phone until someone tries to leave a message on the answering machine. It probably sounds rude, but I can't deal with hopping up over and over for that.

My daughter only applied fully to 2 schools. They both promptly accepted her and offered scholarships before she finished applying to the other 3. Those were her top two choices anyway, so she didn't bother with the others. She got good aid at both, but went with the one that was 3000 dollars less and had a second major that she was interested in. Her friends in ps were routinely applying to 15 schools. But they were perfectly willing to live far away, while my daughter didn't see the point of spending the extra money (she's living at home - not that we ever see her). That limited her choices. Several of those kids who applied to 15 schools all over the country ended up going to college 10 minutes away, although, admittedly, the college they ended up at is highly selective and all that. Maybe they felt it wasn't a safe bet they'd get in so they wanted to apply to more. Sometimes, though, I think a lot of the applications are just kids trying to "find" themselves. They have a little fling with imagining being here and there, and then they're a bit happier when they do settle down with a choice -- even if that choice is the highly acclaimed college across the street. We didn't find that any of the schools my daughter wanted to apply to charged fees for putting in an application, as long as the applications was done online. So the cost was just sending out the ACT scores. ETA: my younger one is talking as if she will only apply to the one school where my oldest is going. She thinks it's a good fit, so she might as well go with that. It's close and will be cheap. I guess she figures, what more can she ask? Now she just needs to pick a major.

We've been doing bio and chem concurrently, just because of the way things worked out. It's a fair amount of work. We're probably doing what would be considered the second year of each (or AP level), so it's more advanced. I don't think we'd have time to do physics at the same time as these two. However, if we were doing a lower level of chem and bio (or going a lot slower), we could fit in a lower level physics. I'm not sure it would be possible to fit in all 3 at the second year/AP level, still get in the math that's necessary for AP/2nd year physics, and fit in everything else besides. So my guess is that concurrent science works fine if one isn't trying to do AP level. Then, probably only 2 sciences could be fit in, unless you drop a lot of other things.