He will have 3 high school credits and two credits for college level math- one semester is one credit for high school for a total of 5 credits. He does need another credit at least with a possible additional .5 PE credit if I can figure out something different for him than his current .5 PE credit. He just completed 6.5 credits this past year and has 1-2 credits from 8th grade already if I choose to take them. They were both high school level work - one in foreign language and one in math.

He needs a computer science course of some sort for a lot of reasons and I can see him liking web design if anything. Where could I find something that will teach him this for free or cheap?

This is my sophomore's schedule for next year so far: Potter's School: Chemistry - pre-AP ; Writing - by the end of it, he will be ready for college level writing; Government College Algebra at the Community College. He is done with his foreign language credits per my requirements. Is this enough? Does he need another credit worthy class? As you can see, it's all very hands off. I am not good with grading and keeping my high schooler accountable so we farm most of it out. I don't want it to be too intense because Potter's school classes do require a lot and it will be his first time on a college campus. He's done about 20 hours on art type projects (pretty intricate cardboard sculpting) and I could round it off with a video art course of some sort? Help! Beth

I could easily spend $1000/month with our family of 6 (two teen boys) and not shop at Whole Foods. For us to shop there and not get anything processed, but buy grass fed beef and chicken and good produce, we'd be looking at $1500 a month starting. No way I'm going to spend more on groceries than my mortgage, property taxes, and utilities combined!

I always put the child who was testing in my bedroom closet with a clipboard. Not really ideal, but that way, I could close two doors. It's harder if you actually have to read the test as you do sometimes with the younger students.

It depends on the age. My daughter was similar in a lot of things. She is in 2nd grade. Part of the reason is that a good portion of the test is oral instead of read at that age. She is easily distracted and could easily get medicated for ADD if we wanted. I did give her a practice test and here is an example of a test question (not actual, but they do go something like this): Mary has 5 apples and 6 oranges. She gives 3 apples to her friend Sue. How many apples does she have now? Now, if my daughter saw that on paper, she may still get a little tripped up, but at least have a chance. With that question, by the time the proctor gets to the end, she has forgotten everything but "How many apples does she have now?" Reading is similar with the oral confusion. She also failed on punctuation. I choose to just work on basic sentence structure in 2nd grade -- start with a capital letter and end with a punctuation mark. The test went way beyond that. Also, I know where she's at and she's doing just fine for her grade. Could she have better listening skills. Yes. Will she need to know more than basic punctuation? Yes, and we'll get there eventually. But I know what she needs and I'm pretty sure you know the abilities of your child also. Don't do what the schools do and base your entire year on one test.

My first reaction to this question was: :lol: BWAHAHAHAHAH He really wants to and says he will teach xyz, but never gets around to it. He has a pretty all consuming job and just doesn't have the time although he has the desire. He is teaching Mr. 15 year old how to drive and I consider us even.

What was the weirdest or just plain out uncomfortable speaker/ homeschool convention you went to? I remember being enticed by a speaker who I thought was going to talk about a homeschool related topic and it turned into a marriage talk. I can't remember who they were, but basically, it was a talk on how to keep your marriage strong even when homeschooling. The wife was one of these do it all type people who was running a business for a curriculum that she developed. They started talking about how their marriage suffered and now they are much better. They then proceeded trying to one up each other on the podium about how much better they were acting than their spouse. Very passive aggressive. I remember wanting to yell out, "You have a lot more work to do on this marriage thing!!!! Maybe you shouldn't be talking about this in public yet!!!" It was very uncomfortable sitting in the audience watching them have a passive aggressive fight on stage for 45 minutes.

I had a dust buster sitting on the floor of our kitchen and a couple of days later installed the hook for it on the wall. A day after that, I heard a rustling sound coming from the thing. A mouse had gotten into the thing and got stuck. We had been using the dust buster for days with that thing stuck inside! Yuck!!!

Compassion International - they may have some one time gift options.

I have my 6th grader enrolled in Writing Fundamentals which is the 6th grade class much like the one you listed. My 15 year old has done Potter's school English classes since 7th grade and I am very impressed with what they have required of him. I haven't had a bad class with them yet.

Also, toddlers and crafts or toddlers and science experiments are enough to make a mom go nutty immediately. There's nothing like the chaos a toddler can bring to the table and the "me do it myself" that makes the whole hands on experience for the older child go downhill very quickly.

Yes. Phonics, handwriting, and math. Focus on the minimums and get lots of books from the library just to have around to look at and to read when you're feeling up to it. Just a caution. Sometimes when you're new to homeschooling and buy the all in one curriculum, it's hard to edit stuff out. You feel like since it's written down you should do it and if you don't, you feel like you're failing your child. If you keep it to the basics, they are still getting a good education and you're not burning out. The basics was kindergarten for all of my homeschooled kids. Everything else (history, science) is gravy.

I wonder if this is part of the reason my dh's previous job started making things very unfavorable for him at work. He got significant pay cuts and a lot of other things that were unwarranted. He was at a small company (around 60 employees) and we have two children with ongoing expensive medical needs. Before the pay cut, my oldest had two VERY expensive surgeries and one minor surgery and we adopted a child with medical needs and she had a surgery. I always wondered if we were costing their insurance plan too much and they wanted him out. He is now working for a company with a much larger employee base so the costs can be absorbed a bit better.

Just a caution with these type of programs. As more and more people sign up for these programs, more and more doctors refuse to take them as insurance. We qualified when we lived in a small town (the income level for our family was $90K - we made much less than that) and were able to find clinics that accepted it no problem. When we moved to a larger city, there were very few pediatricians that would accept the program. Once my husband got a better job with better benefits, I hightailed it out of that program even though we still qualified. So, yes, these are great programs for people who really can't afford healthcare for their kids, but be aware that there may be a limit of which doctors can afford to accept this as insurance. Dentists are particularly resistant to accept these programs. My sister, who's kids are on a program like this, couldn't find a dentist anywhere close to her that would take it and were reduced to the free dentist clinic through her public school. Nothing like a dental cleaning on a lawn chair. Still - free which really was their only option for a dental visit at that time.

My ds had all of his removed at 15. He had two that erupted on the bottom. On one side, he was constantly chewing on his inside cheek because of where it was positioned and on the other side, it wasn't going to come in all the way and had already started an infection cycle ( every 2-3 months, it would get a little infected). Since we were getting the bottom teeth out, we just had them do the top teeth which weren't in yet just to get it all over in one shot. My 17 year old special needs kiddo still hasn't had them erupt. I'm hoping a little that they don't because with him, it's a trip to the hospital for general anesthesia and can't be done in the oral surgeon's office.

http://www.vayarin.com If you look at the brochure, it says that they contain Krill oil. We use Neptune Krill oil supplements. I didn't buy this drug, but did the Krill oil to see if it would help first before resorting to a drug that was basically a nutritional supplement.

Our doctor recommended a drug that was milder than the others. I looked it up. It was Krill Oil. I'm not sure if they made it better by making it into a drug, but it's still Krill Oil. I did buy it for DD and it has helped. There are still some days that she yells at her brain to concentrate (yes, she literally yells), but overall, her ability to concentrate on school tasks is better. It takes 30-40 days to get enough into their system though so the results aren't immediate.

Any good book suggestions for my 12 year old boy? He likes books with technology and cool invention type things. I don't want Harry Potter type stuff (I did read them - they freaked me out - just don't want this child reading them - he's a little sensitive). He also has read a bunch of classic type books. And yes, he judges a book by it's cover. Thanks!

I did Iowa Basics with my 8 year old and 11 year old. They both did as expected. My 11 year old scored high and my 8 year old's score was barely grade level. This I totally expected since a lot of that test is oral (with the assumption that reading levels are not higher) and my daughter is ADD, so I knew that between the start of the oral question and actually having to write down anything would be a disaster. I was right. Her listening scores were barely above the level where the state feels the need to intervene. BUT, I know her strengths and weaknesses and she's doing much better than a test would be able to tell me. Everyone says not to really stress about these tests, but when you have a child who struggles, it becomes a little harder to ignore them.

I have a friend in that area looking for a house. The last house they bid on had 26!!!! offers and the thing sold for more than listing price.

My son's friends had iPad textbooks in high school. They told him how a lot of kids did social media and played games during class. Someone had figured out how to get past the web access restrictions and had told his friends who told their friends, etc. Other's experience may vary.

So, I'm trying to introduce more vegetables into our diet and tonight we tried spaghetti squash with spaghetti sauce. My 15 year old is in the kitchen burping up a storm. There is an ozone hole being created over our house as I type. :glare: My stomach is feeling a little gassy also. Spaghetti squash is supposed to be low gas producing. What is happening here?

My 15 year old has started doing online surveys for teens and gets paid for it. He gets Amazon credit or "points" where he can bid for products like iPod shuffles and then sells those on eBay. He's figured out their system and has used it to his advantage.

i was thinking about starting this because my two youngest have gut issues that is showing up in different ways. I would like to go on it based on gut issues I have had. So, as long as half are on it, why not the whole family? The problem is trying to fill up growing children. I have two teen boys and 1 pre-teen who if anything like his 15 year old brother is going to be hitting a growth spurt soon. The carbs like bread and pasta have saved our grocery bill.