I think they know that accidents happen, but young riders in particular, are still at the stage where they think it won't happen to them. They think they are invincible. There are plenty of young people at the CCI* level. With the right horse, it doesn't take that long to get there. What bothers me most is when cross country people just shrug and say, "Oh, well." Someone dies and the event continues like it's no big deal. "She died doing what she loves." Seriously? I'm pretty sure she would prefer to still be riding. :(

It's not so much the inherent risk of riding horses. My daughter rides constantly, and we are at an eventing barn. The problem for me, is that, at some point, you have to stop pushing the limit on the cross country courses. You can only jump so high/far and turn so tight. I just think we might be pushing it too far sometimes. We have many horses at our barn that were former racehorses. They have lots of problems, especially the damage done from running in a circle in the same direction all the time. There has to be a balance. You can enjoy riding without killing yourself or your horse, barring something unforeseen. But the number of dead athletes, both human and equine, on the cross country field of late is concerning, not to mention the number of severe injuries.

What is killing the eventers is the same thing that is killing the horses....rotational falls. The worst part is that plenty of the riders are teenagers. They just have no clue the danger that they are in, but horses are dropping left and right along with the riders.

Even more disturbing is the number of eventers that have been killed in the past few months. It's even more tragic when it's the riders who are dying. It is senseless.

We did CC for 3 years, and I tutored for two of those. I honestly don't recommend trying to line things up. CC jumps around a lot in every subject, so it is difficult to line up. I just used whatever curriculum I liked, and used CC as memory work. Connections are made whenever you study the topic. If you are set on lining things up, there are tons of resources that line up SOTW, MOH, etc. with CC. You can also use the history and science cards as resources and teach directly from them while adding reading from the library.

I don't have any ideas as far as lyrics, but it would be fun to look up musical terms in their sheet music to see what their origins are. There are a ton of musical terms that come from Latin since they are Italian. It would by helpful to look up the etymology of these words. Off the top of my head....tempo from the Latin tempus (time).......forte from the Latin fortis (time)....fine from the Latin finire (to finish).

My husband died when my daughter was 3, and I have always homeschooled. I think it is made more difficult because she is an only child. There are some days when our only interaction with people is with each other. The hardest part for me is balancing everything.....school, travel to extracurriculars, part-time job from home. I really don't have a life outside of that, but it's okay for now.

We are schooling math at home, so I'm sure that makes a huge difference. In her Latin class, when filling out charts on the whiteboard for the class, the students are able to use the keyboard to type them in. This obviously wouldn't work for math, though. They communicate through chat/webcam for literature.

My daughter hasn't needed a digital pen yet. I would probably just contact Wilson Hill because they would know what kinds of problems you may or may not encounter with a chromebook.

We have used Omnibus in the past and will continue to do so. There is really nothing else out there like it. You can use any level at any time, but some of the books and/or assignments tend to get harder in the high school level from what I've heard. Because it is just a collection of essays, you can pick and choose which books to read. In that regard, it is very flexible. We don't have the same beliefs as some of the authors and sometimes disagree with their opinions, but that's okay. It is an essay, after all. We can take what we want from the discussion. I'm not really happy about the plagiarism issue. It looks for the most part that someone was extremely lazy in adding in all the sidebars and did not cite sources. This happened across the board with many essays. I don't know at this point who was in charge of doing this and whether the editors were even aware of it. It is pretty easy to trust someone to do what's right and then get burned. There were just too many hands on this project to tell who was responsible. I'm also not happy about the fact that VP has not released a statement. They DO know who added in all the extra information from wikipedia or wherever and need to do somthing about it. They need to probably release a digital copy with sources cited and pull the hard copies. In spite of all that, there is nothing else available with that kind of information and discussion available, so........

For those of you who have used Latin Alive, do you think it is helpful to follow up with Henle as a method of reviewing after Latin Alive 1? I feel exactly the same about Latin Alive. My daughter is taking it in an online setting, but there is almost no homework because of the very few exercises in each chapter. For those of us that know little Latin, it is hard to help them study the chapters besides flashcards. I would love a set of extra worksheets or at least some structured method to study the text.

I can understand how a lot of these examples given could happen accidentally, though. (Not all, obviously). It is easy to plagiarize when you are stating a lot of facts or writing a simple narrative, especially when the narrative uses simple vocabulary and is chronological. You almost have to reinvent the wheel to keep from doing it. Facts are facts and a simple retelling of a story makes it harder to be original. You will find exact matches in other literature somewhere. I also think some of these can be attributed to sloppy editing when you cite page numbers and lines without the actual sources. It should really be automatic to cite the sources.

I like Keith Snell's fundamentals of piano theory and have heard teachers rave about Theory Time. http://www.theorytime.com

I would have to say that you might not be able to find a "perfect" barn at all, especially as you start to specialize. We live in a very populated area surrounded by rural areas where everyone rides western. The majority of the very few English barns in the area are hunter barns. My daughter's love is dressage. There is only one dressage/eventing barn, so we have to be happy where we are even though it is a fairly long drive (45 minutes). Sometimes you just have to make it work, as long as it is a safe environment, of course.

This looks very similar to our 9th grade plans. I am assuming that your Veritas self-paced is Omnibus I. We did this on our own in 7th grade. It is a tremendous amount of reading, probably more than other years. The only thing I am concerned with is that there is a lot of self-paced screen time. These self-paced classes can be just more and more of the same thing. I think it could be tiring. At least, that was our experience with elementary self-paced classes. We chose to go with Wilson Hill for Omnibus because it just seems a little more manageable. I think as long as you are flexible with the omnibus classes, you are good.

I had this done about 10 years ago. I did not have insurance, so I chose to not have anesthesia and just have a local. In spite of that, it was still no big deal. I remember it being sore for 2-3 days. I had had the cyst my entire life and just had it removed at the same time I had a cyst removed from my arm and a few moles removed. All of this was done with a plastic surgeon in his office. I don't think you have anything to worry about at all.

My daughter rode for 3 years (from 10-13) only once a week using a lesson horse. You can definitely make good progress going this route, not as much as riding 4-5 days a week with your own horse, but still good. It is also nice as a beginner to not lease or buy and ride a lot of different horses. She will need a helmet and some simple boots with a heel, and that is really it to start. I also agree with regentrude about learning horsemanship. She should learn how to groom and tack herself. You really want to look for a barn with horse people who are fully invested in their horses, not a place with professional grooms.

Horseback riding--horse, boarding, lessons, shows, helmets, clothes for the rider, "clothes" for the horse. It is never ending. Even if you don't compete at all, it is expensive.

We have the double whammy next year Mr. Etter for GC3 and Mr. Martin for Logic 1. Yeah!!! Now if I could just talk her into Latin 2 with Mrs. Hensley, that would be a stellar year! She is so not into Latin...... :(

I think that my daughter would cry if she didn't have Mr. Martin next year. Me: "What class do you want to take next year at WH?" Daughter: "What does Mr. Martin teach?" Me: "Logic." Daughter: "Sign me up for that." Me: :hurray:

My dd is enrolled in his Logic I course for the fall. To me the only downside is that there is probably going to be a lot of cramming and less discussion. I think she is really looking forward to the practice of using logic through discussion and writing, and Mr. Martin really excels in this area. It might be good for students who have already had logic, though, as a refresher.

Once Macs get to be a certain age, they can't be updated because they don't support the new software. That's the case form my 2010 desktop. I can just use what is on here because it is too old to update further. Same thing with my ipad.

So, the only difference is just that you have to read/organize/connect the information on the spot? I would think, though, that if you can write an essay connecting various sources that you have read, you could do a DBQ. Right? My dd is going into high school next year, so I am trying to make sure she is doing what she should be. There's a lot to think about.

I can only compare Orange Beach (east of Dauphin Island) and Pensacola. Pensacola is totally worth the drive even if it is farther. The water is considerably better. The beaches in the Fort Pickens area are really lovely and less crowded as well. Enjoy your trip!

i'm going to probably show my ignorance here. But, can someone explain to me what the difference is between a dbq and an essay? It just sounds like an essay that cites a source, but maybe I'm missing something.