No. We're doing it with our 7th & 8th graders. They have done general and did just fine in it. Another friend who has an 8th grader is also doing Apologia Bio this year too. :)

I agree. I'm one of those very ordered oriented people but I'm trying to find ways to relax and let things be more spontaneous without it rattling me. I'm not spring chicken either. :)

On your skin: Water only spreads the fire so don't wash your hand until you neutralize the`heat. Capsaicin — the compound that gives peppers their heat isn't soluble in water, but chlorine or ammonia turns it into a salt, which IS soluble in water. In a little bowl add 1 part bleach to 5 parts water and just dip your hands quickly, but don't soak your hands in this solution or it may irritate your skin.

I've had it for years. I love it and use it a lot. It would be something you would want to make an effort to use consistently if you bought it because it is costly. Every week when I do our schedule, I work in unitedstreaming videos, interactives and print out any associated worksheets. We are almost done with the middle school spanish that we did this summer as a refresher between Spanish I that ended in Spring and Spanish II that begins in Sept. In my experience, Unitedstreaming works best for us when I schedule it along with my planning. I use the 'My Content' feature to organize the videos that I want into an easy access format. I put all of the Spanish videos in a file and when I wanted one, I just went right to the file. I have the Plus version and like that I have access to more videos.

So far so good here! Ds started back last Tues. He said the classes are going to be easy and interesting. He is mostly working on classes for his major in Video Gaming Design.:001_smile:

We did Monster Storms this summer. It was really good and the girls enjoyed it. I love that it was all free too! :)

This is how I pronounce it too.

Apple Dump Cake Get out the crockpot or slow cooker and use your clean fingers to grease the sides and bottom real good with a dab of butter... 
Dump in 2 cans of apple pie filling. 
Dump in a box of spice cake mix.*You can spread it out some DON'T stir it or mix the layers! 
Dump 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, 1/4 cup brown sugar and chopped up nuts on top of that. (Are you beginning to see why it's called a "Dump" cake?)
**
Finally, cover the whole top with a stick of butter cut into thin layers, put the lid on and let it cook for about 3 hours. Serve it up warm with a big dollop of whipped cream & enjoy! I've made this with white cake and cherry filling and that is yummy too!

I've seen this too. Mostly at co-ops though. I've often wondered how some of those hsing moms work in the hsing when they are so involved in the social/mentoring aspect of hsing. They must be super-women. :)

Hey! The Kitchen Chemistry open course from MIT has a lesson on Wacky Cake! We're doing it this fall. :)

I agree! We tried RS for Latin and it was horrible. We spent more time trying to guess at what we were supposed to be doing than actually learning something. I tried a free RS for Spanish at the library and it was the same thing. I tried Powerglide Jr and didn't like it either. My faves are the Spanish programs from University of Northern Arizona that are on Discovery Streaming and FL Virtual School. I would only do a language for school that taught the grammar.

Totally useful for us! We love maps so it is something we use a lot. Tolkien was into maps in a big way and that is reflected in his works so the atlas is a great addition to the study. We're using the Atlas of Middle-Earth by Fonstad.

is it secular? I believe it is. I haven't seen anything yet that leads me think differently. is it enough for 8th grade LA? We're using it for a 7th grader and 8th grader this year.We're adding a separate resource for writing and grammar. I consider this mostly a comprehension course. what do i need to purchase? You'll need the compiled 50th anniversary novel, Student workbook and Teacher guide. I also added an atlas of middle earth that I bought on Amazon. how much time do i allot per day? We do half of the daily work outlined in the syllabus per day because we're extending the study. how much time to complete it? a year or less? For us, since we're extending, I'd say maybe about a year and half. what do you like / not like? So far I like the story and the assignments are no stress. We've had some interesting conversations as we've progressed in the program. So far I've had no dislikes.

Open Courseware are free college level courses on the internet for use by anyone. They can be very complete with video lectures, a syllabus, lesson plans and worksheets etc. MIT offers a lot of courses and other colleges like Yale, Univ of Washington, Harvard, etc offer open courseware. If you google it, you'll come up with a lot of links. The MIT one is here: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm We're really getting into open courseware in our homeschool. There are some real gems out there! :D

Just finishing: Hogwarts Summer Correspondence School-We did Herbology, Astronomy & Cooking. Forensics through Duke TIP (fantastic!) Fall:MIT's Open courseware Kitchen Chemistry, Unit Study on haunted places through Universal Class (for a fun Halloween project), Yale's Open courseware Roman Architecture. I'm putting together a primate study this year using open courseware too. We're also doing a large unit study on Buddhism using the online secondary student syllabus at Buddhanet.com.

We had a very bad experience with the BARF diet. It made the dog so sick. We didn't have access to fresh meat. We just had the store meat which even though it may seem fresh may in fact have been frozen and thawed. It was quite expensive but we would have kept with it if it was healthy for our dog. But she had very bad loose stools and vomiting. She also had a difficult time actually eating the raw diet and made a huge mess when she tried to eat it. I would not do that again. I have however made our own dog food but it was cooked and ground muscle meats. She did well on the cooked diet. Cooked it in a slow cooker, ground it up (juice and all) and put it in freezer zip locks. I would do it once every 2 mos and each ziplock held enough for her meals for a day. Now she is on Pedigree. We were making the dog food when the contamination scare was going on.

I have 4 cats and it seems that the only time they know their names is if I simultaneously rattle the food bowl while calling them. They rarely just come when I call unless they think there is some kind of reward or they are in the mood and at at point it doesn't really matter what I call them. They would come if I called them by the dogs or kids names as long as they were in the mood to come. If you new guy is motivated by food then I'd use that to encourage him to come-it may not help him know his name but he'll learn to come. :)

I'm so happy for you! You deserve this happiness! :thumbup:

Tips...hummm...well having taken one through hs and into college I can say that he didn't spend 9 hrs a day on schoolwork. He took upper level mathematics and 2 years of Latin and the sciences. I am wondering what your scheduling looks like. Is it possible you are not spreading out the work most efficiently? Is there a possibility that there is some inefficient use of the study time? The times that you are coming up with seem excessive based on what I've experienced. We do a lot in our hs and supplement quite a bit too and I've never had days that long on a consistent basis. I'd like to try to help but I'd need more info. I suspect the key may be somewhere in scheduling and efficient use of study time.:)

:iagree: This very reason is one of the main reasons we took our son out of private school and began homeschooling. The last year at private, they used Saxon for math and the teacher was so disorganized and flaky and the school year so broken up that they did less than 1/3 of the book for the whole year. I ended up doing a crash course over the summer with ds. :)

Here are my bookmarks for our Forensics Study: http://www.nclark.net/Backpack_Mystery.pdf http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ScienceP/forensic/ http://www.forensic.santoshraut.com/ http://forensics.rice.edu/ http://apps.trutv.com/forensics_curriculum/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/oj/view/ http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/simpson/simpson.htm http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Simpson/Simpsonaccount.htm http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/body-mind/psychology/misidentification-can-you-identify-the-criminal http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/body-mind/psychology/identifying-faces http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/body-mind/psychology/professor-elizabeth-loftus-on-distorted-memory http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/murder/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/oxford/murder/ http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Myst/en/game/index.phtml http://www.trutv.com/shows/forensic_files/index.html#c=/video/forensic-files/hear-no-evil.html http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone/comic/ I used Duke TIp Clues In Crime for our 'spine'. Our local science museum had a CSI exhibit and the girls got to solve 3 cases using most of the different types of evidence analysis. They also were able to attend a Mystery Night at the local library. This is a really fun and easy type of unit study to assemble. I'm sure there is a lot more out there than I've linked here. Enjoy!

We school year round so that helps a lot too. So if you take that 900 page book and split it up throughout the year it is a very easy amount of reading. I do require they read it all though. I don't like skipping around especially when I pay outrageous prices for high school and college texts. :)

One of the best I've found is through Discovery's Unitedstreaming. You would have to subscribe to Unitedstreaming to get it. It is called Elementary Spanish. The program is best if you also use the associated worksheets though. They also have a fantastic middle school spanish program. These programs were created by Northern Arizona University.

That is really way too expensive for something like that IMO. The text is around $100 on Amazon too. I am just finishing up teaching forensics using Duke Univ. Tip - Forensics Clues In Crime and it is really good and a lot less $$$. It is only $75. The TIP Forensics course is at : http://www.tip.duke.edu/independent_learning/cdrom_courses/clues_in_crime.html I supplemented with forensics shows, interactives on the pc and mystery night at the library. There are lots of great resources out there that make teaching this easy and fun.

I've been finding some great resources via open courseware. Google 'open courseware' and you'll see lots of free lesson plans and video lectures. We're doing kitchen chemistry via MIT open courseware, a primate study and Art History-Roman Architecture via Yale open courseware this year with my middle schoolers. There is an interesting archeology course at MIT open courseware: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/materials-science-and-engineering/3-986-the-human-past-introduction-to-archaeology-fall-2006/index.htm And another one: http://bruceowen.com/introarch/324f2002.htm from Sonoma State Univ. HTH! :001_smile: