Gwen:lurk5: Will your son design my dd's boats for her eco-cruiseline?

I vote for art and art history. Or music. I'm really enjoying art history now and could see that it would be v. interesting to make art of any kind. Painting might be especially fun and fulfilling. Music like piano would be a dream come true for me. The thing about these 2 are you can be engaged in them on many levels. They can take as much or as little time as you have. They both present lots of puzzles to wrap your brain around.

My dd will graduate in 4 yrs. from an LAC. She takes 4 - 6 classes a semester (some are just 1/2 credit - dance). She could graduate earlier but wants a major and minor and thesis. 4 yrs. will be quite enough for her as LAC is small and in a small town and she will be wanting to move on. There were no real core courses. She has always taken what she wanted to.

Up until recently, my dds did ballet daily. And they've always had some chores around the house. We try for a team work approach, if something needs to be done we divide up the chore so all can participate. The physical exercise and chore stuff are v. important and my kids actually have a reputation as reliable workers when things need to be done at school, at ballet, at friend's gatherings, at their volunteer opportunities. I've never liked the idea of kids spending their time cooped up in their room away from each other and the family so, we try to keep them engaged. Lately, my dd and I have been cooking and baking together a lot. I like them to do the creative things as well as just chores. I envy all the posters with their farms. Wish we'd had that for our kids. The physical, outdoor things that go along with farming are exactly what kids should be doing.

My dd used the schaums. You can dig out problems that go along with just about any curriculum and at just about any level of technical ability. I used it for undergrad chem and physics. There are also some schaums books called 3000 (science) problems.

How bout a trip somewhere? An adventure, just for him.

I would do the following. Sit down with the test and go over it line by line. See where the mistakes were made. If there is a certain kind of mistake (computational, simplification, conceptual) you will have a better idea of what kinds of material to chose when making up problem sets, etc. for the next chapter. Have her review the chapter and correct the test so that it is all right. You could average the grades of the two and use that as her "test" grade. Next test, look it over before administering it and check to make sure the problems and work that she has done in assignments were similar to what is on the test. This will give her confidence and a way to learn to focus her study habits.

Online coursework did not work for us. Too much glancing at fb or tmz during paper writing time. I abandoned it all v. quickly. Dd writes out her assignments on paper and gives them to me. In reality though, isn't all this on-line time wasting temptation just like all the other choices a teen has to make? I personally, do not know how to give advice on this particular temptation to teens. They may have to work thru it all themselves, understand the choice they make when they play on-line rather than working. Either they do it in high school or, they'll have to work thru it in college. Re: stopping swimming. I found that having dd forego ballet has not been positive, too much excess physical energy and none of the social interaction during classes has made her antsy. Wish I could send her. But $$ won't allow it.

We have a friend, a sr.. who is in the dance program there. It has been a good fit for her. They've been very flexible about her core course credits and her "need" to dance a lot. She has been able to do core courses over the summer so they don't interfere with her choreographic and performance duties during the school yr. She was able to move off campus in soph. year to get the peace and quiet she needs.

I started the whole hs thing with my 2nd. This has given me the energy to plough thru her jr. and sr. years. Having to do the homeschooling stuff does not leave me much time for the "fun" that I had with my oldest dd who was not home schooled. We did more college visits, future dreaming kinds of things. With youngest dd, I am too busy reading Dante or figuring physics to get to sit back and talk things over. I do know this dd better though through the schooling process.....maybe too well!!! Having to learn new things or dig out that long-sequestered knowledge from my brain has given me energy. Having to look for a different kind of college for dd#2 has helped me keep my energy and focus on the college search. Probably the biggest thing this year is trying to stay on top of curriculum planning and pushing the dd so we will get through a decent amount of academics. Joan, wish I had a younger one...we'd get to do more "fun" studies.

Kathy - When I was planning our physics and calc. curriculum I thought that since the fundamental theorems grew out of consideration of physics calculation difficulties there would be a curriculum that mirrored some of the original classical reasoning. Not to be. It could prove interesting to students, to look at where alg. failed to answer the great physics questions and then to learn why/how calculus does.

Larson does transcendental right after integration. There's a sort of review of log and trig f(x) behaviors first and then on into the derivatives and integrals. When I took calc. in the old days (we had a backassward syllabus, integration and then derivatives), we spent time with the trig and log functions first before moving to the polynomial stuff. It was a computer-oriented class where we modeled calc. techniques on known curves and functions and then extrapolated the formulae from our programming conclusions.

We are doing the same. Dd is just taking "a calculus course". We are calling it "Honors Calculus". She will most likely have to take calc. over in college anyways so, we are not taking the official AP exam. I am using AP sample test questions as assessments.

We are using Larson. I like it b/c I can easily match problems to text examples. Dd would prefer NOT to do practical applications. The book has some applied problems and also some puzzlers. Dd will probably have to take Calc. in college so, she just wants some good technique training at this point. BTW - I really do think some of the more brilliant posters on this board should get together and create a Calc/Physics year-long course. I stumbled around a bit trying to do this last year but, I lack the math/physics expertise. I could see where it would be a really terrific course. Making knowledge less segregated, etc.

In ps, they want the kids to be tech savvy. So, they use calculators early on. I like the graphing calculators for simple conversions and getting a good look at what graphs of equations look like. I'm not sure that they truly provide a "solution" to all types of math problems. I try to assign problems that require equation manipulation and simplification on paper and some that require taking a closer look at how the math operates in a graphical way (changing curves, mapping functions). I think if you balance assignments this way, you can give the kid a good workout and have it not be tedious.

Just remembered - Cornell? - maybe a little too rural for him? UNC = Chapel Hill. Georgetown or one of the DC schools (not sure what the engineering possibilities are). WPI and RPI - three family members went there, did v. well.

Johns Hopkins, Duke, Princeton.

Dd got first acceptance. Just to the local big U, she has not heard about honor's stuff yet but, I am ready to start crying already. Not ready for both kids gone!!! When the first one left, I spent a whole month cleaning the house and the yard. Not sure what I will do this time. Dh promises to put me on a plane to......

Quality not Quantity - What I meant was not blazing through classes for the sake of blazing through them. Real understanding takes a while. I like to do a thorough work out of each of the math chapters. We are in calc. now. We are going slowly but, carefully, mastering each concept.

Re: Concordia. My dd's best friend went for 2 summers and told me that when she gets old enough to be a counselor, she will go there and meet her husband!!! She loved it, she wished she had gone starting in middle school. She did the Spanish programs.

You could do environmental science? Or there was a thread recently about Geology/Earth Science.

I went on the AP US History cite on NROC and then looked at the reviews of the texts on Amazon. We used something called "America: Past and Present" that came with 2 really nice books of primary source readings (with study questions and synthesis essays) called "Voices of America: Past and Present". We coupled these with readings from the Norton Anthology of Am. Lit. that we used for english. The NROC site had some practice questions for the AP US History exam that I used as testing materials or essay work. We used Howard Zinn's book as well. I found a couple of AP class syllabi that had some study questions tied to that book. We read both whole texts. Dd had a nice time with it.

Would that I had the time. Memo to possible future high school home school parents. Backtracking will be necessary, but quality not quantity may have to be the by-word of the whole experience. Wanted dd to feel passionate and engaged in her subjects....I would have liked to have started in 8th grade.

The private schools and universities in our area offer some techie camps at a reasonable price. Middlebury college has some summer language camps and there's an intensive language camp somewhere in the woods of Minn. For middle schoolers, I'd make sure the camps were fun and creative, not just book learning. Science could also be environmental so, nature/outdoor camps are a very good option, especially for city kids. E. G. - Diving/scuba programs have a strong scientific/ecology component these days. Hands-on in the summer has always been my motto. And, dare I say "fun"!!!!

Stacy - You are probably right. Schools/colleges are looking for paying customers these days.