How about instead of consumer math you call it Finance or Consumer Finance? You can talior it to learn about credit cards and pitfalls as well as investing and budgeting. Dave Ramsey is great, but there is a wealth of information on the internet as well. You can take your own budget and have the kids break it down and apply what might be happening in their lives with college as well. Get the paper and have them budget for a month using the section of the paper with local rent prices and food prices. Make sure they understand the cost of using a credit card - hidden and upfront. Find out how much that dress will cost after three months of payments. Just some ideas. This kind of information is all over the place and I don't think you will need any sort of guide. I have faith in you!

I really don't know why I'm hesitant. We are in the same boat that we had to force the kids to have cell phones. Neither of them text or hardly even talk on them. Although the kids have some great friends they would rather be face to face then on the cell. I guess I worry that the laptop will not be utilized as much as it should be and would end up needing to be replaced by the time they are off to college - Taking money which is not flowing fast from the money tree. The kids are in 10th and 9th grade so college classes are not an option yet. In our state they have to be 16 to duel enroll. On the flip side of my mind is the fact that my dd loves to make stories and type them up and there have been times I had to steal back the computer in order to get things done. The thought she might get involved with writing and find a passion is a real bonus to the equation. My DS would probably be working on a game making program and learning how to program in other areas. Thanks for the replies and I look forward to hearing more.

Just curious if your children have their own laptops and about how old were they when you got one for them. Did you buy it, was it a joint venture, or did you have them set aside money for one? Grandparents have mentioned that the kids are in high school and should have one, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. :confused:

Thanks and i'll take a look for it.

Do you know the author? i'm getting two different ones when I'm searching. Thanks

:auto: looks like you are on the right road. You might check into a career of research and development. Who knows maybe one day you will be in project management.! Great job and wishing you the best this year

Any recommendations for computer programming or web design books. We have done Game Maker and the kids really enjoyed it. Looking to getting another book and keep moving in the world of computers. Any suggestions?

My motto: high school in high school, college in college :iagree:

Wish I could give you a good answer. I don't use one book or another with history. I find that you can't get both sides of the story that way. Instead I have a few base books and we supplement a lot. I can tell you for 9th grade we used a series of books called Our Great Heritage along with others and had many debates and discussions. I really enjoyed these books as back up. They are from 1976 with the bicentennial, but it seemed like they wanted to paint the full picture. They were willing to go into detail about some flaws and consequences in our history including those of our Presidents and events in history. For example, the Whiskey Rebellion with the force of the Army to stop it was mentioned. It went into both sides and how Washington had remarked about the Democratic societies encouraging the uprising. This was the first time he has not been above the partisan lines and because of it he forfeited his reputation for neutrality and nonpartisanship. It went into how the rebellion actually weakened the position of the president, but strengthened the hand of the Federal government at that point. There are many other examples and I love that after all this time we haven't changed much. They talked about the inability of many of America's top leaders to get along with each other. How there was also extreme bitterness and distrust between the Federalist and the Republicans; even then the tactics of smear campaigns started to emerge. Go figure. The books are definitely not a series I would follow as my main stay, but it was wonderful to bring in another view to the picture. It was the only book I've seen so far that has been willing to lay it out on the table and inform you on how things were and why; even it if meant not letting us believe it was picture perfect. Like I said, we used many many books with about 5 base books and we would use them all to build up the history and get involved. Then we would discuss and look closely at those pieces to get a better understanding of how and why.

I went with Lial's - they have a pre-algebra and Introductory algebra all in one textbook. I figured I could review and go over basics and head int o the more algebra 1 without doing two different books.

We have looked into this and I have two different answers. First, my DH took CLEP while in the military. He took a few classes but being transferred from one base to another makes it difficult. He is now out of the Army and went to a few colleges around our area to finish up his degree. Their response was "CLEP what?" No one really knew about them or how to process them. We area talking about a few different colleges here. That's not to say that they will go to waste, we just have to put more work into finding the right college or path. DH hasn't looked too much as jobs and commitments have made it a bit hard lately. As for our our DD, I think CLEP are a great idea. I really want her to do them as well. After reading up I know that a bit will depend on the college; some accept them and some won't. You might want to see if the colleges that are in mind accept them first. Since my DD is not quite sure where she wants to go, we plan on doing the SAT2 as the primary test and CLEP when we can. I'm willing to spend for the test and have it as a possibility later. Even if the college doesn't accept it as a credit, my thoughts are that on the portfolio they will see that she is versed in the "mommy" credit given. I have heard of others taking the CLEP test, going to community college and finishing up an Associate Degree and then transferring that degree to a 4 year college to finish up. My final answer is find out what path you want to take and will the CLEP be accepted. If you don't know your path then decide if the investment of money/time is worth a test score that has a chance of not being used. If you are willing for a possibility then go for it and have no regrets.

I would say it depends on your child. If they are learning well from Apologia then I would keep with it. They will get the high school level material and you can always supplement if needed for the SAT2. If your child takes to the learning approach of Apologia and then you change out the format he might not digest the material as well and then you are right back in the same position. Even if the course isn't as "rigorous" that particular science book has a way of breaking down the material to really explain details and for some that will help more than anything else.

I believe the College Board that does the SAT2 subject tests makes a study guide with tests in it. I would probably get the guide try a few questions and find out if there are any areas you need to cover. I believe the answers give a paragraph explanation as well.

My DD just got her permit and they asked for the same thing. When we told them that we home schooled they asked us to get an attendance record from the Board of Education instead. If your state does not require attendance you might be able to bring in your Intent to Homeschool form.

Very nice!! i always love a great deal!:001_smile:

Well, I might be one of the few, but it would not bother me as much. Of course, we all want our kids to be safe. I would prefer if they drove during the day, but really it's not much different than having a job and getting off work at 10pm and driving home as most do. I think if I was a parent of one of the high schoolers going I might offer to drive every other day to give them a break or offer to take them on Wednesday which is the "late night" so they don't have to worry about it. I would also consider the child in question and how comfortable they feel with the schedule. I know as a junior in High School, way back in the day, I held two jobs and went to school full time and the short sleeping hours never bothered me much. I was usually more awake at nighttime than in the afternoon hours right after school finished myself. Only my two cents.

We do take the material into consideration and so far they have been on par with each other. Being a homeschool Mom I have learned how to bend and sway. The confusion came in with the class that I knew would be two units, but we spent so much time this year on it that I was curious what we would be doing. That is when we went to a seminar with the college my DD was interested in and they said to rollover the time. I just wasn't sure how others do that or if when they finished the class it was just 2 credits overall.

thanks for the replies. It was for a comprehensive United States History course that will be going over a course of two years. We have been counting our credit for the class as either time or when we finished the book which is the guideline we were giving by a college my dd was considering. In the case of our history we went over the "time" but it will continue next year. Someone recommended starting the next year with 30 hours invested in the course since it will not take the whole year to finish it, but another stated that it only counted for the one year of the schooling so I was a bit confused.

I have some conflicting information that I was hoping could be cleared up. Say you spend 210 hours on a course, say American History, can you take the hours over the credit required and apply it to the next year? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks

We did this class this year, but we didn't use any cir. We just got in the kitchen and talked about nutrition. We went over different diets for say diabetes or having low sodium and we made recipes from cookbooks. It was great for the kids to learn how you can make healthly changes even to old favorites. I've noticed that they keep up with it as well making their own snacks.

Home school tracker has been wonderful!

Looking for anyone who uses or used Holt Geometry 2007. I'm interested if it has enough proofs and if you felt it covered all the areas needed in Geometry. We are going from Lial's 7th edition Introductory Algebra which DD really took to and looking for a cir for this year's 10th grade Geometry. Any information will be appreciated. Thanks

I think with any science course you are going to get view points whether you want them or not. We used the Physical Science this year with our two kids. We found there were spots with religious undertones, but most of the time it was directed at the science overall. He would even give you different theories and why people agreed or disagreed with them. After doing all the modules in the book my feeling was he supported intelligent design and although there were a few bible hits, it was very few and far between. On the other side, we have used other books more pro evolution and had the same experience with it too. I don't think you will have one that doesn't confirm the evidence to their opinion. I do have to laugh though as one of these textbooks talking about the Big Bang stated "and the Big Bang occurred just because it did." Anyway, when it comes to the big bang vs creation I don't want to encourage my kids one way or another. This is something they need to decide for themselves. I give them both sides of the story and spend time on each side explaining the evidence and the pieces that fit and don't fit. I tell them to explore their questions and research and make their own decisions. They understand and have seen first hand that science tends to lean the way that author feels and they take it with a grain of salt. As for the material. I have looked at the text books of other ps'ers in the same level and feel that Apologia gives everything they need for high requirements and sets them up for higher level without hitting too much into the college material. It is a comprehensive HIGH SCHOOL text, but not much beyond that. As for us, we tried it this year. We have used different cir is the last few years. Overall, my kids liked how the text was more of a conversation and used analogies to explain concepts. They enjoyed the experiments and have an understanding of the science they read. The best thing is they now apply that to understanding things in their everyday life and can break things down. I left the decision on whether we stayed for round two and both kids gave thumbs up for it.

Change those DS to DD in the last post.. it's our first day of vacation and i'm not 100% with it yet. :lol:

We used the Saxon 8/7 as well for both my dd and ds. I can tell you that 30 problems every lesson gets very repetitive especially when it's usually the same ones over and over. At first I felt like they needed to do it, but after getting some reassurance I started having them do the odd ones on Odd lessons and evens on even lessons. That helped out greatly. We moved DS from saxon 8/7 to elementary Algebra by Jacobs. She could do but was not inspired. We changed over to Lials Introductory algebra ((7th edition)) and DS took right to it. She loved it and was able to go through with no problems. Durning the lessons there are sample problems and review at the end. A test for each unit. It's gets involved quickly but at a good pace. I would recommend it for yours as well. With the review I would pick 1/3 of the problems. If no issues for her we would skip to the test. She liked the challenge of completing the test and seeing how many she could get right with the limited review (( Of course, if there was any issues in the review we would stop and go over adn review that area)) For her, there is doing problems for checking to see if they have an understanding and then doing the problems just because they are there - which can be very boring and laborious when you already understand it.