My dd did this last year in 9th grade: Physical Science (Apologia) Algebra I (Teaching Textbooks & some Life of Fred) World History & Literature (Sonlight - Alt 7) Grammar & Writing (BJUP) Vocabulary (BJUP) Piano (Year 7) Community Theater - extra-curricular Bible Spanish I (Rosetta Stone) Studio Art (private group lessons from a local artist)

Before we were married, my husband and I thought we would have 4 ( we are each the oldest of 4 kids, and always liked that number).....HOWEVER, after 5 miscarriages, 2 laparoscopies, and MULTIPLE other fertility testings, the beginning stages of adoption proceedings, and a hysterectomy due to severe endometriosis at the age of 38, God gave us 2 children. Marriage counseling should include discussions of infertility. It happens a lot more than we ever realized.

Our county's website lists people's properties (how much they bought and sold their homes for, how much they paid in property tax every year) as well as listing court cases, (civil and criminal,) and the results of the court cases. It gives me the willies.... If I knew someone's last name, I could find out their criminal history, if they had been sued, how much they bought or sold their properties for, etc. Or if I had a street address and wanted to find out a history about a certain home, I could just check the street address and house #, and would have all of that property info.

Yep, you saw the parts I saw. I watched almost the entire last season when Jamie was in Huntington, West Virginia. Wow, he was "put through the wringer" by the school, the cafeteria ladies, the children, the parents.... yikes! It's happening in L.A. now. Jamie has to figure out a balance of better nutrition, coupled with cost savings, for the families, schools and restaurants. We all know that it costs more to eat healthy ... but in California, with all the farmland, I wish it wouldn't be so expensive.

Do you have a fax at home? I could fax mine to you .... otherwise I will be happy to photocopy and mail you a set. :001_smile: PM me and "we'll talk some more."

This is a beautiful thing to say. I completely agree. Go! Go! Go~ And prayers for your friend. I'm so sorry.

I've used their Teaching Character through Literature (which would be really fun to do with your children's ages!), American History for the Primary and Intermediate levels, Medieval, Renaissance and Reformation History, and Teaching Geography through Literature. We enjoyed all levels. BF is not as structured as the Sonlight or Winter Promise weekly schedules are, but there are suggested schedules in each of the teacher's guides. Their website samples give an accurate depiction of what a typical history lesson is like using BF. My kids liked cutting out and coloring their timeline pictures, as well as other "notebooking" type assignments. We started using Sonlight after 2 years of BF simply because I wanted more structured lesson plans, and the kids wanted to read more books. I purchased most of my BF items on ebay or homeschoolclassifieds.com at a reasonable price.

I wish I had started using the "literature approach" style of learning earlier. Too many years of BJUP curriculum was squelching the love of learning in my kids' history, lit and science. They are both much, much happier and learning more since switching to different curriculums. i.e. Sonlight, Apologia, etc. My daughter has had trouble with math for quite a few years. I would have switched her to Teaching Textbooks sooner, had it been available. She shed many tears of frustration with Saxon and BJUP math before I made the switch. I would have held off on teaching cursive another year or two. After all those years of practicing cursive, now that they are in high school, my children's style of writing is back to printing! Go figure :lol:

:grouphug:

1660!!!

My son took the ACT in Feb 2010 of his junior year and got a composite score of 25, then re-took the ACT in Oct 2010 and scored a 28. The majority of students that re-take the ACT bump their scores up by 2 or 3 points. It's definitely worth a re-take! We practiced with "The Real ACT Prep Book", and would highly recommend it as a resource.

We did school 4 days a week and were off on Fridays .... which left plenty of time for a 2 week Christmas break, a week off at Thanksgiving, about 4 to 5 weeks off in the early summer, etc.... it was great to have a LONG weekend every week!!

Sharee, I give you two wiggly thumbs up for your blog post! You are an excellent writer. I attended the SE homeschool convention 2 weekends ago and thankfully was blissfully unaware of all the "kerfluffle" regarding SWB, Ken Ham vs Wile vs Peter Enns, etc ....

:grouphug::grouphug: Yea! I'm sooooo happy for you! Time to re-group, recoup, and all the other "re-" stuff you haven't been able to do for a while. Start with brownies. A really big batch of caramel nut brownies with a side of vanilla ice cream. :D

I cried 3 times last night .. ... the episode was beautifully written and directed. My husband was downstairs watching TV, and could hear my audible gasp upstairs when I finally realized who died. Sigh... I don't want to give away any "spoilers."

I feel your fear and anxiety of making a change! Three to four years ago I was in your shoes. We were using almost exclusively BJU teaching materials - Not the DVD's, but the textbooks, with me as the teacher guiding them using the BJU teacher manuals, etc. My kids were at the point that the BJU format was literally sucking the joy out of learning. Several friends of mine were using Sonlight and I enjoyed browsing through the catalog. I secretly loved the idea of literature-based learning, but didn't think I could swing all the read-aloud time with them (I do medical transcription at home about 5 hours a day, 5 days a week) I discussed how Sonlight works, and both kids begged me to change to that format... I told them school would take longer each day... but they didn't care. We now use Sonlight for history/lit, Apologia science, teaching textbooks math (although my son still uses BJU math- it "works" for him), etc. and couldn't be happier with the change. Their Stanford achievement testing scores still remained high - or a little higher, in some cases, and they love talking about the books they read in school. They wanted to read the "read aloud" books to themselves anyway, so I didn't have to do much reading for them.......I would say ... GO FOR IT!

I usually shop at Aldi, where the cashiers have to scan about 50 items per minute. They are so fast, that I barely have time to fling my items onto the conveyor belt before they get scanned! :D

Thanks so much for your advice, ladies! The websites helped a lot!

bump

My son is studying for the CLEP in Human Growth and Development this month. He studied David Myer's General Psychology this year http://www.sonlight.com/590-00.html and is working towards earning a Human Growth and Development credit in college. (It's very similar to the psychology he studied, with more life stages to learn) So .... my question is for the parents (or students!) who have taken various CLEP exams. Did you feel the practice CLEP books were harder, easier, or about the same as the actual CLEP exam? Thanks for your input :D If all goes well with this test, we are going to work towards a History of Civ. CLEP, and one or two English CLEPS..

Since my kids are in high school, it's been about $1000 to $1300 a year for their curriculum (Sonlight cores, Apologia Science, Teaching Textbooks math, etc) I buy used whenever I can, and re-sell their books when we are through with both children. I've been able to re-sell their school books for almost what I paid for them, when I am able to buy them "gently used." Piano lessons are about $800 per year per child, but we have stopped those, as my husband lost his job a year ago and we went 8 months without his income.

Just want to say that I attended the Southeast HomeSchool Convention this weekend in Greenville SC, and took one of SWB's classes on a writing program for grades K-12. She was awesome! Two wiggly thumbs up to you, SWB! Keep up the good work :D That's all, nothing more. I had a great time, and learned a lot. Tim Hawkins was awesome :lurk5:

Here's the link to USC: http://www.sc.edu/admissions/freshrequire.php USC requires 4 maths .... (My son needed 4 maths and 4 sciences, among other things, to qualify for the Life Scholarship)

I guess I will chime in here, since my son just finished his senior year of high school - woo hoo! (He worked ahead during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and on weekends) He has been accepted, and will be attending, a university in SC for nursing, and has met all their prerequisites. For high school he had: Alg I (BJU) Geometry (BJU) Alg II (BJU) Consumer Math (half BJU math, half Dave Ramsey's Personal Finance) My son LOVED Dave Ramsey's course! It is meant to take 1 semester, so after we were finished with Dave Ramsey, I filled in the rest of his consumer math course with chapters from the BJU Consumer Math book, with topics not covered by Dave Ramsey. For science he had: (Apologia) Biology Physical Science Chemistry Advanced Biology (human anatomy and physiology) He scored a 28 on the ACT test, earning him a $5,000 per year Life Scholarship. His lowest score on the ACT was in math, which was a 25. If he had had Trig as a separate class, he would have scored higher. (From what I remember on the ACT, the last 7 problems in the math portion are trigonometry) I gave him the option of Consumer Math for his senior year, or a trig/pre calculus type class, and he chose consumer math. He had a lot of other time-consuming classes this year, so I'm glad he chose consumer math. It was a very practical choice.

I've bought my Sonlight Cores "used" (but in excellent condition) from ebay or Sonlight's used book forum... and saved about half the cost of buying them new from Sonlight. When we are finished with the books, I've been able to re-sell the cores for practically what I paid for them.