We require our kids to have National AP Scholar (eight tests with fours or fives on all of them) by the end of junior year. Several of my older children complained about this early on, but changed their minds when it was time to apply for college and they decided they wanted to try for Ivies. My husband and I think we should give our kids an education that keeps all of the doors open for them and that has worked well. If we left it up to the kids, by the time they got motivated it would be too late to be competitive for the highly selective schools. Some of my kids have taken more APs beyond what we require, and that has been their choice.

A French friend told me she always thought Milou was a play on "half-wolf" =)

If you are trying for the top schools, homeschooling can be an advantage because it makes your child interesting. An admissions officer told my daughter that Harvard even has a quota for homeschoolers!

My three oldest were finalists and my 11th grade ds just got 229, so it's a pretty sure bet he is too. I never did ANY grammar with my kids, but I had them write every day -- every single day, from the time they were in kindergarten. We also did French, German, and Latin starting in preschool.

Right -- only 11th graders can qualify for National Merit. Also, the cut-offs listed above are for last year's test. This year's cut-offs won't be announced until next fall. I'm hoping my guy did well enough that I don't need to wonder!

Two of my children took APs as 8th graders and there was no problem. Their 8th grade scores were on the report sent to colleges and I didn't need to do anything special. I also had a child get an 800 on the SAT 2 as an 8th grader. Usually scores from before 9th grade are erased, but we contacted the College Board and asked that they keep the score on his record. It was there until he got to 12th grade and had taken so many SAT 2's that the first score was removed from the list, not because he had been an 8th grader, but simply because their software would only accept so many scores. I kept calling the College Board and going up the ladder until they agreed to send an official letter to the colleges he was applying to listing all of his scores. I felt like this was reasonable since I had paid for all of the tests and there was no warning this would be an issue. All of his schools (including very selective ones like Harvard and Yale) accepted his score.

The War Nobody Won by Albert Marrin is a great overview of the War of 1812.

Providence is God preserving and governing His creation; revelation is God showing himself to mankind. The Heidelberg Catechism defines providence as: "The almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty - all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand." It goes on to say that the knowledge of God's creation and providence can help us because, "We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love. All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved."

Flylady.com has a great system!

Anything by Travis Thrasher!

It doesn't matter. you can always go in and change it later.

Don't worry -- you don't have to do anything now! You'll get the scores back in December, and next fall the semifinalists will be announced. The application that people are talking about is what you do to move from semifinalist to finalist. If your child is a semifinalist, you'll get all that information next fall. I wish your son the best! I also have an 11th grader taking it this year.

We found the audio components online (not sure where -- dh found them years ago and downloaded them.) Keep looking!

I am reformed, so I will try to answer you. We believe that baptism is a "sign and seal" of the covenant. Like circumcision in the Old Testament, it shows that the child belongs to the people of God. We do not believe in baptismal regeneration. Only God knows when regeneration occurs. We baptize our children in faith, trusting that God will work in them. The Heidelberg Catechism says God uses baptism "to teach us that the blood and Spirit of Christ wash away our sins just as the water washes away dirt from our bodies. But more important, he wants to assure us, by this divine pledge and sign, that the washing away of our sins spiritually is as real as the physical washing of water." Calling baptism "means of grace" means that we see the sacraments, along with the Word and prayer, as the means God uses to teach us about redemption. I hope that helps!

PSAT scores are not reported to colleges. They are used for the National Merit program and all students in a state are compared. They don't distinguish between homeschool and public school kids. They look at the scores in each state and figure out the selection index (sum of reading, writing, and math scores) they need to get the right percentage of semifinalists. If your child participates in the student search service, colleges get something about their performance, but it's for marketing purposes. Even students with mediocre scores get tons of junkmail this way, so I don't think it really means anything. You need to use the homeschool code so the scores will come to you and not to the school. The public school kids don't get their scores in the mail -- they are handed out at school.

How big are the schools your children are applying to? My kids applied to very selective schools that get tens of thousands of applications every year. We thought the best way to keep something from getting lost in the shuffle was to submit everything the way they expected it to be submitted. If all of the schools were uploading their transcripts, we uploaded ours. If they expected recommendations to be submitted online, we had ours submitted online. With a smaller school it might not be an issue -- you could call and ask.

If you are using the common app, the references are completed online. You give the names and email addresses of the people writing recommendations, and they get an email telling them what to do. If you have extra letters (e.g., from a soccer coach), give the person a stamped envelope and let them mail it to the school. I'd do that after I started the common app process so the school has a file on your child. Don't worry about SAT scores -- they are sent directly to the college electronically. You also upload the transcript. Everything is online so it's easy to see if the colleges have gotten and downloaded what they need.

I don't use a spiral curriculum. Skipping a whole book didn't leave a gap at all. When I started homeschooling I had one in 4th grade math and one in 6th grade math. I didn't see any reason my son (very strong math kid) couldn't go straight into the 6th grade book. I got the book to see what he would be missing and it was lots of review and introductions to topics he'd cover in more depth in the 6th grade book. I did it and he did fine. Some of my children weren't so solid so I thought they needed more review.

I skipped 5th grade math with several of my children and went from 6th to Algebra 1 with all of them. There is so much review and overlap that it gets tedious if they "get it."

This is not true. My children have taken many APs and SAT subject tests after college courses. We did it because we weren't sure how colleges would look at the community college grades since quality varies so much from school to school. APs and SAT subject tests are objective measures colleges respect.

It looks like Mathcounts is going to allow new homeschool teams this year with some restrictions, although the new rules haven't been officially announced yet. My husband coaches a homeschool mathcounts team and it is a wonderful experience for the kids. You wouldn't believe how much fun they have doing math together!

I used French Muzzy exactly the way you are describing when my kids were preschoolers and they loved it. The Tintin cartoons are also great. I'd put one on for my preschool boys so I could have a few quiet minutes with the older kids, and they'd run around quoting it when it was over.

Maybe 8 hours per week? A lot of that is reading though, and if you enjoy the stories, it's not work :)

I was pleasantly surprised by how much my math/science boy loved PA Homeschooler's AP English Lit with Debra Bell. I was expecting it to be torture, but he really enjoyed analyzing literature. He had read a lot and I had him write an analytical essay after each book, but he had never had a formal writing class before the AP class.

Has anyone downloaded mp3s from Europe recently? Last summer I downloaded an audiobook for my kids and it was wonderful -- 5 euros, no postage, we had it in ten minutes. I was so excited! Now, amazon.de and itunes won't let me download mp3s because of geographical restrictions. Has anyone else run into this? Do you know any sites where you can legally purchase and download European audiobooks?