I wish I had the link, but somewhere I saw an article written by an admissions rep who said his school was increasingly seeking the desired HSer qualities of motivation and lateral thinking, which he finds less and less in the general applicant pool. I suspect that disparity will grow as the PARCC curriculum and tests are rolled out.

No ditches I can think of here, but DD is doing her 9th archaeological dig next week, and they go down about 3 feet deep, so there is much ground-in-fun to be had. :coolgleamA:

DD12 is usually done in about 6ish hours each day, but I still need reassurance at times. One of the best things I heard was Dr. B. answer a similar question at a conference -- something like "When were you confident that you were doing the right thing." Her answer was priceless: "When my son got his first college acceptance letter." I should really have that on a wall plaque.

I'd try searching the site of the newspaper in the town where it occurred. If it made the news, it might be archived. If the paper is/was too small to have a website, maybe the local library would have such info on microfiche.

Just did apple picking, so time to bust out my pie operation. Also due for another batch of soft pretzels, but I need to restock my local honey. Of course, just tonight we were talking to DD about making mini cheesecakes and her eyes lit up, so add Nilla Wafers to the list. I could use a prep chef.

What's kept me alive thru almost 3 years of Stage IV Metastatic Ocular Melanoma is working with the very few doctors waaaaay out on the bleeding edge of emerging therapies. I had a 6-hour surgey in which all the arteries around my liver were clamped off so the super-toxic chemo, a derivative of mustard gas, could not eecape to other parts of my body and kill me. I do miss the abdominal muscles they sliced that never healed right. I had off-label infusions of a skin cancer drug that sent my immune system into overdrive, and my pituitary gland into hibernation. Radiation was kinda neat when it was coming from a huge robotic arm aimed at my spine, but the doses aimed more broadly at my abmdomen still cause sporadic fatigue. If I have any hope of remining "chronic metastatic," a term only now trickling into use for some cancers, it will mean continual therpies and/or drug trials. Since mine is an orphan cancer, most trials are piggybacked onto cutaneous (skin) cancer trials. So yeah, that's a huge difference. Metastatic cancer has historically been the end of the line, but we're on the verge of making it HIV, or diabetes - deadly for some, manageable for most. Stage IV will have to have subgroups, or perhaps a Stage V will ultimately be established as the new "TERMINAL" after a long period as chronic metastatic. That would be pretty nifty.

I'm for only doing the PSAT junior year, just to go for the Nat. Merit $$. I don't even prep kids for it any more, since it makes more sense to prep for the SAT and use that same training for the PSAT.

98 first time, but I kept wanting the star to swing all the way around and whack the backside of the "g" as in any good Youtube vid.

DD had a plantar that our dermatologist froze with liquid nitrogen and it fell off after a while. Derm recommended duct tape, too, but we had little luck with that. Also had little luck with the Dr. Scholl's home-freezey stuff. Not nearly robust enough.

One of DW's former principals used to stock cases of bottled water and cheap crackers in DW's room -- it's a big (relatively) band room with shelves at the back. I guess the idea was they could still have food and water during an extended shelter-in-place emergency?!? Yikes. I don't think any food is left, as the kids ate it all over the past few years. :glare:

Budget? What budget? We just squeeze more blood from the stone each month and somehow the universe seems to provide. Dance is up to few hundred a month, but so far, we've been able to schedule four classes into two nights, so it's not crazed. Being an independent Juliette Girl Scout helps avoid little fees here and there, although we are making payments for DD to go on a huge GS trip to London and Paris in two years. Our biggest expense may turn out to be the NJ Youth Chorus, since DD just auditioned into the Advanced Choir after 6 years in the training choirs. DD got a partial scholarship, and this is the one activity that is so soul-nourishing, so professional, I can't imagine us NOT doing it. Advanced tours and records and has heavy gigs with orchestras and such, so the travel and ticket prices might start to add up, but I can always sneak in since I'm married to the accompanist's page-turner!

I second Building Foundations. Best series we've found. For volumes 1-2, I usually read aloud. Now in Vol 3, I've taken to doing Powerpoints with embedded vids from Discovery Streaming. That also allows me to put in bad visual puns along with the more serious diagrams and such.

DD just started year 11 at the same school -- lyrical,ballet,tap,jazz. Same school as when she was 2 with a teacher who was DW's former student (just to make us feel, you know, OLD).

DW has lockdown drills regularly and absolutely hates them. Still, in her first school in rural MD, circa 1987, they had a real bomb scare and sent the teachers around to look for the bomb. DW was the band director, and found herself looking into tubas for....what does a bomb look like? Red sticks taped to an alarm clock? A black bowling ball shape with a burning fuse? It doesn't help when your main point of reference is the roadrunner.

So far, 12 really hasn't been anything I can't handle, although I do count on at least two professionals -- DW, the veteran middle school teacher, who deals with this age range for a living, regularly reassures me that yes, everything is normal, and yes, it would be far worse in PS. Then there's the child life specialist at my local cancer center, who is a gem. DD always comes out of those sessions very bouncy and happy, even more bouncy than is her default mode, which is pretty bouncy indeed. I had horrible anxiety in high school, which only now do I really recognize for what it was, and I'm sure i must be saying to DD what I wish my mom said to me. So yeah, I count a psychologically crappy childhood as pretty decent parental training!

Here in N.E. NJ, many families live on "NY time." Dad and/or mom gets off the train from the city past 8pm, so family dinner, assuming there is one, is after that. One of my current SAT students has a high-powered mom who works in the city until 10pm. Yikes.

Welcome aboard. Nuclear power, huh? Wasn't there a kid in the news a while ago who built a reactor in his garage? Then again, that could prove to be an excellent source of power during the Syracuse winters. Be sure to post photos! :laugh:

I'm HSing with Stage IV cancer, which, hopefully, I can manage long term as a chronic, rather than fatal illness. HS started 6 years ago; cancer started 4 years ago, so DD has spent her share of time in waiting rooms, etc. One memorable time was several weeks after I had major abdominal surgery/chemo two years ago. it was in late August, and I was still on pain meds as we started the year. I still remember nodding off as DD did math, and she'd periodically say "DAD!" when she needed to check an answer. That was interesting, but survivable. Fatigue has been my symptom du jour this fall, but we still work through it.

Get him a pneumatic nail gun from Home Depot, then bake 40 cookies with a nail in each. Then again, that might lead to someone's ER x-rays ending up on the news. :laugh:

It is a prep phrase, and also a fixed phrase.

We've done the ITBS one year above GL for years, and like it. As an SAT tutor by night, I would NOT recommend using that to gauge ability, since it's such a weird test. The ACT is more straight forward, albeit faster.

Spelling Workout by Modern Curriculum Press. DD has done every level over the years, and is now on the last one (H). DD's test scores sound very similar to what you described. We've done a lot of different things with writing -- First Lang Lessons, both editions -- first was great, but I think DD was too old by the time we did #2. Paragraph Town was a bore. Then I just picked up old copies of Warriner's English Composition and Grammar, used off of Amazon or Ebay. There's still nothing wrong with this old war horse, and yes, as an English major, I'm totally biased. This year, we're trying Dr. B's Writing With Skill, but still using Warriner's for grammar. We have found WWS a bit slow if we go by the day-to-day schedule as printed, so we've started doing 2-3 days in one sessions. We shall see. I've found it best to just get DD to mind-dump, which is what I also do when working with high school kids on their application essays. I trot out the adage that good writing is RE-writing, although I suspect that gets through to only a fraction of my students.

My cancer is not breast cancer -- mine is Stage IV Ocular Melanoma. In my little community of survivors, one thing we've all learned, which isn't yet the societal norm, is to view physicians as professionals we hire and fire by choice. Of course, firing a doctor is easier than it sounds, since you just call the receptionist, cancel your next appointment, and ask for a copy of your records. I'm a complete lightweight when it comes to confrontation, but I've fired at least two docs this way. Do not wait. Hire a professional with whose approach/attitude/demeanor you are comfortable, and may all your scans be negative.

Thanks! Be sure to get photographic evidence!

For some reason, I just started poking around the forums and thought, gee, I should really create an account. Turns out my username was taken....by me....a while ago. I guess I signed up but never posted. Well, here goes: Hey kids! I'm Tom in Morris County, NJ. DW is a middle school music teacher. We've HSd DD 7th grade since 1st using WTM-secular-academically-accelerated (lousy acronym, that one). It's a lonely task in my part of NJ. There's much organization in other parts of the state, but I seem to be surrounded by unschoolers and the far-right religious, who have not been keen on a dad doing this job, which is too bad, since our approaches are probably not that different in terms of academic rigor. I know there are other dads doing this, only because I've seen a blog or two, and some moms know of a friend who used to live next to a HSdad. It's like sighting Bigfoot -- plenty of anecdotal evidence, but I have yet to find empirical proof. Someone should start taking plaster casts of footprints to be classified as the rare Schola Domum Patris of legend. I'd go for that, especially if it involved some royalties... 8-)