:iagree:I've got one just like this. She is in her 3rd year of studying Greek on her own, will be starting ASL next year, continuing with high school level Greek as well as starting Arabic the next (both online). She also wants to learn Romanian from friends we know, and her real desire is to learn Polish. She wants to study linguistics and global studies in college, in order to be able to create alphabets for cultures with no written language. In my experience, you can't stop a kid who's truly passionate, so just go for it!

:iagree: Once I form my full theory, :D, I know it will have something to do with this and the larger concept of personal relationship as it relates to learning. Another poster wrote well about the parent having a vested interest and accountability for a child's education that a teacher simply doesn't have. I agree with that and take it one step further. There is something about learning from someone who not only knows you but LOVES you that makes the quality of learning different and, IMHO, deeper and stronger than learning from someone with whom you have a more institutional relationship. I think the institutional nature of the teacher-student relationship is only increasing, at least where we live, where the education is so test-driven that teachers seem to be teaching not only to the test but to the funding incentive, especially for failing schools that are in danger of losing funding if they don't bring up their scores. Teaching seems to be growing more and more impersonal, less and less about interacting with students as actual people and seeing them only as succeeding/failing, with dollar signs attached. This is a system failure, not a teaching failure, though it trickles down to teachers, of course. The larger the system, the less it can focus on the individual. Obviously, as others have stated, the opposite is also true. I am not saying this very articulately, which is why I say I haven't formed my theory completely. But another component of my theory would have to do with having a consistent teacher rather than changing every year. The consistency and the umbrella of love and relationship over all of education is really big for me. I don't mean to say by this that homeschooling needs to be a lovey-dovey, sappy environment, unless that's your style. I mean it in the overarching and the foundational sense. With parental love and concern underneath and over the education, learning is just....different. And better. It may take awhile to see it, but it's there. I also think that homeschooling can lead to kids with a stronger self-knowledge because of the freedom in learning homeschooling students can experience. A stronger self-knowledge leads to a better learner overall, IMHO, because it can lead to a more intrinsic sense of the value of learning as personally applicable. ETA: This is an excellent thead - I'd love to see you post this question on the general forum!

This is the combination I used with my middle dd and it was perfect. Planning to try it again with #3 in a couple of years.

I haven't used it myself, but in the process of learning about it, I searched "TRISMS" here and got lots of information. Give that a try!

I loved dissections, too. I did them in both high school and college. My dear friend,who was my lab partner in college, still talks about how I could dissect the cat with one hand and eat peanut MnM's with the other. She, like your partner, didn't participate in the actual cutting. :tongue_smilie: Fast forward to homeschooling - one of the moms in our HS group led a fetal pig dissection in our backyard, and I have many photos of my middle dd, about 6yo at the time, with her own pig. My oldest loves dissections so much that she once volunteered to help a friend who teaches middle school science on pig dissection day. She helped with about 40 pigs! So, no, you're not the only one!

Well, now the Barenaked Ladies song is going through my head at top volume! Someone get me some pre-wrapped bacon! :lol: I think we need more of a report (unless this has been done, I haven't read all the posts) on how Audrey's family reacted, and how Nutty Hostess' family behaved during the, uh, "dinner." ETA: Okay, just read Audrey's post with more detail. Sad, really. Good grief.

:smilielol5::smilielol5: I'd pay money to see this happen! A whistle! Bwa ha haaaa!!

:iagree: All that you describe - having nothing to be depressed about - is part of what makes chemical depression what it is. That is, you are not depressed due to circumstances, but possibly due to a chemical imbalance that you have no control over.

:iagree:

Take a look at Shepherd Biology. My dd will be using it next year. She has done Apologia for the last two years and is tired of the tone. I tried BJU with my oldest and it was just too much. Shepherd looks like a happy medium. Perhaps it would work for you!

:iagree:Though I don't have any direct experience, exactly. My dd just started HO Modern Level 2 so I've looked through it extensively. It definitely includes the wars (which pleases my dd because this is her first go-through with modern and she has long been fascinated by WWI and WWII) but there's lots else to explore, and it would be easy to spend less time in those sections, I think. So, take my advice FWIW, but I just wanted to add that we're looking forward to using this.

MedicMom - Thank you so very much for sharing. You've given us some great information! I will let you know whether we have more questions.

I confess I have not experienced this personally. But my dearest male childhood friend was a VERY late talker. His mom told me this story many times: he spoke barely a word until he was about four. Then, one day, he opened his mouth and spoke what amounted to a complete, well-expressed paragraph. Then he just kept talking.

I voted Owen because I think Owen sounds like a fat little pumpkin of a boy, and that's how I like 'em. ;) As for the girl, we have a Charlotte Rae (the Rae comes from my late father and dh's late gpa, boht named Ray), and people are constantly telling us how lovely those two sound together, so to me Charlotte Mae sounds just fine! Congratulations! :grouphug:

:iagree:To be honest, unless you've noticed other red flags, I would go with creativity, too. My oldest dd did the exact same thing at that age, twice. It had more to do with wanting to take matters into her own hands and being generally dreamy than it did with being anxious or rebellious.

One thing I love about PP is that it's inexpensive, so if it doesn't fit your family, you haven't lost much! I have used it once and loved it. 100 EZ was a huge fail, but PP was very easy to use and very flexible. I plan to use it again when dd3 is ready.

Absolutely point it out. Little confession: If I see a grammatical error or misspelling in any of the copy on the page of a seller I've bought something from, I gently point it out, trying to do so in a funny way. No one has ever been anything but appreciative. I love Etsy and I can't stand to think that anyone there is killing kittens, you know? (This is the most comon offense.)

I think you should take a week off school just to give you enough time to kiss those CHEEKS! Congratulations!

Thank you so much, HBookbinder and FluteAnn for chiming in. Everyone is helpful, but it's great to hear from people who have actually attended Houghton! How would you describe the Christian atmosphere there? I know I can go online and read their missions statement, etc, but I'm curious from a student point of view. Did it feel conservative, liberal.....other? Since it has a small student body, were your classes small and intimate? Were there extracurricular opportunities? Again, I know I can read their website myself, but I'm interested in hearing from people who have experienced life there. I also know that it may have been some years since people on this board attended college (okay, I'm speaking for myself here ;)) and things may be different there. I know when I have visited my college campus (graduated 1989) these days it feels VERY different than it did when I was there. So, thank you for any information you can share. We have numerous Christian colleges here in Southern CA to choose from, so it's a bit of a stretch for me to think of her going out of state. Not because I don't want her to leave home, but because of the extra travel costs involved, etc. So, thank you for sharing!

Bwa ha! Maybe I should find out if she's doing her research based on which schools would allow her to accumulate the most outerwear? :lol:

My BJU experience with my older dd tells me that it would be a disaster for an unmotivated student. It is SO detailed and SO much work. She was motivated but science isn't her favorite and we didn't finish. Next year I'm doing biology with middle dd. She has done two years of Apologia and doesn't like the tone of the writing. So we're going with Shepherd. It looks like a happy medium of the two. Not such a chatty, unedited tone (sorry, but I really think the Jay Wile books would be half as thick if he had a good editor!) but not as overwhelming as BJU. That said, for a motivated science student, BJU would be ideal. Just my two cents!

Starr, Just some general impressions at this point. This is for my middle dd, who has a few years before she has to get serious about which college she wants to attend but is ambitious and loves to do research about college already. We live in Southern CA and so far she has only looked at colleges here, but now she is starting to branch out. She is interested in majoring in intercultural/global studies with some sort of concentration/minor/emphasis in linguistics/TESOL. From her research she's discovered that many Christian colleges have the global studies major, sometimes called missions or some other name, but not all have linguistics to the degree that she's interested in. Houghton does. As for moving to rural New York...well, we'll see! I think I'd love it if I were the one going to college, but not sure how she'd feel about it. Thanks to nynyny for the description!

This has been the part that's amazed me most as I've walked through this case with my friend. The level of secrecy and outright lying that's occurred in order to protect this man. No one on this side of it can figure out what the incentive would be to do that. Except to keep your school from looking bad in some sense, but how could professionals in the education field consider that above the safety of children? I guess I'm mighty naive, because it's been deeply shocking and sad to me to see how this has played out. It's not over, of course, but so much has happened so far that it's hard not to become more and more jaded. This is a man who targeted the most disabled and least verbal of his students for the worst abuse (although everyone in the class suffered), documented by more than one teacher's aide, and he's now on PAID LEAVE after it took months even to get the case this far. Boggles my mind and breaks my heart for the kids, parents, and honest professionals involved.

Lemon curd!

This is my first post here. :) Does anyone have any experience with Houghton, a small Christian college in New York? Thanks in advance!