Specifically which college in Texas has those requirements? Homeschooled students are exempt from the State of Texas Uniform Admission Policy, so it is definitely not a requirement at the majority of colleges in the state. Texas A & M, for example, does not even list any social studies credits as needed in their minimum required coursework: ETA: Maybe that exemption is only at A&M. The waiver for admission to schools across Texas still only has 2.5 credits required for SS under the minimum high school program - one credit of US History and 0.5 credit of Government, and student's choice for the other credit.

I have two students currently using it - one is doing prealgebra and the other is doing geometry. I would say it is solidly college-prep. The instructor teaches the concept in the video, and the lesson problems are designed so the student has to apply that concept in a variety of ways - they don't just do a set of problems exactly like the ones used to illustrate the concept in the video. I have not used another geometry program to make a comparison, but the prealgebra is on par with Dolciani prealgebra, which I own and have used to supplement another program.

Unlock math is all online and has what appears to be unlimited problem sets (the student does as many sets as is necessary to master the concept). Every problem is immediately graded and the student is presented with the answer and the worked solution (including every single possible step).

I was going to recommend Acellus as well. My daughter started using it this year (8th grade) and it is going remarkably well. I have been taken completely out of the equation with this program. If she gets upset at the amount of work or the difficulty, it is not me that she gets upset with, it is the instructor on the video or the program. For the most part she does her work each day with zero complaints, and she is getting all A's and B's. The fighting between us over schoolwork has dropped to nil this year. The program shows the number of lessons she has to do each day to stay on track and it gives her grades. I do use something else for math, though, since she has always struggled with math and I wanted something that had a tutor available to her whenever she needed help (since she doesn't take instruction from me very well at all). Acellus is not the most rigorous program, but is is definitely sufficient prep for community college (my daughter's goal). The student has to pay attention and even take notes during the lectures; they can't mindlessly click through a lesson and pass it, and they definitely won't be able to pass a unit test if they haven't learned the material in each lesson.

So Verbose offers two lit analysis courses (Literature Response I & II) and in our experience with one of the essay courses, the student receives plenty of instruction before writing. The classes are quite affordable, too...only $60/9 week course.

If a guy tells you that he isn't good enough for you or you are too good for him, he is being truthful. Move on.

Writing & Rhetoric (another progym curriculum) teaches how to write a research paper in book 7.

My 8th grader is using their pre-algebra and my 10th grader is using their geometry. We only started using it this fall so I can't give a full review, but so far I am extremely please with it. The courses appear to cover all of the standard topics, contain lots of review, and are definitely not light courses - my 10th grader was complaining yesterday that the problems used to illustrate the concepts in the lesson videos are a lot easier than the lesson problem sets! She said the first two problems are just as easy as the problems in the lesson videos, but then they get progressively harder. Every single problem in the lesson shows an explanation for how it was solved after the student submits their answer (whether or not the student got it wrong), so the student can compare their solution to the one in the program and see if there was a different or easier way to solve it. I do like that if the student needs to attempt a problem set for a second time, the program gives them new problems so they can't just re-use the old answers to get a good score. They give a 50% sibling discount, so only the first child in a family pays full price - the rest only pay half. It is definitely worth it for me for a program that a student can work through as fast or as slow as they need, provides worked solutions to all the lesson problems, and includes all the tutoring a student needs from the program owners at not extra cost.

My husband is a pastor, and I have somehow fallen into the trap of hosting a holiday open house every year. I usually put out a hot cocoa bar, coffee, and punch for drinks. The only hot food I serve is something that can be kept warm in a crock pot. Other than that it is all appetizers or treats that I can prepare ahead of time like cookies, fudge, chex mix, a cheese ball and crackers, etc. I agree with the suggestion to only put out a part of what you have, otherwise people will treat it like a meal. Also, set out small plates! They will fill up the plates, no matter the size, so go small! Lol. As far as discouraging people to not stay past the ending time, one year my husband announced the open house hours from the pulpit. He said it was from 7-10 (or whatever the hours) and followed that with informing the congregation that at 10:30 his pants come off and he gets comfortable, and they don't want to be there to see that. They got the hint, lol.

My 8th grader has used Writing & Rhetoric all the way through middle school (we hope to be done with book 8 by the end of 8th grade). We will continue with the series in high school, but I don't yet have a plan for after we finish the series...maybe their Rhetoric Alive! course, which is intended to be the follow-up to W&R. The plan for my 5th grader is to do the entire W&R series as well.

Unlock math is self-teaching and has a teacher available for help through email or phone call, so other than checking to see that the work was done each day it is completely hands-off for the parent.

The test administrator at the school where my daughter took the PSAT made all the homeschool students put the school's code on their test booklet. A number of the kids (including mine) argued that they were supposed to leave it blank after marking that they were a homeschool student, but the administrator refused to accept the booklet until the kids wrote it in. Is this going to cause a problem with the students getting their scores?

I have one word for you - gangs. My immediate area does not have a lot of crime. I live less than 15 minutes, though, from a city that perpetually ranks in the top ten most dangerous cities in Texas. Currently the murder rate per capita is 3rd in the state; the rape rate is 1st. The city and the state know the high rate of violent crime is a problem and they are trying to get the gang problem under control. When I moved here 20 years ago the biggest issue in that city was burglaries, and while that rate hasn't changed much, the violent crime rate has risen considerably. 15 years ago the Army was letting in pretty much any yahoo who wanted to join, and gangs realized they could spread across the U.S. on the government's dime. The Army eventually wised up to the scheme and started kicking gang members out, but their mission was already accomplished. I don't know how it was around other Army bases, but the gang presence here was too well established for it to make a bit of difference. I don't live in fear, but I am also not stupid. I live in a rural area with no regular police patrols. The one time I had to call the county sheriff (a pushy door-to-door salesman actually became physically pushy after I refused to make a purchase) it took the nearest officer over 45 minutes to show up at my house. I don't want to be unprepared if the violent crime from just down the road makes its way to my neighborhood. And I am not going to move away in fear just because I don't live in a Mayberry-esque neighborhood.

It was clear to me that that is what you meant, it just wasn't clear to me that that was what hornblower meant at all. I read it to mean something else entirely. Obviously I need more coffee, lol.

My mistake, it appeared to me that she was allowing guns in the home for protection against animals or for hunting, but as far as for protecting yourself from crime she wanted stronger police and not armed citizens. I did not understand that to mean she was ok with people keeping a gun in their home for self-defense. That option is a necessity where I live; in fact, the county sheriff likes to check with newcomers and let them know that they recommend having a shotgun or deer rifle in the home (locked up in a gun safe and not accessible by children, of course - they even provide free trigger locks) since they are not able to protect us from criminals, just clean up the mess when it is over (their exact words).

Absolutely 100%. I am a veteran and I know what AR's are designed to do, and there is no good reason for a regular citizen to own one. The gun we have in our safe for home protection is a simple basic shotgun. I was only pointing out that hornblower's ideal world, with unarmed citizens and a stronger local police force, would leave people like me with no protection.

Regarding the bolded - that only works if people only live in cities. For all of us who live in rural areas, it leaves us almost completely defenseless. I do not live in a city, so I don't have a community and I do not have a local police force to protect me. If I have an emergency and I call the police department of the nearest city, the dispatcher will inform me that they cannot help me and hang up. The county sheriff of the county I live in will respond to emergencies if I call, but since that (tiny) office services all rural areas of the entire county I live in (over 1,000 square miles in area), it is a very long response time - long enough that any crime that was being committed would be well over by the time they showed up. I don't think that people who live in cities understand that people who live in rural areas do not have the same public services that people who live in cities have. Go to the website for your city and look at all the departments listed there - those are all the things that we don't have. We don't have the public works, the public safety, the city parks and rec., city libraries, etc. None of it. Recommending that the police department in the cities have a well-trained and staffed police force does absolutely nothing for the protection of the 46 million Americans who live in rural areas. Laws prohibiting us from having a gun in the home for protection would leave us as sitting ducks.

My next question is does he need a chemistry course that takes two hours a day? Does he want to study it for that long every day? Is he going into a science field that needs that kind of foundation in chemistry? That looks like a huge time suck each day, and if it isn't important enough to dedicate that kind of time to it, then perhaps you can reassess what you are doing. I understand the desire to give him a solid foundation in chemistry, but there are easier ways to do it that will take less time if it is just getting done to check the box. Obviously, if he would spend six hours a day on chemistry because it is his passion and you are limiting him to two hours, then this does not apply :001_smile: My personal limit for my 10th grader is one hour/day per subject. If anything routinely takes longer than that, I look for an area to cut back (answer workbook questions orally, cut down on the number of assigned problems, etc.). I feel very strongly that kids need time to develop all aspects of themselves during the teenage years, not just the academic part, so I really don't want my daughter spending more than 30 hours/week on academics. You asked, so I will give you my honest answer...yes, I think 40 hours a week of school is a bit on the unreasonable side :blush: I have known kids in my community that had schedules like the one you listed, and the ones that thrive on that kind of busyness do really well; but the ones that are overwhelmed by it tend to crash and burn rather spectacularly at some point. Their parents don't talk about it (who wants to admit that their honor-roll, earning-an-associates-by-graduation student has to finish out their classes at the alternative school in order to salvage a senior year that had literally more classes than the student could complete?), but it does happen. I would not make those students the standard by which my students are measured. If your son doesn't want to change anything, then I would just keep going the way things are. Part of learning to be successful with ADHD is accepting that some things will take extra time and effort to do well, so that is a good lesson to learn now. And if he just doesn't want to do all the work (and you don't think it is an unreasonable amount), then I wouldn't change anything. But if he is unhappy and would like things to change, then I would listen to what wants.

It does look like a very packed schedule to me. Since he needs extra time to complete assignments, are you limiting his school work to only include necessary classes? For example, in your signature it lists two history classes. Can he just do one this year and one next year? And if he is baking for a few hours every week, is an actual for-credit home ec class necessary? Just a couple suggestions off the top of my head. I believe in the long run it is wiser to do fewer subjects better, than lots of subjects at a pace that might burn out the student, even if they are in areas of interest. The week before school started this year I had to tell my 10th grader that one of the electives she had requested was getting put off until next year. It would have been a good subject to study, and it was definitely an area of interest, but it would have required another hour/day of school time. Six week into the school year she admitted that it would have been too much and she would have had less time to focus on her other subjects if she had tried to squeeze it in.

I think people only post about it when they are struggling.

My middle child began in book one and is now (8th grade) most of the way through book 7. My youngest is in book 2. I plan on using the entire series with both of them. The publication schedule is slightly ahead of my middle child, plus the upper books are quite meaty and take a good bit of time to get through, so that is why she is only on book 7. I will have no problem giving her high school credit for using the upper ones in high school.

My 10th grader did it earlier this month. It gave her an idea of what types of questions would be on the test and what specific areas (commas!!) she needed to work on.

My older two are enjoying Unlock Math this year (prealgebra and geometry). It is online, but at your own pace. I like that every lesson has review of previous concepts, the students only need to do a short problem set to show mastery (although the system will continue to give new problem sets if the student is struggling or wants extra practice), and best of all, if the student needs help they can chat, email, or call the owners directly for assistance with a concept. It is completely hands-off for me; all I have to do is monitor their progress through the parent account.

My daughter spends about an hour a day on the class. I would contact the instructor first and see if she is willing to work with you on helping the course fit him better. My daughter is under the impression that the survey the students took the first week of class helped the instructor somewhat individualize the course for each student (i.e. whether they desired a basic course or an honors-level course).