The insurance company was Dewar. It was offered through the school; we didn't purchase it independently. In fact, I believe it was required and included with tuition. I believe that if dd had been expelled, we would have received more money, so we briefly conspired with dd to do something really horrid, lol!

I'm a big fan of tuition insurance. My dd lasted 6 weeks at a private school, and we were able to recoup 50% of our tuition for the year. Without it we'd have been on the hook for an entire year. Getting our money back was no problem, no hassle, just a couple of emails to the school and our check arrived in the mail. I would take advantage if you are unsure about whether the school is a good fit.

One thing that helped me was to physically break apart the book. On the advice of another BFSU user, I took the book to the office supply store. For a few bucks, they can cut off the binding and 3 hold punch it for you. I took it home, stapled together the individual lessons and put it all into a 3 ring binder. Then I could pull out 1 or 2 or 3 individual lessons at a time. It just made it all much more manageable for me. I would plan out roughly 3 lessons ahead of time. This includes ordering materials and putting books on hold a the library. Since I used money from a charter school, at the beginning of the school year I'd go through the entire book and order everything I needed at once, returning materials to the school as I finished with it. My favorite story is about how I had ordered elodea, a fresh water plant, for a future BFSU experiment. Along with everything else, I put it up on a shelf and forgot about it until a few months later when I needed to use it. By that time, it had died and turned all brown, lol! So apart from living organisms, it makes sense to buy as much as you can at once. (You can amortize shipping this way too.) Good luck!

How about these Folio Bags? They came in canvas, corduroy, leather...all colors and patterns. 90% of the girls at my junior high school in the 1980s had one. (Mine was navy corduroy.)

In reading the curriculum of a local Waldorf school, there appears to be no math instruction at all in senior year of high school. That might explain the dearth of admissions to any tippy top name or STEM-oriented colleges. However, another nearby Waldorf School (yes, Waldorf is big out here), seems to do better, offering AP Calculus, This might explain why they appear to do better in college placement.

It also looks like there's a discussion on Reddit. Thanks to everyone who recommended Mr. Moskaluk at PAH for AP chem. Dd got a 5, an 800 on the SAT chem, and is doing chemistry research this summer. Not a bad deal overall.

The ZOOM address song: "Zoom, Z double O M Box 350 Boston Mass 0....21....34....! Send it to Zoom!" It's good to know that if the internet goes down and society collapses, I'll still be able to send my jokes to Zoom.

Looking to next year for AP Computer Science A. I'm thinking about the PA Homeschoolers class taught by Cynthia Lang or the Edhesive class taught by Mrs. Dovi? Pros? Cons? Any other online vendors?

We started around February and managed to finish everything but organ systems by the May test date. This was while she was taking WTM bio. She ended up getting over 700, and this was before she even covered organ systems, so we're really curious what her new score will be.

I want to point out that TAs aren't necessarily worse teachers than their professors. Stanford has one of the best CS departments in the world. Their introductory programming classes are taught by professors but the section leaders are undergraduates.

On this page, I'm curious to know what the abbreviations mean: C, L, DL, OA, OB, OC?

I also love this rule, in the form of a pdf that graphically describes what is and is not allowed. In a spectacularly meta fashion, this rule pdf is itself not allowed. And the pdf contains an image of itself with a big red X. Perfect.

Ooh! And color-coded cards, presumably to wave discretely when in need of the appropriate item: Five colored cards: Purple: to request more paper; Orange: to submit a question to the jury (during the first 30 minutes only); Blue: to request water; Green: if you need to go to the toilet; Red: if you need help or want to stop working early (not during the last 30 minutes) (I love this. Don't mix up the red and green cards!)

I decided to investigate my own question by browsing around the IMO website. And I was not disappointed. In reading the rules (yes, I'm procrastinating. You gotta problem with that?), I've learned that in addition to the usual (pencils, erasers, compass, no cellphones), students are allowed "if necessary, a small talisman (small enough so as to fit into one hand)." If necessary? A talisman? Like a rabbit's foot? Perhaps your son would have packed a larger suitcase if he had remembered to pack his talisman?

I'm enjoying reading In Quest of the Universe for fun, which I heard about on these boards. Full color, detailed explanations of scientific concepts. It was published in 2013, so a little out of date especially with respect to Mars (and now Jupiter!).

Dd took the SAT subject test in Bio M after taking the WTM bio course. We signed up before realizing that the WTM course didn't cover organ systems which are definitely covered on SAT Bio. We learned this because we had purchased the Barron's and Princeton review guides. Buy those. Go through each topic in those books, and review in your textbook. (We used Holt, which was also excellent preparation.) Also, buy the blue/green College Board guide. We saved those practice tests for the very end. Print out a calendar and map out all the topics you need to cover before test day. Dd ended up taking the test before having studied organ systems (long story) and scored very well. She took it again a month later, this time with organs under belt, and we're still waiting on the score.

My math teacher would always say, "Math is not a spectator sport." Having said that, can you direct us to a website where we can track the progress of the teams?

Did you know that Purdue is actually public? I didn't. I don't see it discussed much on these boards.

Out here, a lot of homeschoolers do what I've taken to calling "Waldorf-inspired" education. They do the knitting, the relaxed approach to academics in the early years, the fairies, the felting, the greeting the sun every morning. Then as their kids grow, they end up becoming less Waldorfy, some earlier, some later. I've only seen one homeschooling mom who was truly orthodox Waldorf, who called me to ask that my kids not bring paper (paper! with writing on it!) to park days. (She ended up enrolling in one of the expensive Wadorf schools out here.) If you do apply to a Waldorf school, under no circumstances should you tell them that your student has been exposed to television or any electronic media AT ALL, or you risk automatic disqualification. No matter how well curated, how educational the tv shows or websites. I've heard that nearly all parents lie to their Waldorf schools about their kids media exposure. (This is second hand information from a local parenting email list, but you may want to check if this is true at your school.)

I like flash cards, and I prefer the kind that uses actual notecards, especially the half size ones. Learning the latin stems also helps a bit.

Two words: tuition insurance. My dd dropped out after 6 weeks, and we were able to recoup half of her tuition for the year.

Spanish cognates appears in all his vocabulary books, including CE and WWW 1-3. So you may want to skip MCT vocab if this bothers you. I for one studied French in high school and have bitterly regretted it. I had no idea there were so many Spanish speakers in this country.

Oh, man if only the internet had been invented in time for my summer internships!

It just occurred to me to share my own college internship experiences. They weren't awesome. I worked at a well known investment bank in Japan for a summer. I worked at a used-to-be-huge technology company for a summer. In both cases I was paid buckets of money to do very very very little. I did some science research in a lab that didn't really amount to anything. It was frustrating at the time, but boy did I look great on paper! I was getting job interviews left and right. My dh pointed out that it can be hard for busy employees to carve out an interesting project for a summer intern. Depending on their skills, interns typically take up more time than they contribute. My dd is doing research in a great lab right now, but some of her colleagues showed up only to find the PhDs were on vacation! There was nothing to do but sit around and read papers. Don't discount the "looking good on paper" aspect to these summer internships.

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: I agree; there was nothing you could have done to prevent the situation. What a terrible way to treat your son. Really just awful. Best of luck to you.