WTM is where I go for MCT questions.

I don't know anything about languages, so I'm going to just throw this one out and see if anyone else more knowledgeable can comment: Would straight to graduate school be an option for her since she's so advanced, beyond what a senior in college could do? Is she interested in research? PhD's learn for free!

If you don't mind my asking, could you share your math coach's contact info? Does S/he do online tutoring? You can PM if you like.

I don't know much about vet school, but I hear admission is quite competitive. You may want to get in touch with vets and vet students to get the story on preparing for admissions. Good luck!

(I feel like I always need to hear someone's back story, lol.) I went ahead and ordered a used copy of Suchocki, so I'm good after all.

Wonderful news!

Okay, I'll back off. I think you're correct that it's more embarrassing to be considered "dumb" than to be "not good enough for the varsity team."

Would he say the same of kids who play football? Audition for roles in the school musical? Run for student government? Wouldn't the students who don't make the team, don't get a big role, don't get enough votes have it shoved in their faces? Sorry, but this attitude really gets my goat. :glare: I think even students who don't necessarily score highly still benefit from the process. Dd14 was keen to be an AIME qualifier this year, but didn't after 2 attempts. But I'm glad she made the attempts, because the effort she puts in makes her a stronger student.

MK is very friendly to homeschoolers. Check back with the website later this year, and email Maria about setting up a new site. They'll be thrilled to have you because you'll be allowing more students to participate. My kids have been doing MK for years. Even my 9th grader still enjoys it, though not so much with the loud t-shirts that are designed for boys. (Why don't these programs ever give out t shirts for girls?) If you need more info about setting up a site, I'm also happy to help. I'd wait a few weeks because they are just receiving their scantron cards and will be busy with grading exams and everything else.

Math Stuff: AMCs, MathCounts, Math Olympiad for Elementary and Middle School, Math Kangaroo (tomorrow!), etc.

DD14 took a statistics class taught by a professor at Duke. She enjoyed it. We paid for the certificate, on my husband's advice, though I'm skeptical of its value. It does show that dd has completed all the assignments and done well on the exams, but at this point in time I doubt college admissions committees really care. If coursera gets used more widely, this may change.

I think sewing is way harder than reading an electrical schematic.

To do this demo, I purchased this kit. As I recall, the wire is already wrapped for you, which is really nice. ETA: When I google "varnished wire" I get links to magnet wire. I'm guessing the "varnish" refers to the thin transparent layer of insulating material. So transparent, that it's difficult to detect that it's even there. From the wikipedia site: "...completed windings are often vacuum impregnated with an insulating varnish to improve insulation strength and long-term reliability of the winding."

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Epstein also has a book on modern physics, Relativity Visualized, that you and your dd will enjoy.

No tomatoes from me. Fine motor skills are helpful for everything from wiring up breadboards to taking apart alarm clocks.

Maybe her friend was more attracted to spending a nice day hanging with your dd, and seeing the college was secondary?

This this this. Every time I've purchased or taken something from another homeschooling family, I've regretted it. Save yourself the headache and plan your labs first, only a year at a time at most, and buy stuff as you need it. I took a bunch of glass test tubes from another family. After years of sitting on my shelf, I never used them and gave them away. Then I needed test tubes, so I bought them all over again. Ugh. I also took another family's used Thames and Something chemistry kit. Never used it.

Try this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/308651699340117/

How does it compare to Zumdahl? I'm looking for a regular (pre-AP) high school chemistry text.

A couple of questions: Who is this Dr. Tang person who created the wonderfully detailed lesson plan? Has anyone looked at the Suchoki Conceptual Chemistry text used by the WTMA class? It gets mixed reviews on Amazon.

This is the textbook used by WTMA chemistry, and it gets mixed reviews on Amazon. What are your impressions of this text?

She tells me "all of the above." But the essays are short. All exams are online, not with paper/pen. She did have one episode where something happened and she thought she had finished the test, but she actually hadn't, and was distraught that she had missed half the points because she didn't see the exam. But we emailed Amy, who fixed everything so that episode had a happy ending. (We never figured out what went wrong, and it never happened again.) Amy personally reads the responses to make sure lost points aren't due to misspellings, etc. We are very impressed with Amy. She really knows her biology which is important to my dd who often notices small discrepancies or details that warrant explanations, and Amy has been very good about providing accurate satisfying answers. I miss hearing her friendly voice over the computer!

I'm not sure if you heard this tip, but this is what I did, on the advice of someone from the bfsu yahoogroup. You can take the book to an office supply store, and often they will charge a couple of bucks to slice off the binding and 3 hole punch the entire book. Then I took that home and stapled the individual lessons together and put it all into a 3 ring binder. That way, I could pull out individual lessons as needed, sometimes 2 or 3 to plan ahead. This also makes it easier to go through several lessons and make a shopping list of materials so you'll be ready to go when your each that lesson. But here's another lesson that I learned the hardway. Don't purchase elodea (freshwater plants for a bio lesson), put it on your shelf for several months, and then plan to use it later. By the time I retrieved my "elodea" from my science supplies shelf...it was dead and brown, lol! PS, there are still folks on the yahoogroup, but it isn't as active anymore. Most bfsu fans seem to have migrated to a similar facebook group, and they seem pretty active.

I know I'm pretty lame, but whenever I see materials that can be recycled, I just look to see where I can buy them new. I find them typically at Home Science Tools, or Amazon or similar online vendors. For example, I'm pretty sure I bought this for that lesson. And this. Radio Shack, Jameco, and Amazon also sell small speakers; they are quite cheap. Here's a cheap speaker that is made of paper (!) so it's super easy to take apart. If you are learning about sound, microphones and speakers, you'll definitely want to check out this video on how to make your own speaker. We did it and it really works! (I'm nostalgic for BFSU.)

Would C or C++ be a good thing to learn if you want to write scripts for an Arduino? How about if you have a high school student who knows python and some Java?