I have not heard of a single fire starting by arson this year. :confused: One was a controlled burn and the rest were lightening strikes as far as I am aware of. We have a friend that is a local volunteer fire fighter and he said dozens of fires have been started each day by lightening. Thankfully they have gotten all of theirs out.

Sadly, you would be wrong.

I highly recommend getting it out. My son has permanent liver and pancreas damage because the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. The large number of stones he passed stretched out his bile ducts, making it more likely that stones will form in there and he may possible need a complete liver transplant. The back up pressure on the pancreas caused damage that he may end up with pancreatitis. Gall stones are really nothing to mess around with. Like a pp said, the gall bladder flushes are not really flushing out the stones. I went to both of my alternative medical providers and they both said not to mess around with any of the alternative therapies like flushes, diets and ultrasounds. :grouphug:

:grouphug: I don't think PS will help your child. I think it is even more important that you teach him at home with the help of specialists. The psychologist that evaluated my daughter and one that evaluated my friend's daughter told us not to put them in school. That if we put them in school they would realize how far behind they are and how hard it is for them to learn and they would emotionally not recover and they would not get the academic help they need anyway. Special Ed and help for struggling learners is only getting worse and worse in schools. If your son is not reading, look for an orton gillian tutor. I found one that is going through her training so she is only $50 an hour. My daughter has made so much progress. Hire the speech therapist. I found both people who would come to my home. Get your son in some sort of martial art. Buy an i-phone or i-pad and have him work on educational aps. Find a way around the testing requirement of your state for now. Start looking for curriculum made simple on the special needs board. :grouphug:

This year, 3 people died and dozens of homes were destroyed in a fire that started as a controlled burn. We do controlled burns out here, but there is just so much forest, so much dead forest due to beetles and little logging. Logging sites used to serve as a break for fires, but people don't like to see bare spots along the front range so now they can see dead and burned spots.

I had a similar teaching style/experience with my oldest. I got a test prep book and he was totally unable to answer even the basic math questions. In his math book 2+2 was always vertical, in the test prep book it was horizontal or had pictures. He seriously could not figure out the different format! We went through the whole book, 2 pages a day from both sections and it was by far the hardest part of his school day. The critical thinking it takes to figure out those worksheets is amazing. ;) He then scored in the 99% on the test, after 6 months of going through this book and other workbooks. I now find workbooks to be a necessary part of school. None of my other kids have had such problems and they don't do the test prep workbooks, just normal workbooks, like Spectrum. I would start working through a test prep book and order a home test when he is done. You may be uncovering some deficits in your teaching style, materials or an LD that needs intervention.

That is very reassuring and big reason why we want to move. ;)

Thanks!

Is the supervising teacher option really that common there? Like I said, you would pretty much be a homeschool outcast where I live, because you wouldn't be a "real" homeschooler. Would the HSLDA accept you if you have a supervising teacher from the school district? This is really very foreign to me!

The test level that most closely approximates the child’s chronological age must be used. per http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/Iowa.pdf

Bumping up because we are considering moving to the Story City area. I am so shocked at how strict the Iowa HS law is! Are there no umbrella schools in Iowa? (An umbrella school in my current state is a private school that you register with. You send all of your information and test scores to it. You are technically considered a private school student and have no contact with the state.) Are families that register through the school district in the HSAP program not looked down on? (In my state you are considered a public school student and the HSLDA and some local homeschool groups will not allow you to join.) How strict are they on "showing progress" with your test scores? (My two oldest score in the 98%. To show progress would be tough. What if they have a bad testing day? My oldest took the Explore test two years in a row and even though his overall score went up, his math score went down due to a couple mistakes.) My 7 year old who has an August B-day is registered a year younger in my state because she has dyslexia and another LD. In my state she won't need to test for 2 more years, but if we move to IA she will have to test right away and as an entering third grader! :ohmy: She sees a reading tutor and she is only reading cvc words and has just started to master her math facts. What do I do?

My 10yo daughter used to be very allergic. Thankfully, she seems to be growing out of it. We used to do Benadryl and Ibuprofin, but would have to go get oral steroids if the bite was on a joint or her lower leg. We would elevate the bite the best we could, like prop her foot up on pillows at night. Hers would swell so bad that she could not move her joint and they would bruise. You could see her pulse throbbing through the bite. Since we discovered Zyrtec, she has been fine. As soon as she gets one, we give her a dose and she has not needed oral steroids since. I find topicals to be useless unless it is a small bite.

At first I thought she was talking about the writing guy from last year. That was the most controversial thread I have ever posted in. ;) But after googling the name, he is the co-founder of wikpedia, who has since left and is writing a program to teach babies to read. The video, half way down, is pretty fascinating: http://larrysanger.org/2010/12/baby-reading/

Wow! I can't believe how cheap all of yours are! Now I see why people are drawn to it. Ours are all about $200 per credit hour for in-state! :001_huh: At that price, I figure they should take on-line classes from a "real" college that they plan on going to.

If she is having good and bad days, try to figure out what is causing them. A friend's daughter needs 10 hours of sleep or she can't function. They have had to give up all evening activities even church. I realized that if my daughter had gluten for breakfast she had a bad day. We kept her GF for breakfast for a while, then breakfast and lunch. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing diet change, just for the school hours. I agree with others, I would take time off through the summer, but then I would get back to academics. I would hire an Ortham Gillingham tutor if she is still struggling. I am amazed at the progress my daughter's tutor has made with her. Sometimes I think it is just because it is an outside person. Sometimes I think it is all the multi sensory activities they do.

This is what my hubby and I did. We both got straight A's in CC, but when we transferred to the college that we had an agreement with, we found that we were quite ill prepared. Our English teacher told us to drop English 201 and start over with 101. We had to do some serious catching up for math and science. This was from a very highly rated CC. That is why I won't even consider CC for my serious college bound students.

I think you have handled this well. I think your son is young for this, but I used to go out to dinner with my friend and we would sit at one table and her son and a special girl would sit at another table. I think they did other things similar to that like bowling and movies. They had her over for dinner a lot too. I had never considered something like that, so I thought I would mention it. :grouphug:

The most frustrating are actually agave and canola. There are so many prepared food I could eat, but they almost always have one of these in them. Recently agave has been showing up in the weirdest places, like salsa!!

That is interesting because she specifically mentioned thyroid and tested me for it. I had constant hyper/hypo cycles before, but have been stable since going on a celiac diet 5 years ago.

I already have celiac. :crying: I don't eat: gluten, egg, dairy, soy, almond, canola oil, banana, coconut or agave syrup. I can't imagine having to give up more food. Thanks for the well wishes everyone!

Interesting!

I have been assuming it was reactive hypoglycemia because I have been diagnosed with that. That is why I was shocked when the numbers were the opposite of what I was expecting! I just got back from the doc and she said extended fasting causes blood sugar to rise that high. (I did tell her the strips were expired.) She said she thought it was a certain type of ulcer. She told me that she would test my thyroid and run the diabetes marker test. The nurse took 6 vials of blood! I said something about how she was only testing for 2 things, why was she taking so much blood. The nurse winked at me and said, "I think she is checking for just a few more things." I am supposed to go to the hospital sometime this week and get an upper GI too. (I think safe numbers for people diagnosed with diabetes and much different than the numbers used to diagnose people with it.) Thanks everybody!

I heard that they send all of your high school SAT scores to colleges.

Help! I have had wide spread food allergies, low blood pressure and hypoglycemia my whole life. I had my fifth baby 15 months ago after being on bed rest the whole time and I am still very thin. My glucose test in pregnancy showed hypoglycemia, just like all the others. 3 months ago I started getting very sick. I thought I had developed a new allergy, so I started taking foods in and out of my diet. Nothing worked. I started fasting and adding foods back in. Almost everything I ate made me sick. I finally figured out that I could have a protein shake for breakfast, a V8 for lunch and a handful of nuts for a snack. If I ever ate more than that I would have to go to bed. I wold eat a normal dinner and get very sick. This has been going on for a month. I ate 1/3 of a Chipolte burrito bowl, some chips and a couple homemade PB cookies last night, a very light meal, especially after fasting all day. I was still hungry, but I got that all too familiar sick feeling and had to go to bed. I had this thought to check my blood sugar. It was 140! I took it at 2 hours past the meal and it was 135. I finally felt well enough to get up at 4 hours past. I took my blood sugar and it was 125. At bedtime I was starving so I had some juice and potato chips. I took my morning blood and it was 165! I took it again and it was 40 (I think my hand was wet) and again and it was 135. What is going on? Is my meter defective? The strips are 6 years old. What do I do now? My doctor retired so I need to find a new one. Are there any other problems that could cause this to come on so suddenly? Help! Thank you for reading so long.

This was my first thought at well. Would your son and this girl really think he could make it 30 miles round trip in a night? Even if he was riding a bike, it sounds super fishy. I was wondering if someone would appear to give him a lift. I would be thoroughly checking to make sure she is real.