My dd loves her co-op and has had a great experience there. For consistency”s sake, senior year, she will at least stay involved in some way or take a class or two. She’s just on the older side of the population they serve and she’s more mature than the other students. She also is a bit over being the only one who consistently does the work, although she has always made it work and thrives and the teachers certainly love her 🙂 I don’t really think her CC options are good for senior year. The CC north of us where my son went is so impacted she would be super unlikely to get her classes and it’s a significant highway drive. The CC south of us is Serves migrant farm workers and has a jail-to- society education program. The staff there is super super nice but the classes are very dumbed down and basic, as well as the fact that all the academic classes are offered odd hours of the night since they mainly serve nursing, aviation, and tons and tons of remedial classes... we do have a large university that I could drive her to or take the train to, with her, but I’m not sure how dual enrollment for homeschoolers works there. (Edited there’s a huge notice that they do not accept any high school students due to over crowding) she has a fantastic job all summer but it doesn’t exist during the year. She could inquire about working something related during the school year but that doesn’t change the fact that she just plain needs academic classes. she hates online classes. any other ideas ???

Wow, she sounds like a real survivor and has taken great opportunities even while being ill and recovering!!! My dd is also coming off of two years with MTBIs and the sale of her horse which was like losing a major relationship....I think when they re-start their lives, and re-set everything, they have anxiety because of the new fresh start and the expectations that are building up from having a fresh start. I think after a while she will settle down but I agree with your advice to her, to consistently remind her that having fun is part of being a whole person and a healthy person. If she stresses herself out, that can increase auto immune issues, so enjoying herself actually is best for her long term grades! 🙂 God bless her, she sounds amazing and I love it that you want her to enjoy the experience. I keep saying the same thing to my son as well,...look around...see what's available, meet new people and try some things 🙂

Well you already paid for the class so I would go ahead and stick with it. As a new homeschooler the last thing you want to do is teach your son that (partly) due to his complaining or feelings, a class can easily be dropped 🙂 From the get go it's best to teach him he generally has to stick with things. For a computer Science major, math is very important. Saxon works and if your son has the patience to use Saxon with the DVD's or an online class, he will score high on SAT's and probably find a good comp sci program somewhere. I would encourage you to supplement Saxon with Khan Academy SAT practice test and test prep, and any math clubs you can find! Please advise him, however, that if he does join a math club he may feel "stupid" compared to the geniuses there but keep learning from them, and keep going and keep growing and seeing the amazing stuff they do there, will help him! My son was the "least smart" one in Math CLub but he scored very high on his math SAT's and also he went to community college at age 15 to start Pre-Calc there 🙂 For Computer Science your son should start learning a little bit of coding. There are a bunch of cool free programs to teach them the basics and the best place to start is Hour of Code. 🙂 You can do this, you will be fine. Just help your son to be independent, have good study skills, and get out there and be part of the community as well.

Honestly, I tried MOH twice back in the day and was unimpressed both times. I did not enjoy the tone or the writing style. We LOVED Story of the World 🙂

i just did it for my son because he’s busy and it’s not rocket science- just annoying. Interestingly the data retrieval didn’t work last time but it did work this time. That was very nice 🙂 renewal, assuming you haven’t had any major changes, was so much easier than the first time around !!! Woo hoo

To me it’s not about money it’s whether he is a conscientious business person with a good business plan. In high school it’s pretty ugly when your kid is left high and dry halfway through the school year. so personally I would never take any classes associated with them again. My son was left high and dry halfway through and we had to scramble to fins another teacher with the same book and schedule, as well as hire a tutor so that my sons high school transcript would not show a lapse.

totally a zombie thread... But since are updating ... We ended up signing up my son for Instacart and he has 24-cases of bottled of water delivered for 4.00 and includes a generous tip (since it's only an 8.00 order) The reason is that his U does not advise using the water fountains due to mono and strep so they have "Filling Stations" which are popular here in CA and a very good thing- but the "filling station" closest to his dorm is about a half a block away. My son never ever drank enough water at home, so we sent him with two gallon jugs which he was then going to fill at the filling station every few days. (you can fill into your brita, or straight into your jug or water bottle) You are NOT allowed to fill up at the water / soda fountain in the cafeteria for health department reasons (spreads flu, and strep when people touch their used bottle to the little plastic things that push the soda out) So I get a call that he has a headache for days, feels light headed, out of it...and find out that the entire first two weeks he lived on campus he survived on about 30 oz of water per day....I had him immediately guzzle down two Gatorade and re-hydrate with Gatorade and water for 48 hours and he was fine...and my husband and I decided it was worth the money to allow him 8.00 every two weeks to use Instacart to buy water. So just keep in mind, when your kid moves in on moving day, it is worthwhile to take a walk and find out how far the filling stations are and assess whether your kid is likely to go use it. 🙂 If not I suggest Instacart

absolutely awesome!!! Congrats!!!

OK, so I think I am going to change the grading scale to 35% homework 65% tests, but allow unlimited tries and encourage her to keep fixing them till they're correct on the homework. Thanks everyone. This seems fair and also good for her learning.

What do you guys think of multiple choice ones?

hmmm, unfortunately I have no way to record that... unless I kept a paper notebook with a tally of how many I had to delete ... compounding the issue is that the ones she finds most challenging are the multiple choice. If she has two tries, then has it deleted, then has two more tries, that's now four tries and they usually have only 6 answers, sometimes less. So I wonder if I should tell her I can't delete any multiple choice ones ?

hmmm that may be a good point...I would think freshman genEds would be easier. Are you sure it's not just because your ds is used to juggling everything now?

My daughter's math program allows them to have a parent delete a problem that they got wrong. The program gives the lesson, then shows the problem. The student compeltes the problem on paper, puts in the answer, and it gives two chances. My daughter would like me to go in and clear 2 or 3 problems every day. She does NOT view the solution (and the program shows me whether she did or not) before trying a third time. (fourth time if I clear the problem) Now, I have her homework as 50% of her grade and her tests as 50% of her grade. I could average homework, or I could just give her 100% for the homework being done to her best ability. When I was in high school, most of my math teachers would walk around the room with a grade book in hand, and we'd turn the pages quickly and show our work. Then he or she would also call on us totally randomly to further ensure her quick check was good. In my honors 11th and 12th grade classes it was only the top students in the school so she would just take our word for it and ask if we did it and then proceed. If we were out due to illness or something, she would accept a few not done each year. So, should I continue clearing problems for my dd and just giver her 100 on her homework? Or, continue clearing, but then average her actual homework grade? Or, should I just say I will clear up to 3 per day and that's it??? I do want her to have the chance to learn from these problems. She is self teaching using the program (TT) and meeting with a tutor every other week to go over anything she found challenging. For whatever reason she is finding ALgebra 2 a lot more challenging than Geometry, but still maintaining an A

idk...this is why we aren't DE'ing for my dd this year. Last year we tried one class - an English class, and it was so stupid, so ridiculous - jamming a ridiculous agenda into the class, only a few basic essays...such a simple ridiculous course and my dd was missing two entire co-op days because of it. So we dropped it before the drop date- she will not have a W on her transcript. She signed up instead for an English class at the co-op and had a wonderful relationship with a caring, gifted teacher and a nice group of kids, some creative and challenging assignments ... So this year as I was really thinking through whether to DE, it wasn't very difficult of a decision. If I let her DE it would purely be to learn to use Canvas, and to have DE on her transcript. Since she would not DE for any math or Science, she would take entry level, agenda-filled courses with mostly high school dropouts (depending on which CC we take her to...)... It seemed like I should make the decision that is truly best for her actual education, not what would show on a transcript. So that is what I would encourage you to do. putting the transcript aside, what is best for your daughter's actual education, and also her character ? I was concerned about having my daughter drop a class, but at the same time we've had a hard time finding fits for her academically, because she is very different from me, and very different from her older brother. My lack of experience in planning an education shouldn't consign her to an entire semester or year of either misery or sub-par course. In your dd's case it sounds like it will just be a big challenge, to get a B. In a weighted transcript, a B in a DE course gets a 4.0 so won't bring down her high school GPA. It will of course affect her COLLEGE GPA which will affect grad school (perhaps??) ...so I am leaning toward saying that your dd should stick with it and work through it, assuming that she isn't completely lost, or that the material isn't ridiculous or sub-par. IN future, I would caution against taking DE just cause. IMO they should be to really advance the subject material as well as the intrinsic benefits of working in college environment.

I would also caution you to remember how liberal/left most universities are. Even the ones which are not as liberal/left could have an admissions board that happens to comprise of these people. Many of them have a weird and un-explainable distaste for, and dislike of hunting. I live in CA and came from Florida where everyone had guns and also hunted. Here...well let's just say there is a strange and un-explainable fear of all things with guns even just for the purpose of getting your FOOD. I don't think your son should change who he is, but I would just point out that unless you really think it's going to look amazing or add to something on his transcript...or unless the college itself has a hunting club in need of members etc....it might be worth considering whether to include it.

Yay! Of course she does! Those are both great options and they aren’t the only ones. Your questions are all very valid! It’s an exciting time 🙂

The only problem with that is that sounds like she'd be jumping into a whole new life and taking super hard classes all at the same time. A lot of kids on the PennState parents page are really struglling becuase they chose to skip over some GenEd's and move up a level or two in math. Meanwhile they're figuring out where to eat, where to get water (sounds silly but my son had to figure that out!), where to shop, where everything is, taking tours, getting to know people, trying out different clubs, getting sick and taking care of themselves while sick for the first time (also where the health office is, pharmacy, etc.), then there are career fairs and college - specific events.... If you don't take any GenEd's and all you have is 300 level classes, well...that's pretty tough and not necessarily advisable. I may have misunderstood what the program is about but it sounds different than an Honors program, where they take allt he GenEds but with an "H" i n front and are with like minded kids, have an Honors building, group events, or smaller class sizes etc.

She was begging me for some copic markers, that is so funny! We were at Michaels and I'm like so happy that we finally figured out her career path, etc. (for a while it was english degree with future goal of working in the library but that always worried me as she is so creative )...anyway, I told her until I saw her start with pencil and really do a few months worth of really excellent, time consuming pencil drawings that take patience, etc. I'm not buying her any markers. (thankfully she is so frugal she will never spend her own money unless there's no hope of me ever buying something...) so far she's really enjoying the pencils and super glad she finally gave them a try. I'd like to see four or five more really good pieces before I even consider any other medium. LOL maybe controlling, but she needed that little push.

Does the school with the unengaged kids have an Honors program? They often get to take Honors only classes, have Honors first year seminar or something like that as well as other perks and social as well as academic events.

That's actually what she's been doing all along is tons and tons of digital. She has a few really great works from her digital work, and now she needs to learn basically every basic medium in one year. She did do some great stuff with this same teacher in, I think, chalk pastel, that was so good we framed it. Really excellent. It was a very promising medium for her and I wish she would do more, but she found it too messy at home. ....so this year she really needs to kind of master pencil, oil painting, probably do some chalk pastel again....the pencil stuff is coming along amazingly, and she literally started less than a week ago, so my fears are allayed in that area. She hadn't picked up a pencil set to draw, like, ever. ....but we found one that doesn't make a scratchy sound (prismacolor) and I'm so happy! I can't remember what she uses for her ipad digital art...ah yes it's ProCreate. She's amazing at it...like a "pro" LOL. She's also learning Sketch to make posters for the student government and they've turned out nicely. I'm sure she'd be able to figure out Adobe Illustrator if need be. I suggested she at least try it out today, after reading your suggestion 🙂 She also will need to learn, with her teacher more about just using the space to make it interesting, and what the scene/picture/person/character is all about...the teacher gave her some pointers already via just email that made a huge difference. They'll meet mid October and by then she will have some great new stuff for the teacher to critique!

Maybe not too relevant, but the best teacher I ever had in history had gone to William and Mary....she graduated 30 years ago but even then, she talked about how William and Mary trained her to think about the whole picture and view it from all angles. One of her favorite topics to explain how history shouldn't be so cut and dry, is the Civil War and how slavery was only one piece of that complicated puzzle. Ok so not very relevant...but I felt like sharing

Yay!! Library science is changing and often not offered at so many universities but it's not a thing of the past. People like your dd who are interested in special collections really need that degree! How does she do with quiet??

GREAT ! OK, so her art teacher is going to be working on actual pieces for her portfolio. On her own, dd has forced herself to start learning really advanced pencil techniques and it's coming along well. So we decided on a comprehensive Art course which covers Color Theory, Value, Design, and then branches off into different mediums and closes up with an Art Appreciation unit. This will ensure she covers a lot of art topics that she never had, since the random art classes throughout the years certainly didn't cover all of this. And then next year I will have her do a Consumer Math course in addition to Pre-Calculus. I'm not sure she needs an "economics" course per se, but a Consumer Math would be great. Also thanks for the tips for National Portfolio Day! I hadn't really heard of it! I will make sure she goes next year. Right now she doesn't have much that is portfolio ready.

oooh neat idea! Why doesn't TEVA or someone make regular sneakers that have adjustable backs?

never occurred to us! Isn't that weird?? But that's why I have the HIVE I'm also very interested in all of prairimama's suggestions since I am sure my dd will find herself in stages of life where boots just aren't the thing anymore.