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yvonne

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Everything posted by yvonne

  1. I had the same problem. When I take one Benadryl/diphenhydramine before bed, I almost always sleep straight through the night. An MD told me it is not addicting, and I have not had to up the dose at all.
  2. G5052, how late was "too late" in your area? I've only asked two schools so far and both said to contact them again in Feb. Fortunately, at least one gave me a heads-up that they won't let outside students take the French AP. But neither school was willing to be definitive about the Latin AP. On the one hand, I want to respect their timelines. On the other hand, Feb. seems pretty late. I'm planning on contacting more schools this week to see if I can find anything more concrete/sure, but maybe this is too early and they'll all tell me to contact them in Feb.
  3. Is there any way she could finish the first semester at the private school? If you're looking to move to another brick & mortar school, an online school, or a charter, a half year of credits from the private school might transfer more easily. It would also give you time to look into options and make a good, coherent plan.
  4. Could you call the admissions offices of the universities/colleges you're looking at and ask them to clarify... do they want the student to take four years of the same language IN grades 9-12? Or do they want to see evidence of the student reaching the level of four years of study in one language? If it's the second, does a 4 or 5 on the AP exam for that language fulfill their FL requirement for admissions? If your student can take the AP exam in 9th and fill the FL requirements for admission, he'll have more time available to take other classes in 10-12, so it's worth finding out directly. (And please post what you find out if you call! We're in a similar boat. My oldest will take the French AP and the Latin AP this year, in 10th grade. My impression from what I've read/heard is that this will fill their FL reqmts for college admissions, and they do not plan to continue in 11th & 12th grade. They wouldn't mind continuing. They just don't have time schedule-wise to fit more in.)
  5. Just found out our local public school has stopped letting outside students take any AP language exams that require use of a computer, which, apparently, is all except Latin. :( Drat! The initial info I got from them was that we could take the AP French exam there. I asked in another thread, but ... If we use the home school code (instead of the testing site's school code), will our results go on the testing site's results "record"? I don't care one way or the other, but I wonder if I'll have an easier time finding a private school test site if I let them know that my students' exam scores will not affect their stats at all?
  6. My 10th graders will be taking the PSAT this Wednesday at our local public school. They have to be there at 7:30 am. Ugh! Are other testing sites starting that early, too? If we use the homeschool code (vs the public school's code), will the results come directly to us? Or do all results go to the test site administrator?
  7. This is what I don't understand: why bother taking some pre-PSAT test? Why not just take the "real" PSAT as an 8th/9th/10th grader? I'm having my 10th graders take the PSAT cold this year, just to see if/how much studying would make sense for next year, in 11th grade. Is there any advantage whatsoever to taking a pre-PSAT? I can imagine the CB just wants to make more $ off more tests. However, I doubt they're admitting that. They must be claiming there is some advantage to these pre-PSATs, positioning the pre-PSATs as somehow useful to students. Any idea what the company line is? (I know schools may not allow non-11th graders to take the real PSAT. My question is: Why would a student bother, other than for practice w/ standardized testing? Hm. Maybe the CB's end game is to restrict the PSAT to ONLY 11th graders.... What a game.)
  8. I've heard of home schoolers in the south bay using the PSP program at King's Academy in Mountain View in order to allow them to play sports at King's Academy. It's a private, Christian school, so not your ideal solution of a public school. I have also heard of ONE home schooled girl whose mother approached the local public school's volleyball coach directly and was able to get her daughter onto the girls' volleyball team at a public middle school in the south bay. However, there may have been more to the story (friend of the coach maybe?) because I know a lot more home schoolers who want to play public school sports but haven't been able to find a way in. Good luck! Please post if you find a way into public high school sports, or PM me. I have friends who'd love to be able to do this.
  9. We're in CA and had the same issue. When my oldest started high school, I wanted to do the same... keep the door open to transferring to a public/private high school. For 9th, we opted to home school under a public charter which would allow us to home school, selecting the courses we wanted to take, but which would also provide us with an official transcript for transfer purposes. It worked! My boys registered at the local brick and mortar public high school as 10th grade transfers, and all of their credits transferred, including the a-g status of certain courses. Even their Latin and Greek, which are not offered at our local b&m public, transferred. That said, it can be an administrative time sink for the parent, and it can potentially create additional busy work for the student, to have to sync up the a-g or other requirements of the charter with the class the student is actually taking. For example, English... our students took a pretty rigorous online high school English course, but to get the a-g designation, I had to match the course work up to an a-g approved textbook. It felt ridiculous because they were reading complete works rather than the abbreviated excerpts in the textbook, and they were writing complete papers rather than the silly little paragraphs the textbook suggested. So, it was a lot of work, but they did get to take the online classes we wanted and they did get the transcript that allowed them to transfer all their credits to the b&m. They've opted not to transfer after all, but to continue home schooling, and, now that I'm more confident about home schooling high school, esp. with all the online options available, we've dropped the charter. It is so nice not to have all those extra administrative headaches. YMMV, etc, etc, Good luck to you in finding a solution that works for you! I'd talk to people in your particular state about what they've done to figure out what best fills your needs. yvonne
  10. It is difficult reading and does take a lot of thought. I'm surprised they had them read it in class and discuss right then instead of reading it at home, before class. I wouldn't have done well in that situation in high school. Actually, I wouldn't do well with it now as an adult. I need time, and solitude, to really think about that type of reading. Poor girl. She probably felt under the gun. What a shame. Would have been a better discussion for everyone if they'd been given the text ahead of time.
  11. The Allegory of the Cave is definitely accessible to a high schooler. My boys read it when they did Omnibus I. If she has a good history teacher, she might have a blast discussing it in class! I'd bite my tongue for now and wait and see what she thinks about it after the class discussion.
  12. Sweet Peach... Did the DO course prepare your student well for the AP exam? Did he do much/any test prep beyond the course itself? Thanks!
  13. I would go to Glencoe's product page, get the isbns for the resources I wanted, and search for those isbns on amazon and bookfinder.com. For example, here's the product page for Glencoe's Bon Voyage 1. Under teacher resources, you can find the isbn for the DVD's, among other things. Searching for that isbn brought up this listing on amazon. The one thing to be careful of is that the isbn of the item posted is exactly what you need. The other thing to be careful of is the system requirements for any CDROM resources. I don't know how many teacher package CDROMs I bought before I realized they were just NOT going to open on my Mac. Finally gave up on them & did just fine without them. BTW, a local, native French tutor we used when we first started highly recommended the Pimsleur cd's as a good way for me to improve my spoken French. Those might be a good supplement for the audio/speaking component for your daughter since you have easy access to them from your library.
  14. If it was a rough year overall because of lack of consistency in doing math every day, for a set amount of time or a set lesson/day, I doubt changing to any particular curriculum will solve that issue. A couple things that worked for us for those subjects that just didn't get done consistently were 1) a small peer group working together on the same material and/or 2) outside accountability. My boys tend to be very independent and diligent, managing their own studies, so it was never a problem getting them to do their work. If anything, I was the bottleneck in how much they covered simply because, with cooking, cleaning, other children, I had less time than they did. They loved a writing class and a couple of literature classes that they did together with a small group of friends/peers. Small groups offer external motivation & accountability, both for the students and the parents. Since it's usually enjoyable for the students, they're eager to get together with their friends and they want to have their work done for the class. When the group meets every week at a given time, things tend not to slide. The whole "life happened so we never got to it" excuse somehow doesn't crop up. My daughter and I started butting heads over school work constantly last year. She is more than capable of the work, but she'd rather spend the whole day, every day, reading the books she's interested in and having no outside responsibilities. She also loves to argue simply for the sake of arguing. She wears me out arguing in circles about this or that assignment or about how "it's boring," etc. She knows it eventually wears me down and uses it to her advantage! So, with her, we're going to use some live online classes to provide outside (ie, not me) accountability and to remove any interpersonal roadblocks to getting the work done. A live online class meets regularly every week and someone else gives and grades the assignments. With an outside instructor and class, there's no point arguing me in circles about assignments and/or grades! And, with other students her age doing the same exact work, it's hard to argue that it's "too much work." If you can somehow pull together a small group, or even just one other student, for your son to study with, it might make the work more enjoyable for him and that would make it more likely to happen. Or, if you can swing a live class, online or local, that might help with motivation and accountability. It would, at the very least, ensure that your son completed a solid year of math this year, starting at whatever level he's at. (I'd avoid video-based instruction because it requires a lot of self-discipline and you would need to provide the accountability for it.) Good luck! I know it's hard. yvonne
  15. Do you think it was more of an ability issue, ie he's not solid in the concepts and/or skills? Or was it more of a consistency in doing the work and accountability issue? Has he done any TT or Singapore or Saxon placement tests to see where he is? Maybe a Math Mammoth placement test would allow you to pinpoint the areas he needs to master in order to move on to Algebra I. Then, instead of doing a complete pre-algebra text this year, he could work through the areas he specifically needs?
  16. On the Pandia Press site, they give an address to purchase How to Read How to Read a Book study guide from the author, MaryAlice Newborn, if that's the one you're looking for.
  17. There really is little to no difference between the standard US high school French 1 and 2 texts. Bien Dit, Bon Voyage, Discovering French, Allez, Viens!, etc. are all standard texts w/ the accompanying materials (quizzes, tests, workbooks) that you're looking for. I know that Bon Voyage and Bien Dit are easy to implement because every chapter follows the same pattern, making it easy to get into a routine. I assume it's the same for any standard US high school French 1/2 text. Just pick whichever one you can get most easily or economically. If the student just wants to check boxes, any of the standard texts would work for French 1 & 2. It might still be useful to have the audio cd's/dvd's. I would think it would make it easier to learn if you knew what the words were supposed to sound like. If a student were serious about learning French and wanted to be able to use it at some point, any of the standard texts would be good, too, but s/he would definitely also want the audio cd's/dvd's and a live, native French tutor (local or Skype.)
  18. Do you have a link for this? A Google search only turns up "better Chinese" restaurants.
  19. Thank you, Gr8lander, Luckymama and Homeschoolmom3!! I've sent these on to my friend.
  20. A friend is looking into home schooling using online classes for her rising 8th grader who is having health issues that might keep him out of school. He's been studying Mandarin for a year and would like to continue. Has anyone used a good online Mandarin class? Anyone have experience using Rosetta Stone for Mandarin? (RS wouldn't be my preferred route for a FL, but she's heard of it and was asking...) Thanks! yvonne
  21. Wow! Didn't know this. Thanks for mentioning it!
  22. I am so sorry. I received the beta link, clicked, and got immediate free access, no strings attached. I assumed it was the same thing for the sharable link I received & posted. There was NO mention anywhere about having to get a bunch more people signed up. I would never have posted it if I'd known. I hate those "peddle our stuff to your friends and we'll give you this kickback" gimmicks. (All too common in the homeschool arena, I'm afraid.) Ack! How embarrassing!
  23. I was excited to find The World's Greatest Geological Wonders in the available lectures!!! I've been wanting to see it forever, but I'm way down on the hold list for the one copy at our library and I don't want to buy it because I think I might only want a few of the lectures. I'm hoping the subscription service, once it's up and running, will let me pick and choose specific lectures, so I don't have to purchase the entire course or wait to get it from the library. How cool would that be!?
  24. nm..... I got free & immediate access, but apparently there are now strings attached. Sorry!
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