This one is on my radar but I was having a hard time figuring out what was going on with it besides the cards. I'll be checking out more knowing that it has a labeling component as well.

DS11 just finished IEW Fix-It Book 2 (the revised book 2, which is definitely easier than the original book 2). He is dysgraphic/dyslexic and I vastly prefer labeling parts of speech over trying to have him re-write sentences in diagramming format. There are few things that are driving me crazy about Fix-it - namely the fact that the student is frequently supposed to skip over words that are not marked at all, and because of the IEW-specific terminology that is used. I tried a little bit of MCT with him a year ago, and it was just too...abstract somehow. He liked the "Island" level story but was not retaining anything about grammar. Are there other options we should consider that label parts of speech instead of diagramming? This would either be for next year in 6th grade, or possibly to start sooner since I am doing reading/spelling related work with him year-round, and we often fit grammar into that block anyway.

Can you remind me which admissions thread this link is in? (Or maybe someone could just post the link for me here...LOL). I missed that and would be interested in finding it.

My high schooler loves studying latin and is making a lot of language connections, but he also did two years of latin in Elementary school (4th-5th grade) using GSWL and Visual Lain, and he retained very little and didn't make as many language connections at that age. We've never done latin in Duolingo, but in the other languages my family has tried, there are often sentences/passages on topics you might not find appropriate for a 7 year old - stories about dating relationships and sentences like "I like to date this man because he pays for dinner" or something like that. Not terrible, but just not things my kids would have cared about at age 7.

My DD did homemade gifts for many friends in high school and for others she would buy something from a fandom the friend likes (stickers, hat, Tshirt). I think for a friend she didn't know as well she would be likely to do a coffee or ice cream gift card.

Reason for scrub:

Scrub for today... I'm sure they will try again soon!

My DD had no interest in the find-a-roommate-on-social-media thing either. Her university makes no matching efforts (other than self selecting for certain learning communities/honors, which DD did not go for). Her random worked out passably - they are not friends but DD didn't feel the need to move a semester either. I see lots of posts from the department of residence about using the room change portal even mid-semester so it seems changes are possible if needed.

I know nothing about that site, but I think the expectation should generally be that a buyer would travel to the seller in a private party sale. When my DH was researching his last car purchase, he wanted a very specific model/trim level/configuration that is hard to find...at the time there were only about 5 for sale in all of North America. He absolutely assumed he would travel to pick up the car. (He ended up purchasing from a dealer in Canada...which turned out to be way more trouble than he thought it might, not in the least because it was during COVID and the border stayed closed for so long...lol. He finally got it shipped into the US by a vehicle importer and was able to get it at the border...he highly wished he had just paid a slightly higher price for one from a private party seller in the US!)

Minnesota.... Rhymes with elk for me. I pronounce all the other "ilk" words like silk with the expected short i.

WRT the early move-in, there may be other ways to accomplish it without honors college. I only have big-campus experience, but I know there were many things we could have done to facilitate early move-in for DD18 if she would have wanted to do that - anything from just paying a few $$ (It was super cheap - maybe $20/day per day early) to volunteering to be a move-in helper, to applying early for a campus job and starting training before school started. Maybe it's less common at a small school, but at DD's school, lots of students had reasons to move in early.

Besides size, I think it also depends on neighborhood culture...our last house was in an area where hardly anyone used any lawn chemicals and more "natural" looking lawns were preferred. Many people turned the space between the street and sidewalk into wildflower gardens. We didn't do much other than mow, but size and layout of our corner lot meant an hour or two of mowing a week in the summer plus lots of raking in fall. But if you live on a street with perfectly manicured lawns, you might incur the wrath of your neighbors if you let the dandelions and crabgrass grow. 😁 And it would be a lot more time and trouble! Our current lawn is super small because our whole "backyard" is wooded area, so we just have tiny strips of grass on each side of our house and a tiny bit in front that's not garden or driveway. My teens can mow it in under 20 minutes. We just rake all leaves into the woods each fall, which is so much faster than bagging up!

I use my china (received as wedding gifts) a few times a year. I enjoy pulling it out for special holiday meals or birthdays!

I've mostly not used a history curriculum. Sometimes I've done a "spine" that I read along with reading other history non-fiction and historical fiction. But that's a lot different than using a curriculum with a schedule and lots of bits and pieces. But I've been just as happy when I've picked out a series of non-fiction books that covered the topics/time period I want to study, and using historical fiction as well. I think it has been just fine! Without ever taking any tests, and with writing only a couple history-related essays or papers in middle school, my two older kids that went to public school felt very well prepared for their high school history classes, and thought their freshman world history class was a cinch because they were already familiar with a majority of the material.

My DD18 got super sick over break including a 102 fever and tested 2x (spread out over several days), both negative. This was after attending a big event. DH got sick after a work trip and wasn't super sick (more like a bad cold) but it went on for over a week, and he took I think 3 tests over a ten day period - all negative. I think there is just a lot "going around" that people used to just chalk up to cold and flu season. I know a few other people that have tested positive in recent months with at home tests, but I think we're just seeing more of other things and less COVID maybe?

My dyslexic DS11 is using bookshare with Dolphin EasyReader on his Kindle, and he decided he likes it better than the volunteer-read books in Learning Ally. He says that if he sets the speed at the right point, after a while he forgets it's a computer voice. I think it works way better in that app than just in their web interface (which I have played with just a bit to see if we could use it for a math textbook, and it was a bit wonky). Of course, that means the book you want needs to be in bookshare. We've tried a couple screen readers for the computer (mostly for PDFs) but at least the free or built in tools we tried weren't very easy to use.

I also think different LFLs have a different "vibe" - over the years I have only encountered one that had stamps indicating they came from such-and-such LFL, and most of the ones that I've watched seem to have mostly take one/give one vibes. A few seem to mostly have the same books, and I am not sure if it is because people take them and return, or because they just don't get a lot of use. In my old neighborhood in a large city, I found tons of interesting books in my block's LFL, and I specifically purchased quality used kids books to put in it in return. There was a ton of turn over in the box and the box had an involved owner. We had an interesting and eclectic neighborhood with a lot foot traffic, so I think that helped. I saw interesting books in other LFLs in the the neighborhood as well besides just the one on my block. In my new (smaller) city, I feel like I see less quality in general? But I may not be visiting the "right" ones. We have one in our cul de sac that gets almost no traffic, because it is in such a super out of the way spot. I have put a few interesting kids books in and they just sit there. I have peeked in a few in our neighborhood and they aren't terrible or empty, they are just more run of the mill - some trash/junk, some popular character kids books, a few that probably interest some people but aren't up my alley.

We've only ever seen doctors that are a part of a large clinic/practice (often the only option where we've lived) they usually had an office-wide policy of no more than two kids per appointment, and sometimes only one kid/appointment. Luckily for us when we've had strep we all equally tested positive at the walk in clinic, so we never ran into the issue of needing meds w/o the test result. I too prefer family practice to peds....My boys are seeing a ped right now due to availability at the clinic closest to us, but we had some super condescending ones when the kids were little, and our favorites have been family practice. When our current ped was out on medical leave the sub was sooo awful and kept making weird jokes that my kids felt awkward about. We put up with it to still be on the first ped's list when she came back.

Totally agreeing with you here. DD is required to take one math class for her degree program, and it could be College Algebra, Pre-Calc, or Calc. She is not into math at all (took Pre-Calc and then Stats in 11th and 12th grades), and decided on College Algebra since it was the easiest of the options! She said it was actually really similar to pre-calc she had in high school, but with less trig. If AP Pre-Calc had been an option for her, she definitely would have taken it, and then been able to skip the math class at University (assuming the exam went well). She used AP exam to get credit for the Stats requirement for her degree. It's not the right path for most STEM students, but plenty of other programs have minimal math requirements, and credit for Pre-Calc from an AP exam could be a great benefit if they aren't planning to take Calc.

My DD is going to school at the same place where DH and I went. We were surprised that the dorm rules have generally gotten more lax since we lived in the dorms! Any cooking appliances that don't have an open flame are allowed. No candles/incense of course either. There is a maximum size limit on fridges and microwaves, but it was pretty reasonable. No restrictions on what goes on the walls except no paint or wallpaper (do you suppose someone tried gluing wallpaper once, and that's why they mentioned it...lol). The main fire prevention rule I thought was interesting and different from back in the 90s is that no extension cords are allowed, only power strips with long cords. I think we got DD power strips 8ft and 6ft length cords.

A number of years ago we some funds that needed to be used for an educational purpose, and we invested in the large education set: https://www.amazon.com/Snap-Circuits-SC-750R-Electronics-Exploration/dp/B000IXMP6Q/ No regrets - we've gotten a ton of use out of it over the years and it has projects that can grow with more advanced students. I like that it comes in a sturdy case too. We had the very most basic set before this and the box was falling apart after a couple months.

Or the couple getting married could get time off only at a particular time, or the venue had limited availability, etc. I guess I'll chime in that I could see the wedding thing also, but I would also not "Expect" that my college age kid would necessarily come if there was a family wedding during the semester. I would leave the decision up to the individual kid and have no expectation that would choose to miss classes. I don't have much of an expectation that my college age DD will be around for any events that happen during the school year, and maybe not even on break. We will try to schedule a family vacation when she is available, but we know and she knows that it might not work out depending on what her summer plans end up being for possible summer class/internship/study abroad, etc. I do, however, talk to her a lot about what classes she is taking, how they are going, how work is going, etc. But not because I want to have "control" or anything. It's more that we are close and I want to know what's going on in her life, and she seems to want to tell me. I called my mom every week too when I was in college. I can't remember if we talked about my classes or what we talked about, but it seems normal to me to talk with a college age dc about their lives.

My DD did it in 7th grade, but with a co-op. It was a pretty good fit for her, especially because it was her first real "textbook" science. Oldest DS did it in 8th, and while he also had not done another textbook science before this, it was really too easy for him, and he didn't learn much new. He was also supposed to do it as a co op class, but a last minute schedule conflict came up and it was easier to just stick with it at home than find something else. I think it's a pretty decent program, especially for a kid that needs to learn some middle school level basics. 7th was a sweet spot for us I guess.

One semester in my DD has thrived pretty much right from the start...It was definitely different from my experience, where I thrived fairly quickly socially but took a whole year to find my stride academically (I needed to change my major). I think for her it is a bit of a "Goldilocks" combination of factors with a social group she found right away with a campus ministry she joined, first semester classes that were not too hard but just hard enough to need to grow in study/time management skills, a decent roommate/dorm situation, a campus job she really likes. Any one of those things not going well could have made the semester miserable. She has always been a relatively independent kid, so I figured she would find her way in college pretty well. The only minor crisis was the day she thought her bike got stolen. After reassuring her we could help her replace the bike if needed and talking her through where she might have parked her bike near the dorm, she finally checked and realized she had locked up her bike in a totally different part of the dorm complex from where she usually left it. 😄 I was so happy for her that it was still there. I am not expecting to be so fortunate with my subsequent kids. I think each of the boys give me reason to doubt it will all go so smoothly for them! To the OPs question, I think if I had a kid who was struggling in a major way, I would encourage them to finish the semester unless it was a true mental health crisis. Then look into more affordable places to transfer to (living at home, cheapest in-state/public options, etc) and encourage this route rather than stick it out with a sport that wasn't working out...same for a scholarship tied to a major the kid ends up hating, or whatever. I lost a scholarship when I changed majors, but luckily it was only a fairly small amount per year, so my parents were able to make up the difference. Had that not been the case I think I would have had to look at transferring to an in-state school or some other cheaper solution.

Haven't seen actual shortages here in my Midwest small city, but prices have been around the $5 range. That's the price at Aldi and at a gas station that always used to have cheap eggs. A regional chain was about $5.50. I bought for $4 at Target yesterday and was surprised at that "deal".