This whole thing just disgusts me and everytime I think about it I want to throw up. I am in total agreement that McQueary needs to go as well. As someone posted on another thread, how does one walk in on the r@pe of a small child and not stop it???? And then go home and eat dinner. As has been said before, people knew about this behavior of Sandusky before the 2002 incident. There is so much more to this and I honestly feel this is only the tip of the iceberg. It beyond me how Sandusky is out on bail. Really??? An alleged child predator out on bail and told to "stay away from children". The other thing that disturbs me is the response of some of the PSU students on the firing of Paterno. Many of them were saying, "It's not fair". Really??? Maybe you should tell that to the victims of this abuse. When adults knew what was occurring and could have stopped it.

Thanks for the reminder! I just ordered 3 courses for a grand total of $38.00! I am so thrilled! I may have to search around the site later to see if there is anything else we can use. :001_smile:

Hi all, My dd will be taking the SAT in June. I am trying to decide how to prep for this. She gets the SAT question of the day, I have the Chalkdust SAT math prep DVD's, and an SAT prep book. Should we start any of the math prep or the prep book now? I was thinking of waiting until after Christmas and then starting. She is very strong in the areas of grammar, writing, reading, and vocabulary. It is the math that I am really concerned about with this child. For those of you who have BTDT, what did your SAT prep schedule look like? Thanks!

EFC is the estimated family contribution. It is what you are expected to pay. I about choked when I saw ours for the first time.

Sue, :grouphug: I have been where you are with my dd as well. I honestly would try a different curriculum. We used Lial's Introductory Algebra and she did great. I never tried Saxon with her because it would have killed her. That jumping all over the place would have driven her crazy. If I were you, I would sit down with her and explain the consequences of not learning Algebra. If she ever wants to graduate from high school then she needs to put forth a good effort and do it. Does she have aspirations to attend college after high school? If so maybe talking with her about what is required for admission. I have an extra copy of Lial's Introductory Algebra that is in great shape that I would give you. The solutions manual (ISBN# 0321091051) can be found for under $1.00 on amazon. This curriculum has made a world of difference for my dd. Blessings,

Thanks so much for the support. I really appreciate it. I know that God is leading her where He wants her to be. She seems so much like her old self this weekend and is truly excited for tomorrow and working with the pre-schoolers. And I have to say that I am glad to have been able to spend time with her. That really hasn't happened in the last 5 weeks. :001_smile:

Hi all, My dd was accepted into an intense 2 year nursing program a few months ago. The program in one of the best in the state. Thursday night she decided that she really doesn't want to be a nurse. I have seen this coming for the last two weeks. They actually start the clinical process in the hospital the first semester so she has worked with patients the last two weeks. She loves children and wants to work with them. She thought being a NICU nurse would be great. However she realized that "I don't like being around sick people". So.... yesterday she went through the process of applying to a local state univeristy. She feels like she would like to try elementary education/special education. Both my dh and I feel this would be a great field for her. She is a nuturer by nature and very compassionate. She "just wants to help people". So.... we are trying to salvage something of this semester of nursing school. She will be dropping her nursing classes as none of those credits will transfer to the new school. We are fairly certain clinical math won't transfer so it looks like possibly anatomy and english comp???? Does that sound like an acceptable plan? I feel bad for her. The book learning was the easy part. The working with sick patients, not so easy. I am glad she discovered this now. I am also grateful for a program that gets them in the hospital early. It would have been lousy had she gone a different route and invested two years of classroom learning only to discover in her third year clinical this isn't the field for her. So now we wait again. She was accepted within five days of submitting her application to the nursing school but the local state university told her 4-6 weeks on a decision. While we wait, she has been fortunate enough to be able to help at our co-op. The mom who teaches two of our pre-school classes is ill and will be out for the entire first semester. So the director is thrilled to let her teach. She will teach a math/ABC craft and a gym class to 9 preschoolers. She is so excited! We also have a great pediatric rehabilitation center a few miles from our home where she can volunteer in their special needs preschool. This will help her discover if this will be a fit for her before she even starts classes in January. Thanks for listening.....

I am starting to plan for next year already! I am going to being doing World History over a 2 year period. I am looking for resources to use for my ds who will be in 9th grade. I already have a spine. I am looking for literature and other history resource books we can use. Any recommendations? Thanks!

Thank you all so much for the great advice I received. Things are going so much better! I am sitting with him during portions of the day to keep him focused. I also check each subject as he completes it and we talk about things that he answered incorrectly. We ditched Sonlight and are doing literature ala the WTM recommendations from SWB's literary analysis lecture. It is going really well. I chose 8 books to start and he is currently reading Treasure Island and enjoying it. I like discussing it with him. I also discussed the Algebra 1 text with him and he decided to go back to Lial's pre-algebra. Math is now going much better and taking him around 45 minutes to an hour to complete each day. I took an IRL friend's advice about the Land of Fair Play for CLP. I am now picking and choosing topics and questions for him to answer and that is going well also. At the end of this week, I feel so much better than last week. I truly appreciate the wisdom I found on this board!

Lisa, This is my son. He has other HS friends that he talks with on Skype daily as well. It is such a challenge to balance all of this stuff. I see the sullenness and irritability build each day. It frustrates and saddens me to stand back and watch it happen. I am really glad I recognize what's going on early in the year so we can make necessary changes. I feel much better knowing I am not the only one experiencing this. Thanks for the encouragement!

Janice, You have so accurately described my house! :001_smile: I feel like someone has finely put into words what life is like here. We are going to be working on the daily accountability thing. It will be hard at first but I know we can get there. I am going to download SWB's lecture today and listen. Thanks!

Violet, We are definately dropping the Sonlight. That leaves us with Abeka World Geography and civics. I think we are going to stick with both of them. I want to do LLfLotR but it on my list for next school year. I want to do it with both my dd and ds. We used LL7 last year and the books were good but I didn't like the guides much at all. I am going to plan out my own thing this weekend for his literature going forward. He does do schoolwork in the classroom. He just never wants me in there. But that is changing starting today. We will be doing a lot of working together. We are taking the Algebra 1 slow. Today we will do more review problems together. I definately think he is trying to become more independent and I know that is a good thing. I talked to him about how I will be needing to work with him for awhile to make sure he is doing things correctly. Once he develops a good set of habits and study skills then he can have independence back. His big interest is computers. I am going to start programming stuff with him in 9th grade. I wanted this year to be our year of firming up the skills he needs for high school. Thanks for your advice..... It definately helps.

I am getting some really great advice here. This is what I need to hear. After talking with my dh last night and then my ds, I am making some changes. 1. We are dropping Sonlight. I was always drawn to it and thought this would be a great year to try it. Honestly my ds doesn't like the books he is reading and I don't like a pre-planned curriculum. I have discovered that I really enjoy the planning. We talked about what books he enjoys and I have 8 of them sitting on the table right now for us to look at this morning. I am going to plan out his literature and add in lit analysis ala the WTM. 2. My dh really likes regentrude's idea of assigning a time for each subject and not a "check it off when you're done" philosophy. DS will balk about it but we are going to give it a try next week. 3. We are going to start outlining in both science and civics. I think that will help him learn valuable writing skills. 4. I will continue with WWS as it is revealing areas of weakness for my ds (although it is very quick for him to get through). I am going to add some more weekly writing assignments into his schedule. 5. I am going to chose some additional longer projects for him to do throughout the year in civics, science. This will help to develop research skills. I had thought about doing Latin this school and I still have Henle on the shelf. Another thought to ponder...... Thanks!

This is a great idea. It will help with my goals for this school year as well; learning how to outline.

Carole, Any suggestions for history or lit? We have completed 2 years of American history and last year he did 20th century world history at our co-op. I was looking at the possibility of medieval history since we haven't done much of that in the past. I am not sure what to use. I looked at HO level 2 but don't know how much better that would be than what we are currently doing. Thanks

To be honest I don't know how excited he is about anything. He does like the science we are using as there is high interest in the topic. I think the reading in Core 5 is just "get it done". I know he skims things. He took the IOWA test last year and he weakest area was reading comprehension. Makes sense if he is skimming material. I think he feels like a failure when we go over things and he has stuff wrong. He has a tendency towards perfection. I thought we had worked through most of those issues. I am trying very hard to be encouraging and positive. I check his work daily and we do go over the things he misses. Maybe I just need to sit in the room with him? Check his comprehension after completing each subject? Just not sure what will work with this child who just wants to get it done.

Hi all, I have started to type a post and then delete it multiple times....... We are 3 weeks into the new school year and it just doesn't feel like it is going well. I have been homeschooling for 9 years and graduated one dd and this is the first time I have really not felt good about most of what I have chosen or the way things are progressing. One of our goals this year is to firm up his test taking skills. Today my ds took his 2nd BJU Space and Earth science test and scored another 73%. After the first test, we made a study guide and wrote out flashcards to study the terms. He studied last night and this is the result?? We are also doing civics this year and using the Land of Fair play for CLP. He took the first multiple choice test and scored in the low 80's. After 3 days into using Lial's prealgebra, he informed me that the math was too easy. So we looked through the book together and the only chapter that was new to him was the last one in the book. He wanted to move on to Algebra 1. So I pulled the Lial's Introductory Algebra off the shelf and we started. We seemed to have hit a wall at the end of chapter 1 and I know it is developmental but he refuses to see or understand that he may not be ready for this course. We are using Sonlight core 5 (G) this year and I am really not thrilled with it. Seems like a disjointed reading list. I don't feel involved at all and I really dislike the IG. My ds tends to rush through his work, uses sloppy handwriting, and doesn't answer in complete sentences. For example, I told him to take his time with the science test today and he was finished in 10 minutes. Here is my ds's schedule: Science: BJU Space and Earth Math: Lial Introductory Algebra Geography: Abeka (through our co-op) Language Arts: GwG 8, WWS, roots study for vocabulary Sonlight Core 5 for "history" and literature Logic: Art of Argument (co-op) Civics: Land of Fair Play My ds takes about 2 hours to do all his "school" at the moment. We start our co-op next week and will add in geography and logic. I read a thread last week about how long it takes your child to do their work and honestly started to question if I am doing things correctly. My 11th grade dd doesn't spend 7-8 hours with her school work. What am I doing wrong? I just feel so dejected. My ds doesn't want my help with things and gets angry when I try to explain something to him. Is that a boy trait? I would love to sit and work with him but he doesn't want me there. I am at a loss...... My ds is very bright. Not gifted but bright. The only thing that is going right this year is WWS. There's a silver lining in every cloud. Thanks for reading this far. My IRL friends always tell me how much better an education he is getting at home and that I really expect so much. I needed to come here to get advice I can use. Thanks

I just started it the week with my 8th grade ds. I have already discovered it is a challenge for him to summarize. He wants to add in so many details. The first two assignments he wrote contained several run-on sentences. I think this program is a perfect fit for where he is. I can't wait to get the rest of the e-book in "my hands". :001_smile:

After years of battling strep throat and sinus infections, I had mine removed in my mid-30's. The surgery was quick and coming out of the anesthesia was a breeze. But..... for several days I had the most severe pain that ran up into my ears. It was awful!!! They had sent me home with codeine and it did NOTHING for the pain. My dh called and they asked him if I though I could swallow a pill. I would do anything to get rid of that pain and said yes. The first oxycoten pill going down was hard but after that it was simple to swallow. Definately ask for a stronger pain killer than codeine. I would agree with the pp that recommended taking a week off school. You will need it to recover. I don't regret it one bit. I have never had another strep infection or sore throat. And my sinus infections virtually disappeared. My family doc told me the tonsils are the "garbage dump" of the human body. Never thought of them like that before! So glad mine are gone!

My dh is going to spend this evening cutting back several of the trees around the house. Needs done anyway and then we won't have to worry about falling branches. We are also putting away all the patio furniture and anything the could blow around outside. I never thought about where we park our cars. My dh parks his Jeep in the driveway under a tree. Going to change that for the weekend. I am going to gas up both vehicles and buy extra batteries. Plus I love the baking idea. I have some zucchini sitting around. I think we will make bread and muffins tomorrow and Sat morning. Thanks for the great list and ideas.......It is looking more and more like we are going to experience the effects of this storm.

I keep listening to the Weather Channel tonight and am feeling like we should do some type of preparation. The meterologists have a different tone tonight. It is like a weird sense of urgency. I have never been through a hurricane or a tropical storm. Maybe I will check out what goes into a disaster prep kit. I could be overreacting but then again I never expected to have an earthquake here either.

I am planning on doing both. My ds will be doing the IEW AHB at our co-op. I really like the looks of WWS so we will be doing that at home as well. He is in 8th grade and writing is going to be an area of concentration for us this school year. I am planning on doing 2-3 days of WWS and 2-3 days of IEW. There will possibly be a day of overlap but that will be ok. We'll see how it goes when we start getting into it. I will start WWS next week and the co-op doesn't start till the middle of September.

Love le Tour here!!! It was an awesome day! Love Andy Schleck but Thomas Voekler is still hanging. The yellow jersey makes you feel like superman!!

My dd did great with Lial's Introductory Algebra. She is a writer and really dislikes math. It was the first program she truly understood. We are starting Intermediate Algebra in the fall.

I received a TTC catalog in yesterday's mail and the Egyptology course is on sale. I think it was fairly inexpensive as well.