Then you absolutely, 100%, do-no-pass-go, must go to the USS Constitution and the adjoining museum. They both are the real deal, nothing touristy about them. There is a water taxi line that stops right by the ship, which is officially part of the "T" system, so a "T" pass is valid on the boat, which might also be fun for the maritimely-inclined. There's also the Peabody Essex Museum, which is unfortunately located in the middle of Salem, probably the epicenter of Tourist Trapdom. Nonetheless, there's a lot of maritime stuff in the museum (huge exhibit on ships-in-bottles when last there), and a bunch of interesting art as well. I've only been to Plimoth, but I get the feel that it is about the same as OSV. I certainly wouldn't do both.

I would call the local Poison Control Center. This is exactly the sort of thing they are good at, and they deal with all the time.

What time of year? Mine loved the USS Constitution -- there's also a very nice, small museum for the ship nearby which was a big hit. Small enough that it wasn't overwhelming, with a few hands-on exhibits that the kids liked. Plimoth plantation is interesting, but it's an outdoor thing, and I don't know if you'd want to to this time of the year (might not even be open). Paul Revere's house was not a big hit here, nor was the Tea Party ship. I've never been, but surprisingly, I've heard very good reviews of the Duck tours.

I think middle school is where a lot of kids get "lost". If I had to pick one age range to homeschool, it would be middle school.

I've never heard of cameras in the bathrooms, I'm sure that's illegal in most places. I could imagine, however, cameras outside the main door to the bathroom, which could monitor who enters and leaves, without actually seeing inside.

I wanted to add that, though military justice may be strict, it certainly isn't zero tolerance. From what I understand, at every procedure, from court martial on down, there is the equivalent of a judge or judges, who are required to use judgement and understand the circumstances of the situation, and, "to make the punishment fit the crime".

One reason I like my Kindle is that I have a zillion pdf files that I've put on it, that I've gotten from all kinds of places. It is very easy to email a pdf file to the free kindle conversion service, and it shows up on the kindle device. None of these files show up in the Kindle app, unless I'm missing something? The only documents that show up in the Kindle app are the ones that you've "purchased" (even the free ones) from the Amazon store.

Your two paragraphs seem very disjoint. I'm sure the first is standard boilerplate, but I think it is possible to be profession, yet personal and human in a letter like this. Your second paragraph is much better. Even though you know the person it is addressed to, you don't know who is going to be reading it. Therefore, I'd start out with a quick self introduction, and state your bona-fides. Something like: Dear Mr. X: My name is Ms. Temperance Scoutmistress, I've been a leader of Troop XX in V-town for N years. I appreciate the help that you and the town have given our troop over the last few years in getting permissions for various field trips. Then, your second paragraph is pretty good. I'd replace "We have been there" with "We have been here". Otherwise, it makes it sound like you aren't a member of the community. If you have hard numbers on current numbers of scouts, or the total number of scouting alumni, that would be good figures too.

The advantage of the AP test is that it is a known quantity to colleges. "Honors", "College Prep", or even Community College classes have no standards, so it is hard for a college to tell what's really going on there, especially if the college doesn't have much experience with that particular course. However, I would say that AP classes without the corresponding AP test look suspicious.

I think that for many students, it doesn't stop, or at least the student stops studying before they get to that point. I've read variations of the same quote all the time: "I studied Latin for five years, and I never got past the crossword puzzle phase". I humbly disagree. One of the most satisfying milestones for me in studying a language is completely understanding some phrase or sentence, but not not to be able to immediately translate it back into English. And accurate translation is very, very hard. It is very easy to lose nuance and precise meaning.

Note that, as far as we know, silent reading was very rare, if not unknown, in antiquity. All written texts were read outloud, even when reading to oneself. Classical orthography made it very difficult to read ahead. Also, I'm leery of the term "fluent", as that has a lot of implications. I prefer the term "fluidly", meaning that maybe you aren't reading as a native would, but at least you aren't stopping to translate every construction.

He's far beyond me, too. Dum spiro, spero... There's two main reasons. First, while word order in Latin is certainly more fluid than in English, Latin word order is not completely arbitrary. There are reasons the author wrote the words in that particular order, and they mean a lot to both his style and meaning. By jumping around, and first mapping the word order to English word order, you miss a lot of that. And, there's no guarantee that you'll get it right, especially in the tricky cases where a noun could be either nominative or accusative. In the quoted essay, read the section on the translation of the one sentence from Livy about the assassination of Tarquin. The second reason, is that it slows down reading tremendously, as you are always stopping and backtracking. Perhaps the biggest problem with intermediate and advanced Latin students is the speed at which they read Latin. It is common for 3rd year students to spend an hour translating a single page of Caesar. While some find the "crossword puzzle" method of decoding a sentence a fun challenge, others are completely demoralized. More importantly, you lose the entire thrust of the work, if it takes a whole semester to "read" the same amount of text that a 3rd year student of a modern foreign language could read in a week. That is to say, if you are always jumping around, trying to put the words into an English word order, you aren't "reading", you are "translating", and that's always going to be much slower than reading. Consider how you read a modern foreign language -- after a couple of years, you aren't translating each sentence into English,you just read it. I don't think you can get there in Latin if you are always jumping around the page. Now, I do not profess to be an expert. But I do know that the speed issue is a huge problem, and has been for a long time, and is very well known in the Latin community. The problem is perhaps made worse by the fact that some, very few, moderns can actually read Latin at a decent pace. Perhaps most famous was Edith Hamilton, who talks about this in her delightful introduction to "The Roman Way". There are several schools of thought on how to fix the problem. The folks who espouse the "reading method", as followed by Cambridge Latin Course, Lingua Latina, and others, believe that just reading a lot of native Latin, and trying to understand the Latin as Latin, without focusing on translation to English is the key. Others promote the traditional grammar-translation approach, perhaps with much more reading and translation than is usually done. I've heard of some university professors who assign 50 pages of reading a night, to force students to learn how to read more effectively. I like what Dr. Hale has to say here. I don't know myself that it is effective, but I'm trying to discipline myself to use it. I'd like to know what others think about this.

I might take some exception to the idea that's there's absolutely no "good stuff", even early on in Wheelock. Sure, you need to put the work in, but consider this (adapted) Livy quote from Chapter 6 of Wheelock: "Nec vitia nostra, nec remedia tolerare possumus". This was written 2,000 years ago -- and it's worth at least an hour of dinner-table conversation.

I would also recommend this (long), but worthwhile lecture from 1886, about how to learn to read latin fluidly: http://www.bu.edu/mahoa/hale_art.html

Presumably, you know which declension it is right away, from the root. So, if the word you are looking at is "malum", you know that's 2nd declension, and there's only two possibilities. On the other hand, if you see "manum", meaning hand, you know there's only one possibility, as it is 4th declension.

Many of these test you really want to take multiple times. So, if you take the ACM 10, and claim you are in 9th grade, but then decide that the following year is the 9th grade year, I don't think you can take it again, claiming that you are still a 9th grader. This is probably more of an issue for things like the PSAT, where there's a lot on the line. I wonder how the PSAT administrators verify what grade the student is in? There just seems like so much stuff that some high school kids are trying to cram into their schedules these days. I don't like the idea of making kids schedule an AP class during lunch, just so they can still study the arts. I think I'd rather go another full year, instead of burning the candle at both ends.

It sure isn't a decision that I need to make today :-), but I think it needs to be made before 9th grade. If it was made at 11th, you might lose your eligibility for PSAT / ACM10 tests. In any case, I greatly appreciate all the feedback on these boards.

Oh, don't mistake me, I'm a big of a Latin proponent as you will find, especially for the high school age. I would never tell you _not_ to take Latin. I'm just saying that you need to be a strong student to get to AP Latin by 10th grade. Now, the good news is that the AP Latin test is changing next year, and looks to be easier than the current one.

My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that transfer admissions are much more difficult at most places than normal freshman admissions, and there are also fewer scholarships available. Sadly, unless you are going to an elite private school, I think that five years of college is the norm now (or even more).

Yikes! That's a lot. I'd get cracking on those paradigms, I guess. :-) It seems unfair that the AP languages tests "count" the same as the history and sciences tests. It takes a good four years to get from zero to the point where you can consider taking the AP foreign language exams, but just one good year of studying for history and science. You asked on another thread if the student did take AP Latin exam after 10th grade, whether s/he should take 2 years of Spanish. If your goal is to maximize AP classes, I would replace those two years of Spanish with two other classes which could each lead to an AP test.

Thanks! I had never heard of this, but it isn't quite what I'm thinking of. It seems colleges don't accept AP exams after the "senior" year of high school. Also, the post graduate year wouldn't help with other tests keyed to high school year (not age), such as the PSAT, SAT, ACM10/12, etc.

There's been a lot of talk here, and in the national discourse, about redshirting incoming school age kids, usually at the K level. I guess this term comes from sports, where it means holding them back a year. However, I don't think I've ever heard about redshirting prospective high school age students, especially ones who are "average". I've got a long way to go before high school, but the more I think about this, the more sense it makes, in terms of helping them to be as prepared as possible for college, and to make their application competitive. Consider the following: Colleges don't seem to care at all about the age of their incoming students (it might even be illegal for them to ask). They just care about the last four years worth of curriculum, and tests/achievements passed in those four years. Homeschoolers have a lot of discretion in naming what grade a given student is in. Most colleges, and especially the competitive ones, admit students with lots of AP tests, and often assume that Calculus and high level classes are taken by the end of high school. I've been very impressed by many folks here who homeschooled AP classes, with successful AP test results. So, does it make sense for an average kid to do high school from 10th to "13th" grade? Presumably, the transcript would list these as 9th through 12th grade. I'm not talking about repeating 8th grade, the 9th grade would be a typical curriculum, and to go an extra year, to make sure we can get to calculus, fifth-year language, and fit other AP classes in. Is this crazy?

I agree with previous posters who have said that one passing AP exam counts for four years of foreign language, no matter when it is taken. So, I would certainly have them take the French AP. However, if your students are just staring in Latin in 7th grade, it may be a bit optimistic to have them take AP Latin at the end of tenth. Many schools have AP Latin as Latin V, and treat 7th/8th grade Latin as just one year, and schedule AP Latin exam after 12th grade.

I'm not a expert here, but I'm guessing that you are tripping over the difference betweeen malum, the neuter noun, and malus,a, um, the 1st/2nd declension adjective. To make matters more confusing, adjectives like this can often have an implied noun associated with them: e.g. Boni (the good men) So, this is what I get: nevertheless [tamen (indecl)], he suffers [patitur (deponent 3rd person)] the most evils [plurissma mala n. pl. accusatives] from [a] evil men [malis (abl. plural adjective with implied noun].

In addition to all the other great topics mentioned, a half credit of philosophy might be engaging.