I haven't used it, so I can't give experience, but have you looked at DIVE Physics? It would be independent and it says it prepared the student for the AP exam. It uses the Saxon Physics book instead of Apologia like the other courses. I'll be :bigear: because we'll be there in a couple of years.

You've gotten great advice here. I just thought I would add one more point to the mix. I have gotten very upset several times with one of my children who has been doing everything to avoid work, not attempting anything that seems difficult, not giving her best effort, etc. When I really started thinking and praying about it, I realized that one of the reasons it is so upsetting to me is that I am pouring so much of my time and energy into pulling together the right curriculum and writing lesson plans and adjusting resources and all that goes into educating these kids. When they just give it half an effort at best, I feel like they are not valuing ME and that I have wasted the time and effort and resources in pulling together an education that they don't value. I totally take it personally! When I can separate myself from the curriculum, I can deal with the problems much more rationally and lovingly. It was a big revelation for me. Maybe it isn't your issue at all, but I thought I would throw it out there just in case. I hope you've had a good talk with your ds by now and that fences are being mended. Hang in there!

Welcome! My dh is an Episcopal priest too. I have a few sources for Anglican liturgy that is kid-friendly. We love the book The Anglican Family Prayer Book by Annie Kitch. You can find it on Amazon. It has a lot of the things in the BCP that you might want to do at home but presented in a simpler more kid friendly way. We use the Morning Prayer format from this book every morning. After breakfast while we are still sitting at the table, I pull out the book and we do morning prayer very quickly. I insert a reading of our choice into the slot where she suggests 4 or 5 different Bible passages to read. Sometimes I take it from the Lectionary and sometimes we just work our way through a book. We're reading Romans right now. I read a short section and then we narrate/discuss for about 2 minutes and then we continue on. I like that the canticle is always the Venite. The kids have memorized it and we can say it or sing it as the mood strikes. We take our time with the prayers doing thanksgivings, intercessions, and supplications, then go to the Lord's Prayer. If dh is home (usually) we have him bless us at the end. :001_smile: Annie Kitch has some other books for things like Lent and Advent that are informative. They have coloring pages and puzzles. We've used those before. For instruction on the Eucharist, I love using Alleluia Amen! by Gretchen Pritchard. You can get it from their Sunday Papers website. It goes through each section of the Eucharist service and explains what is happening and what we are supposed to be doing (internally and externally) at that point. And it has the text that we would be saying (Rite 2) printed in the book with drawings to illustrate it all. She also has a baptism book that is pretty good, although I don't think it is as easy to understand as Alleluia Amen! It is called New Life, I think. I am starting to use the Christian Studies books from Memoria Press for our Bible education in school. It seems to be straightforward Bible literacy to familiarize students with what is in the Bible and where. They memorize scripture as they go along. I like what I'm seeing so far. We use Beautiful Feet a lot for history. She connects scripture to historical concepts in the discussion questions but she doesn't tell you what to think. I like this because I can discuss it with my kids and can tailor the discussion to our beliefs. We end up having some great theological discussions this way. My oldest is entering high school and we are going to be reading things like early church fathers, desert fathers, apostolic fathers, Chesterton, CS Lewis, Kreeft etc. I'm using a lot of the suggested readings in Latin Centered Curriculum for him. As he reads, we will discuss and will have the opportunity to approach it from our viewpoints. I haven't seen a prepared curriculum per se that doesn't come from a Roman Catholic or Reformed or Baptist or ______ viewpoint that I could feel comfortable with, but I think our reading plan will work well. He will also be going through confirmation this year, so I'll be reinforcing that. Dh just walked in and I confirmed with him--if you want the daily office lectionary at your fingertips, the easiest thing to do is to get the two volumes of the Daily Office. His are two little black books--year 1 and year 2. They have all of the readings for each day contained within. You could look at the book each day and read all of them or just choose one to read that day. It's handy to have. I'm thinking about getting a set for myself since his are always over in the chapel.

Today we were having a bit of a down day, so I had my older two log onto Khan Academy for the first time. We all were on our own computers but in the same room and were working problems as fast as we could getting through the lower levels and trying to earn badges. It was really fun for everyone and I hope it is something they will enjoy doing. It is certainly pointing out to them where some of their challenge areas are. Very thankful for SWB's blog post about KA. I'd never heard of it before!

Wow! (looking at the law quoted) I was just going to suggest that you provide the dr. with a copy of your blood type and immunity results from previous pregnancy and refuse the std testing, but reading that law, it looks like you don't get to refuse any of this? Can they do that? It seems like they would need to pay for it if they were absolutely requiring it???

Chondromalacia is exactly what I was talking about. :) It can also be called patello-femoral pain syndrome. It is caused by alignment problems, rotational issues, poor tracking of the patella, etc. It is what started all of my knee issues. The pain can be really miserable and it doesn't necessarily show up on the usual tests as anything being wrong so sometimes people don't believe how much it can hurt. It is also misdiagnosed and mishandled by a lot of doctors. The Knee Geeks forum was such a huge help sorting this out for me.

We're doing Biology this year too and I about choked when I saw the price for the lab supplies. We have to buy the microscope too unless I can figure out where to borrow a decent one. I wish I knew a science teacher at the high school. Someone mentioned the dissection set is only $40--yes, it's the prepared slide set that's expensive. It's running $75. Add on shipping... The slide kit that comes with the microscope too is like $270. I usually have a little curriculum fund, but this year it got eaten up by taxes. It figures this is the year with the expensive labs. I didn't know I was going to need $500 for science alone...

Has she been growing a lot? It is not uncommon for girls to have problems with knee alignment when they begin maturing. The legs get longer, the hips get wider and things get wonky. Hopefully they grow out of it and move on. Motrin and ice go a long way to make it feel better. It is also very helpful to wear supportive shoes with some cushion. Flip flops or heels or even bare feet can make knees feel a lot worse. Getting some Asics running shoes or New Balance or whatever brand fits her well would be a good idea, no matter the source of her pain. KneeGuru.com and their message board Knee Geeks are the absolute best place on the web to learn about and figure out knee problems. It's set up a lot like this board and the people are very supportive with lots of lay-person experience and research. I've had knee problems since puberty and they finally helped me get the right help this year.

Be careful to not get Lacy in trouble with them. They could take it out on her and hurt her and she will learn not to get involved in something like this in the future. So protect her if you can. I think you're going to have to be careful to make sure you are there to watch any potential future encounters with them. We had a terrible problem some years ago. My son was 9 or 10 years old and there was this big group of little boys aged 4-6 who were always playing with light sabers and swords. They ran around looking for enemies and battles. When they would see my son outside, they would all come after him and chase him down hitting him with their swords and sabers. They were actually hurting him, but he didn't want to turn around and fight back because he was bigger than they were and he knew he would be labeled the bully in the situation. However, sometimes he had to do something to defend himself. A mother of a couple of those kids used to corner my son and tear into him for hurting her little boy yada yada yada. It made me so mad! She was only getting half of the story from her 5 year old and my son had all of the bruises. I had to tell my son to run in the house when he saw them coming or I had to be outside to observe when he played outside. It was very unfortunate because he felt very restricted and it was a result of her not being willing to supervise or discipline her children. Your guys might need you out there watching out for them when they're outside since this other family and their guests can't be trusted.

I wonder why they have to score two points higher?

I love it. It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to use it, so I didn't pin much for the first couple of months. I just went every week or two and poked around a little bit. Finally I put the Pin It button up in my toolbar and started using that instead of bookmarking websites with good ideas. That was when I figured out I liked it. It is like a visual bookmark directory for me which I love since I'm very visual. Plus, you have the social aspect because you can see what other people are pinning as well. Contentment can be a huge issue for me, so I totally understand where you are coming from. My recommendation is to come up with some categories that would be helpful to you and pin things in those categories, but don't just pin every pretty picture you see. I have a food category, but I only pin things that I really want to not lose track of or things that really inspire me. I have one for homeschool and I pin things that look helpful or inspiring. If I see a homeschool room with great ideas, I pin it. If it makes me jealous and sad that I don't have a dedicated room, I don't pin it.

The SAT was enough for renewal and for TOPS? That is much better than I thought. I kept looking at the English I, II, III, and IV and trying to figure out how to make IEW and our great books fit into that. Yes, it will all be covered, but it won't be so tidy...

Definition of spiral curriculum: Curriculum in which students repeat the study of a subject at different grade levels, each time at a higher level of difficulty and in greater depth. http://www.education.com/definition/spiral-curriculum/ So if you saw topics in the 4th grade book that were covered again in more depth in 6th grade, then your curriculum is spiral. On the other hand, we use a curriculum that is mastery based. Fractions are only covered in one book. If you skip that book, you don't learn fractions. It isn't covered again. They do put review problems on half of the lesson sheets so there is practice, but the concept is never taught again. So that was my caution about skipping books. It's less risky in a spiral curriculum.

It seems like I was told that you couldn't build the clock if you didn't have both sets, or something like that. You could always start with one set and add on the other later if you need it. I have three kids, so I knew we would be happier with all of the blocks. And I got the wooden boxes as a sanity saver for myself. I wanted all of the blocks to live in their home and not get scattered over the whole house. The kids like to play with them and I like to let them, but we have to have them back in the box at the end so they will be there when we need them for lessons. The box makes it easy to see if some are missing.

My ds had trouble with constipation as a toddler, so you have my sympathies! We ended up using Senocot, but the Miralax sounds like a much better option. Removing milk from his diet got him out of that cycle, by the way. It was a glorious thing! Here is my question--and I honestly don't know, but maybe some of our docs or nurses here could enlighten us--if the mineral oil keeps you from absorbing vitamins, how would a vitamin supplement help? Would that actually be absorbed when the vitamins from food aren't? Just something I've wondered...

Thanks for the confirmation! At some point I guess I need to talk to someone who has graduated a student successfully. I've seen and made notes on the core that they are requiring now and I've read the two documents that were linked.

Thanks for the bump. The state scholarship is good and compared to many, our program isn't too invasive, but there is still a matter of opening yourself up to approval from the state. I just didn't want to do that until I had to. We've just enjoyed our hands-off independence for so long. I think I'm paranoid that they will balk at our classical curriculum. I'm still researching how to call what I'm doing the titles of classes that they are expecting...

I'm assuming you're using a spiral curriculum, not a mastery curriculum? Skipping a whole book could leave a big gap otherwise. I think the best way to accelerate ahead in math is to just give the test for each lesson. If they can pass the test, then keep going. If they have trouble, then go back and teach the trouble spot. You just want to be sure that they don't get all the way to upper level math and then have a hole in their knowledge. They need to know all of their math facts. They need to be able to follow the order of operations. They need to know place value. They need to know how to handle fractions and decimals and percentages and exponents. They need to be able to do long multiplication and division problems without getting lost in all of the numbers. That sort of thing. And then the really important thing is to be able to think mathematically through the word problems and applications. A lot of bright kids get really bored in those middle math years and may be able to skip ahead, but sometimes they can end up weak in computation skills or math facts which slows them down in the end. When we get to an easy spot in math, I go over the lesson. let them show me how to work a few problems and then I have them work the word problems from that lesson to get that practice. The next day, we take the test and move on. When we get to the end of a book, we go to the next one.

Seeing the topic last week about making sure you're ready to commit to all of high school once you get to ninth grade got me thinking. I don't have any problem committing to all of high school. There is no other option here for us, so we're good there. But I was preparing to send in my letter for this year indicating that we are using the non-registered private school option (however they phrase that), when I started wondering about TOPS. We doubt that ds will go to an in-state university, but now some of the private schools are covered too. With the economy like it is, we should probably leave the in-state schools as an option for us, so it would be good to remain eligible for TOPS. I know that in order to get TOPS you have to do the homeschooling option where you get state approval and submit portfolios and/or test scores, etc. But I wasn't sure how many years you had to be under that plan before graduation--all 4? So I started trying to read through all of the homeschooling law and all of the TOPS regulations and it appears that we would only have to be under that plan for his last two years of high school. I just wanted to see if anyone here could confirm that. I would rather stay in the private option this year if possible and make the switch next year if necessary. We haven't decided if we are going to graduate him a year early or do the full 4 years of high school. Thanks for any insight you have!

Some of the checks are supposedly pretty significant. There is quite an organized network of people working the system. As for the jobs, they are restaurant and retail jobs, mostly. And I can understand that walking away from a government check to make $10/hour would be a "pay cut" for some people. And that is one of the indicators that our system is broken.

We live in a community with jobs. In fact, there are some businesses who have struggled to stay open because they have had trouble finding people who are willing to come in and do an honest day's work. However, there are government housing projects full of people who don't work. It isn't that there aren't jobs for them. But apparently, the benefits they are getting from the government are better than what they would get if they took one of those available jobs, so they stay where they are. You drive by on a weekend and there are inflatable jumpy castles with kids jumping in them while the adults are sitting around drinking beer and eating food from the local BBQ place or Chicken restaurant. Our church has a food pantry and utility assistance and it is interesting to see the people who come in for help. You have the grandmother who is raising a dozen grandchildren because her children either can't or won't raise them. I'm happy that we can help her provide for those kids. She can barely lift the bag of groceries we give her and she's grateful. Then there is the young woman who comes in talking on her smart phone, fancy long fake nails on her fingers, salon done hair, gold teeth with bling in her mouth, and plops a big Coach bag down on the desk. Her electric bill is double what ours is and the amount we can give her to help with her bill probably wouldn't fill the tank of the nice SUV that she drives. She makes small talk while the check is written and says something to the effect of "Oh, I couldn't work like this all day. That would just be too hard." And she's living on welfare. I try very very hard not to judge and not to feel negatively about this, but it's really hard when it's flaunted like this. We got nailed on our taxes this year because dh got a gift last year. In fact most of the value of that gift ended up going to the government because it jumped us just across a line that increased our taxes. We usually get a refund which I use to buy curriculum for the next year, but this time we had to write a big check. So when I see people taking government checks and living extravagantly, I start to feel like their luxuries came at the expense of my children getting a new pair of jeans or better school books or taking a field trip. But most of the time, I'm able to just let it go... :)

I don't buy much prepared food and cook from scratch a lot. I haven't been baking our bread, but we don't eat a whole lot of bread. I don't buy cookies or muffins or desserts, but will occasionally bake some for a treat. I noticed the person who said she got milk for $1.98. Our milk here is $4.19 per gallon right now and that isn't the organic that I prefer. I try to spend $125 per week on groceries for the 5 of us, but it's frustrating because I feel like we're not eating enough fruits and vegetables and my kids aren't feeling like there is enough food in the house. Mind you, everyone is eating three meals a day and usually a snack, but all three kids are growing right now and eating a lot! I think if I got the amount of produce I wanted for our week, I would easily spend $60-80, and that isn't for organic. I'm trying, but am not having a lot of luck getting my crew to eat beans. Most will eat rice, but it isn't popular. We do work in pasta a lot. Coupons don't really work well for us because we don't use those products very much. So I guess I'm doing OK because I'm sticking pretty close to the $500 per month at the moment, but I'm not getting as many fruits and veggies as I think we need. I would love to do better--getting more for my money so I feel better about the nutrition and the kids feeling like there is more here to eat.

I use the Lock & Lock like QVC has almost exclusively. About 7 years ago, I brought some flour or Bisquick or something home from the store that had those moth like bugs in it. They infested everything in my entire pantry that was in a cardboard box. I had to throw all of our food away. The bugs are common down here in the south, so I decided I would invest in containers for my pantry and started stocking up on Lock & Lock--I think they were at Target at that time. A lot of mine have been in use for all 7 years and still look like new. I got the canister set from QVC a few years ago and really like it. I put all cereal, crackers, snacks, baking supplies--anything that comes in a paper bag or cardboard box--into my containers. I will occasionally use them for leftovers, but I more often will use my Corning ware or Pyrex bowls with lids for leftovers. I also have some Tupperware bowls for leftovers.

My ds almost got tubes. His problem was most likely a milk allergy or some similar sensitivity to his formula. His pediatrician put him on a maintenance dose of antibiotics which caused other problems for us. I regret having to do that. My dds were breastfed and didn't get the chronic ear infections like big brother, but they did occasionally get the beginnings of an ear infection when they had any sort of nasal congestion. I quickly learned that I could keep it from becoming a big deal requiring antibiotics if I started a regular routine of saline drops in the nose at every diaper change. It thinned the secretions and kept them moving rather than allowing the sludge to settle in the ears. My pediatrician also encouraged me, when their ears were starting to look bad, but didn't look like rupture was imminent, to take the script home, wait a day, and only fill it if she was worse. Usually, with the saline treatment and some extra TLC they would get better on their own. The saline drops (we used Little Noses brand) were such a simple low-tech solution but they made a huge difference!

I would look at the hour for PE and hour for lunch. My 9th grader wants to get finished earlier, so he is limiting his lunch time accordingly. Is he riding a regular bike or stationary? I get a lot of reading done on the stationary bike. I would also expect homework in high school if he isn't able to get all of the reading finished during his day.