Thanks, Rose. I have an acquaintance who requested that letter from the office here in Manhattan and they turned her down :confused: My daughter and I need to go in to the office to get approval to take the GED anyway so I think that I will make an appointment to discuss our options. I have filed every IHIP and quarterly report since forever - well, 1997 - so it certainly can't hurt to ask! It does burn me up! We don't want her to go away for her first year and she agrees. There are some private schools here but Brooklyn is super close and super affordable. And BC has an Honors College that really appeals to us - not to mention the full scholarship! AND Brooklyn (and the other CUNY schools) won't look at her transcript, only the GED and SAT. :cursing: :angry: :banghead:

I wanted to take my husband's name but I wasn't happy about giving up my maiden name. I also didn't like the idea of not signing my name with a nice, big *Q*, if that makes sense. So, when I applied for a new SS card I changed my name from Liza Cheryl Q(last name) to Liza Q(last name) D(new last name). I sign everything with the Q, have it in my user name most places online and I am so happy with it. Just that letter keeps me feeling like me! And I am happy that we, as a family, all have the same last name. I like the family identity!

My oldest wants to attend Brooklyn College, part of the City University. All the homeschoolers I know have taken the GED if they wanted to attend a CUNY school. Ick. I have heard that it is possible to take the Regents instead but I don't know anyone who has done this. Any thoughts or advice?

I do a weekly assignment sheet for each of my teens. My oldest checks and dates each assignment and then sticks it in a binder. My younger one transfers the information into this book after she completes each assignment: http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/High+School+Homeschool+Daily+Planner/029491/1212427773-850032 She has been using it since the 8th grade and she loves it! My oldest just prefers to check and be done with it :glare:

One cat - Lady Jane Grey. She is named more for Betsy's cat in the Betsy-Tacy books than for the actual Lady Jane Grey. Generally, we call her Lady Jane or LJ.

My daughter did well with Algebra 1 but found Spectrum Chemistry horribly difficult, even with the Bridge Math. I wish that I had saved it until after she had completed both Alg 1 and 2. I gave her a C and we both hate seeing it ruin her average but....well, she just did not do very well.

Well, my daughter is taking the SAT this Saturday. If she has a problem with the noise level (actually, I am sure that she will) I will be sure to pick up Rocket Revolution before she takes the test again in the fall! Thanks so much for mentioning it!!!

Thanks! I think I will order it if I have any money left when I done with all my shopping....

I mean that I have the old TM with only some of the student pages. I wanted to buy a new set and then I realized that they may not match up!

I have an old TM for this. Will the student pages match up with the old version - I am thinking they will not :glare: I have the new book version on CD but I really don't want to buy a new TM for just the maps, coloring pages and a few activities.

I like your copywork/dictation idea and I can see that it would work well. Another thought - translation work. If your son writes a paragraph in English and you have him translate it into French (maybe twice orally for every one time written?) you would find yourself teaching grammar in a natural way and covering composition at the same time. Maybe keeping a notebook of copywork (daily), dictation (3x per week) and translation work (English to French 1x per week, French to English 1x per week) with a list of French books read independently would be organized enough and would not take *that* much more time out of your day?

I did not have my 17yo do the vocabulary as she was doing Vocabulary for the College Bound student, as well as lots of PSAT/SAT prep. She also used an AG review book. I found that she did not need the writing/grammar lessons in Smarr at all. I had my 15yo do Sentence Composing this year in addition to Smarr. I also supplemented with The Lively Art of Writing, but she is still struggling with writing. I think that Smarr is a good course - you can have your children use it for a while and then decide whether they need more or less of anything. I used my daughters' essays as a way to judge whether they needed more or less.

If she is independent and organized, it is worth trying. But I suggest that you keep a duplicate for yourself. That way you can keep track without telling her what to do every week. And, if it doesn't work, go right back to weekly plans! FWIW, I give my 17 and 15yos weekly lists to check off. My oldest still needs the hand-holding. I don't think that my 15yo still needs it but she likes knowing that I am keeping track of her work. Another thought - you can make the weekly schedules pretty vague. For example, I will just write Math 4x or French 5x on the schedule - they know what they need to do!

Such great comments! I feel so badly for the little boy. And his Mom. His needs are not being met. And I feel bad for the other children - I can't imagine what is must be like to try to learn with constant disruption. I still am finding it hard to believe that the teacher was justified. She may not have known how to handle him, but he has been there all year. Maybe things just came to a head that day? Maybe she felt desperate enough to try something - desperate. I wonder if there is really any right way to handle this. Inclusion? Special ed? Aides? Higher standards? More understanding? So sad. I am thankful that we are homeschooling and I wish that every child could have the personal attention that my children have. :confused:

I really liked the Olivia Coolidge version. The Colum version is told in flashbacks and it totally confused my children! The Emily Little title is an easy I-Can-Read book - you can it in an afternoon! I have not seen the McCarty or Lister versions. The Sutcliff versions were great to read aloud because of the pictures, like Jessica mentioned. Another good version is by Roger L. Green - similar to the Coolidge version, I think. But my favorite version to read aloud was the Alfred Church version, probably because it was the first one we ever read!

If you have the time you can read the *Incident Document* here - http://www.slate.com/id/2192480/ It was very informative! I still do not know what I think about it (I think too many things at once!) but at least now I have some more facts to consider!

Another thought - this may seem like a small thing, but I have seen that a lot of things are easier when they move in with you, as opposed to you moving in with them. My parents were renting a house from my aunt. My aunt needed to sell the house so my sister bought it. She, her husband and their two young children moved in and, on the surface, it has seemed very smooth. However, I know that my parents give her a hard time about a lot of things because they still see it as *their* house. Mom and Dad insist on cable tv and a cleaning lady and then insist that my sister pay half. And the heating, the decorating, letting the children do whatever they want when my sister is not there - it has been a hard adjustment. And I would characterize my sister and my Mom as having an excellent relationship! And...think carefully about the STUFF. My MIL mourned for years over junk that we threw away (we had to rent a dumpster because her apartment was crammed full of junk and she was moving into one room with us - a large master bedroom with a private bathroom, but still not spacious!) and I honestly think that she was traumatized. I used to think that it was just her - till we went through my parent's home when my sister moved in and got rid of a lot of things. I was truly surprised at how my parents acted and I realized that it is just never easy to dismantle your life and start over. So - not that you can avoid getting rid of stuff but....be as gentle as possible.

My older daughters get very stressed sometimes but they realize that High School is just plain hard work. Maybe it helps that several of their friends are in school and they see the work as inescapable. When my 2nd daughter was in 8th grade we talked quite a bit about trying school. Not that I wanted her to but I thought that, if she really wanted to, it would be a good time to make the transition. She thought about it and decided that she would rather stay home for High School. She figured that she would have the same amount of work but she could get it done more quickly at home - she really values her free time! So, does she have any friends in school? Comparing her life and homework time/free time to kids in school may be illuminating!

My MIL lived with us for nearly 10 years, then with my SIL for 2 years, and then in a nursing home before she died. It was very hard, as we live in an apartment and sometimes I really thought that my head would explode. She was an alcoholic for much of my husband's childhood/youth and she had different ideas/standards than we did in so many areas... But if I could do it all over - I would do it again. We were there for her when she needed us and it was just the right thing to do. My husband and I had discussed the possibility before we were married and, while it happened much sooner than I had hoped, I was not unprepared. Sadly, I resented her a lot of the time and I was not always kind and loving :blush: At the time I justified myself a lot - 5 pregnancies with constant nausea, etc., homeschooling, financial struggles, over a year without my own bedroom (sleeping on the couch while pregnant is not pleasant!) - but now I just wish I could spend time with her and love her more.

:iagree: about the feeding of the baby - I kept commenting on it! I watched it with my daughters, 2 of their friends and my husband and I was the only one bothered by it. Maybe it is a Mom thing! I also agree with those who think that Jack is the one Sun blames. Another thing - Sun must know that helping Mr. Widmore will likely lead to hurting Desmond and Penny. I just can't see her not being sympathetic so she must have a really good reason for doing it. I hope. And another thing! About the people on the little boat - how can Sayid and Jack be totally sure that they were the only survivors when they know that there was that boat with, what, 5 survivors and Daniel? While I am thinking that the boat may have been close enough to the island to have moved with it (I figure that they would have been on their way back to the island since they must have seen the explosion), who knows? Poor Juliet - with a sad Dharma bottle of rum. Poor Sawyer - not knowing if Kate was alive or not. My girls and their friends all were annoyed at Kate - kissing Sawyer and then *loving* Jack just a year or so later, but I can see it. Was not expecting Locke in that coffin! The whole fake name thing had - still has! - me confused. I mean, why call him that? Just because Locke is using a pseudonym doesn't meant that the other survivors would use it amonst themselves. Weird. And we still don't know Libby's last name! I wonder if that is significant. Oh, I am going to miss Lost :(

I don't know if this will help but this is what we are doing this year for Year 2.... We will be using Veritas as our primary curriculum - the cards, TM notebook pages and a bunch of reading books. I will have my younger ones listen to SOTW on CD and I am not going to try to get it all lined up - they listen to things like that over and over and it will all fit together in the end. Maps - I am buying the Blackline Maps. Coloring books from a few places. Activities and some notebook pages- Hands and Hearts kit. A few museum trips (living in NY has some perks!) - Medieval, Asian, Renaissance. So - I think that you could do the same, only using the AO CHOW schedule instead of Veritas. Since this will be my third time doing Year 2, I would like to tell you not to worry and you will have a great year no matter how you set it up. Don't worry - you will have a great year no matter how you set it up! :D My younger ones were 5 and 3 last time we covered Year 2 and they are already asking me whether we can have another Medieval Feast. They still remember one we did on Michaelmas that year. I just sort of threw it together using some internet resources, we all made costumes from the dress-up clothes box, even Dad got involved. It didn't take much planning and they still remember it! So...planning doesn't have to take a lot of time!

Oh, oh, oh... It hasn't finished airing on the West Coast, has it? :ack2: I want to talk about it! I'll be back in the morning. Wow, that was the best one yet, I think!

We are Christians but we use/will use/have used a lot of secular things - Teaching Textbooks Lial's Literature a la WTM Lightning Literature (Hewitt is a Christian Company but we have used 3 LLs and have not seen any Christian content) Spark Notes Analytical Grammar Stewart English The Lively Art of Writing Most of the books they read History a la WTM Spielvogel The History of the American People Timetables of History Most of the books they read Great Source Government Economics in One Lesson Lingua Latina I can't recommend any secular science yet - maybe next year!

Same here.

I don't know about MUS but one thing I like about TT Geometry is the Alg review - my daughter feels more prepared for the SAT because she hasn't forgotten all the Algebra she knew.