He was about 9 or so when he hit puberty. Began shaving by 12-ish. And yes.. he had always been on the high end of the charts as a younger child - he was 8lb 10oz and 21.5 inches when he was born. He had what one doctor referred to as a growth splutter after a spurt and that was it. At 15-16 he was fully his adult size as the growth plates had all fused - he will be 21 this summer. His pediatrician did an x-ray of his hand and referred us to the endocrinologist for confirmation. That doctor told us that depending on when they discover a growth abnormality in a child the only real option generally is shots of growth hormones over time which don't always work and can cause other side effects/problems. I don't think we'd have gone that route if we'd known earlier... it's just a bit too scary to us to play with that sort of thing over an inch or two of height. He had a hard time with it at first (what guy wouldn't?), but as we are Christians, determined that God doesn't make mistakes & there is a reason for everything, finally coming to the point that he believes that he is just as tall as God needs him to be.

They can order an xray of his hand to determine how close the growth plates are to being fused which determines if he is done growing. You may want to seek an opinion from an endocrinologist. My oldest son hit puberty very early, he was also on Adderall (which I found out later can affect growth). We didn't find out until he was 16 or so that he would not grow any taller and he is only 5' 3.5" tall at 20 years old. It was a hard thing to tell a young man... This is all - of course - my own experience and I'm in no way an expert!

IMHO: BJU 7 is all review of BJU6 up to Chapter 9, but there it introduces quite a bit of stuff they will NEED to be able to successfully complete the Pre-Algebra book. The jump from 7 to Pre-Algebra is pretty good. I let my DD test out of quite a bit of the 7 and have started Chap. 9 this week. We'll move on from there. If you are going to finish 6 in Jan, you could easily slide right into chap 9 of BJU7 and finish the year with that. It would make starting pre-algebra an easy transition for the following year.

My kids had to be heavy enough to trigger the airbag and they only get to ride in front when it's just them alone and Mom/Dad/Grandparent. They call "shotgun" when they are going out individually. :) We also have them slide the seat back - so there is less chance of an impact injury w/ the airbag and of course they wear seatbelts. They are 10 & 12 and weigh over 90 pounds each.

They are here with a vengeance! My house is COVERED in them - they hitch a ride on the dogs and come in or fly in whenever a door is open. Crazy things!

I use Wii Active and like it. I have not tried the Wii Fit. Having the program helped me to jump start my "lifestyle change" and then I joined SparkPeople.com and have since lost 12 pounds and have been exercising consistently for about 2.5 months now. :D

I had just blogged about this today.... :001_smile: This is part of my post... Back quite a few years ago, I had the brilliant idea of officially naming our home school. I wanted to have a name to put on report cards, high school transcripts and diplomas when the time came. I also had seen it a few places on the web where people had smart or interesting names for their home schools to answer critics about whether home education could possibly be 'real' school. Now to be honest, a name doesn't mean much in the scope of anything. But I liked the idea nonetheless. So I set about coming up with something clever, or so I thought. Lots of families just use their last name but that didn't curl my toes. There were several out there with a faith based theme, which I really liked, since we do this because we truly believe God wants us to do this. However I didn't have any inspiration around that type of name either. One day I was driving along and saw a sign someplace and it hit me! Not the sign, but a name. We live in NH, which is the "Granite State" and how do we get to the future except by traveling a path and often over a bridge when adversity (or a river) gets in our way. So thus... Granite Bridge Academy was born. When DS applied to college, I liked having a school name at the top of his transcript. And when we gave him his diploma - it looked pretty snazzy there too.

:iagree: Worked marvelously for both my kids.

Does anyone have a program they LOVE? What do you like? Not like? I do not speak a second language, so we had used Rosetta Stone French for my oldest son - he is dyslexic so just did the computer work. It was fine to give him a taste of a foreign language, but I didn't think it was really meaty enough to be functional for someone going on to study at a higher level in any way. And a friend's daughter used the Spanish for 2 years with the writing piece and couldn't test into level 2 of local public school classes for Spanish. Other suggestions? TIA! Blessings, Deb:)

Hi - We are using the R&S English grade 4 right now (and are loving it!) and haven't found anything that points specifically to a certain religion. It is God-honoring and that is a theme in many of the exercises, but I haven't seen anything specific about religions. I believe that R&S is a Mennonite group. We are non-denominational Christians and have not run across anything that has raised a flag. Hope that helps. Blessings, Deb

I think the closest amusement park is Canobie in southern NH. http://www.canobie.com Chelmsford has nothing. Driving in Boston is a pain even if your from this area. *S* Of course I'm NOT a city person and hate to go to the city for anything! You could also go to the ocean maybe Hampton (though it's a zoo at Hampton). Portsmouth, NH has some interesting things, Strawberry Banke is historic and nice to walk around - a living museum. There is also a submarine in Portsmouth. Hmmm... I'm sure there is more, but I can't think at the moment.... Have fun!:)

:grouphug: Maybe a nice long run w/ some LOUD music.... and then a nice, frosty adult beverage...maybe with an umbrella in it. :) and some more :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

currclick.com has a lot of election stuff

My 2 cents -:) We don't do the allowance thing here because I am a mean mom and no one gets money just for taking in oxygen. *S* They have standard family chores that they do because they are part of the family and we all have a responsibility to our home/family. They also have "Paid jobs" that do to earn their pocket money - cleaning up the dog yard, washing windows, etc. Money earned is not blown quite so quickly as just "found" money seems to be. They are much more careful about their spending when they have to work for it. They also know that they are to give back to God from the blessings of their pocket money as well. DS (almost 18) does really well with his giving out of his paychecks now that he has a steady job and is not quite so quick to blow his money on frivolous things.