We are leaving for a short holiday tomorrow so it will be a few days before she can try.

Dh was at a meeting at the Church when the announcement was made. Being a dutiful wife ;) I sent a message to his Blackberry and went out to water the flowers. The church is 200 yards away as the crow flys over 3 fences. I got to hear dh scream out at the meeting " It's a boy" and then everyone else talking. Pretty funny. I didn't know it was really that close but everyone has the doors open. Hot evening.

My son used to copy and paste the text into notes so I think you could highlight. Dd is willing to experiment in a few days with the Anatomy course if you need her to. She thinks she has by accident.

I have put "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" aside for a few days. We are going out of town overnight tomorrow and I know I don't want to take it with me. Just not a car book. I have a few new paranormals on my kindle and dd has picked out some "real" books that we can both enjoy! I finished "Soulless" by Gail Carriger this morning. As Stacia said it was an enjoyable summer read. As to my question of the difference between being soulless and null(as in Dead Spots by Melissa Olson) the answer is that soullessness as portrayed here is less dramatic overall, more soothing--werewolves don't have to turn on a full moon, vampires fangs retract. With the null character magic ceases to exist so elall paranormals turn human. This book may have been less dramatic but I loved the Victoria setting. The Queen even appears.... I have the rest of the series requested from various libraries which says it all! ;)

On the question of are our friends (the mom) the same age I get burned every single time. The other mom is always my age. I moved countries. The things that age date American friends are different here so I generally have no idea how old anyone is. I am part of a close group of women who gathered around and supported a fellow home ed mom friend who was dying. We all knew each other before but to chat with when you happened to see each other at an activity. We still meet weekly and they are great. We recently discovered that we are all 50 give or take a couple of months. We never suspected because our friend was in her late 30's. We all thought we were the old lady in the group and everyone else was her age. Lol

I think the pp is right about the first chapter and familiarity with kingdoms/phylums. I would at least go over the material. If you are using Apologia's tests I might wait on that depending on how long you have in the States. It took roughly 2 weeks per chapter for us to do everything including the test if that helps your planning. I am sure that some specimens can be easily purchased when you are home like the fish so I would leave those chapters for last. Also don't stress too much about not having everything with you. I think I managed to find a virtual dissection or microscope image for every single needed one online. I might have had a higher or lower magnification but they were all there if needed. ;)

To be honest I had never thought of the confidentiality aspect because at this point I am just using these letters as support for the grades my dc's have received. I was posting at the same time as your first post so did not have the opportunity to read it or I would not have posted. I am using them as part of their portfolio. They haven't taken complete outside classes for outside credit. But they have had a couple of opportunities to do small blocks of work with outside experts which have been incorporated into their science and math courses. I will say my friend (part of a group I belonged to years ago in US) faithfully collected letters for all eight kids and somehow used them in her application process. If her dc's worked in a soup kitchen or any other volunteer work she had a letter. Participated in a community based course, letter. I haven't been nearly that aggressive. :lol: Her dc's to the best of my knowledge all received generous scholarships in the application process. They were bright good kids but she felt her letters gave them the edge. I would assume they had some sealed ones too. I also want to mention the young teacher I mentioned above has stayed in touch with my kids but not others in the group he taught. It did for lack of a better description "make them stand out". He has asked them to help with a few projects etc. His career has also taken off. Well known internationally in his field. Probably an excellent sealed reference for the future which never would have been if we had not asked for those letters two years ago.

I am so sorry :grouphug:. I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to be at work right now. :grouphug:

I imagine nosy neighbors (that can be good, need to look at them first :lol: ) and smallish rooms.

One of my more experienced friends advised me to start collecting these from adults who see my children frequently for activities. Right as the activity is ending so I don't have to track the person down in three years. We have done this a few times. Dh, the business like one, handles it partly so I don't appear too pushy. Just a note that we are putting together their school records for the past year and would like to include some documentation that they did blank. He has provided a bit of an outline on Word(I think) so they could adjust it. For example, they participated in an outside seminar with a field trip with a wonderful young man, who would not have had a clue what we were hoping for. We wanted a clear description of what they had done included because the course was unique and special.We provided one in the outline/sample. He tweaked our sample quite a bit and returned a really lovely letter. He took our basics....they had completed a course where they did these things under his supervision...and made a really glowing reference for each. We just provide the basics the other party does the rest. ;)

Birthday's at our house are a two day affair. We celebrate the last day of being.......with a special fun activity. Could be a take away meal or a trip to a favorite place like a zoo that we have a pass to. Something nice but not overly unique. The actual day can vary alot. They have baked their own cakes for years so we have to be home part of the day! :lol: They love that part and get quite uptight if we don't put baking time in the itinerary. Another great idea of dh's is they each have a birthday book with a picture of them each year on their birthday. One picture,usually with their cake, really says it all!

I bought the whole set when they were little and used them extensively. Truly probably the most used and versatile home ed product ever at our house but I never really used it for penmanship by itself. We used it with history, geography, and science. We generally did the copywork although sometimes they wrote their own to go with the pictures. Each child must have drawn each picture at least once. Most of them 3 or 4 times minimum. Some of the animals graced the front of thank you cards for years. Draw Write Now worked particularly well with the Galloping the Globe curriculum just in case you are considering that in the future.

Just finished my latest Elly Griffiths "A Room Full of Bones". Once again interesting but fictional. While building an ASDA an ancient coffin belonging to a Bishop is discovered which kicks off a series of pretty horrifying events. The ancient coffin takes rather a back seat to drug trafficing, horse racing, and aboriginal artifacts but I still enjoyed it. I am about halfway through "If on a Winter's Night....". I am having some problems keeping everything straight so am spending quite a bit of time looking back in the book. I am curious to get to the ending because I can't believe one ending will some up all of those cliffhangers!

:lol:

On Coursera there is going to be a course titled Ancient Greeks from Wesleyan University this fall. It can be found in the Humanities section of Coursera. Sorry I can't link. If you look at the assignments there it is very similar to Regentrude's list with links to the literature. These might help you with your planning. :) This course is free. I have been looking at literature lists for high school intensely for about 2 weeks now while planning for the AP lit exam for dd. I think the must reads are Iliad and Odyssey, if those go well Antigone, Aeneid, and Oedipus need to be added. This happens to be the reading list for a Greek Lit course I took in high school. Greenleaf and EIL (world lit) both publish course guides which cover a majority of these works and might be helpful.

I just talked to dd and she does select her topics which is why she has the nice distribution. ;) The Quests are fun too per both dc's. Sometime you need to select certain topics for the quests which is the reason ds has some other topics apparently otherwise he prefers to work through sequentially.

Just another :grouphug:.

We just watched "Blink" with David Tennant last night. Sooooo good. As Mrs. Mungo says a stand alone. Might be a great way to get hooked! :) Ds had never seen that one. He was a hoot to watch while he watched. Kept turning around and telling me it was the best one ever!!! He has a church with lots of statues outside his bedroom window. It seemed like asking for nightmares when he was younger so skipped that one. Watching the new Drs. In order with dc's right now. We skipped "Empty Child" which is possibly my most disliked episode ever.

Looking forward to your review. I love the sound of it but can't find a copy at any of my libraries. :( I will add it to the list.......

When we were first married, 25 years ago, Dr. Who aired in our town on either Friday or Saturday night. Dh refused to go out because what if the VCR didn't work? So it was a night alone or watch the weird show. It wasn't long before I was hooked. I love the old ones! :)

Some of the courses are originally itune courses. The virus course was originally I believe.

To be honest I would probably say it is probably the worst and the best thing I have ever let them do. It has completely taken over the last few weeks. But at the same time they both got thrown in and are passing their quizzes and are still in line for a certificate. For dd she is proving she can survive a tough college level class where her interest at the beganning was not high. She just passed week 4's quiz first go (77%) and is super proud of herself. Other then her kindle fire she did not "like" computers. Feeling better now. She is a perfectionist (used to cry if she got one wrong) and has learned passing can be great! For ds it has been eye opening. He has literally spent the last year sleeping with my begging him to finish something. He is very bright and thinks he will just automatically set the programming / game world on fire by his presence in 10 years or so -- he simply did not get that there is going to be work for him envolved in that goal. This course has been an attitude adjustment for him. He is struggling big time. So much I suggested just auditing the course(my original intention). He told me no because he is "not a quitter". Appears to be managing his time better which honestly isn't saying much but he is learning. This was a course he really wanted to take. He also seems to be learning that he needs to learn some of the other topics I am trying to help him learn. Things like writing a really good proposal are important and he does need to start at the beganning - a respectable essay. Lol I have given you way to much of an answer. :lol: The short one is survival has been really enlightening so good.

I had a hard time finding it too. It is called Online Games......offered through Vanderbilt. We are now signed up. :)

Just requested the "Devlin Diary". Thank you!!! I had no idea she had a second book in this series. I can't wait to find out what happens next. This afternoon I started another new paranormal series by Gail Carriger called "Soulless". Now the title should have given me a bit of a clue but being souless is apparently very similar to being a null. Is this a common character type that I have just missed somehow? I can't quite believe that I ran into two books with this "new" concept in two days! This one hasn't made me laugh but it does seem to be pretty good. Alternate Victorian London setting.

I finally finished "The Rosetti Letter" by Chtisti Phillips. It has been in my pile so long I was on my last renewal at the library -- 3weeks for 6 times! I enjoyed it although now I really want to go to Venice.... I also read an Amazon Prime book called "Dead Spots" by Melissa F. Olson. I really enjoyed it! :) Your basic paranormal book with a bit of a twist that I haven't seen before. The main character is a null, which means magic does not exist around her. Vampires turn human and age, werewolves turn human instantly. There were some humorous scenes because of this that made me me Lol. My favorite was when a strange werewolf was running by her and suddenly she had a confused naked man laying at her feet. Now the rest of that scene was not funny but that ability certainly lightened the mood several times.