Oak Meadow's English 9 is The Hero's Journey. My dd is really enjoying it. Also, you could check this out.

We are enjoying a kit from eScience Labs. We got the one that cost $98.

We used/are using Lightning Lit, and we like it.

You may wish to check out Garlic Press or Blackbird and Company.

Vomiting can be a sign of thyroid issues.

The year I married my husband, he took me to my dad's for a birthday cookout with my dad and stepmom. The doorbell rang. A college friend who happened to be in town heard we were nearby and stopped in to say happy birthday. The doorbell rang. My dh's best friend and his wife were driving by, saw our car, and stopped by to say happy birthday. The doorbell rang. A childhood friend who was visiting his parents nearby decided to swing by and tell me happy birthday. The doorbell rang. One of my very best friends, who lives in a completely different country, had happened to fly in to wish me a happy birthday. In all, eleven friends (+ husband, dad, and stepmom) surprised me. It remains one of the greatest things anyone ever did for me.

The TM for the 2014 Macaw book should work fine. The book didn't change from 2010 to 2014.

We liked the Holt Science and Technology Short Course books. They are basically the Holt middle school books broken down by topic and in a more user-friendly size. We used them in 4th-7th grades.

I would not use MM for a struggling student. It is a challenging program, and although my mathy dd really liked it, we did get to the point where we felt that the complexity of the practice problems overshadowed the concepts being taught. Also, MM teaches several ways to approach various problems, and this resulted in my ds, who struggles with math, becoming confused and trying to combine elements of various approaches. My son does better with a very straightforward, spiral curriculum.

My daughter was in 3rd when we used it. It was pretty much all copywork and dictation with a few little notes about literary elements in the passages. The parts about the literary elements were not the focus and there was not enough mention of them/work with them for the concept to really be explored and retained. So, what would make it complete? Actual exercises to work with the literary elements that are mentioned, not just short notes to notice the element in the copywork/dictation. There would also need to be (in my opinion) more of a focus on the book as a work of literature and not just the source of a few snippets to copy. I should probably have mentioned that it has been six years since we used the Arrow, so maybe things are different with it now. But especially for a seventh grader ... there is really absolutely no comparison between The Arrow and what we used for literature in seventh, which was Lightning Literature. Some people think LL is light for literature, but next to that, The Arrow would cover virtually nothing.

I used it and liked it, but it is not a complete literature program. But then again, at the ages my kids were when I used it, we weren't doing formal literature anyway.

This was my absolute number one complaint about the schools my daughter was in. They believed they knew what was best for my daughter, they believed they had a right to parent her, they believed they had a right to tell me what to do, and they interfered in non-school issues that they had no business interfering in. My experience was that when schools told parents they wanted them to be involved, that was bs and what they really hoped was that parents would shut up and let the schools do whatever they wanted to do.

Basing whether students are placed in remedial classes or even whether they are allowed in to begin with on standardized test scores is not a good idea. It reduces all of a student's knowledge and uniqueness to their performance on one test, which, to me, is completely counter to the idea of education. I do not believe that standardized tests are effective reflections on how well a student can succeed in college. My dd had an abysmal ACT score. But she graduated from a high school well known for producing hard-working students, so a college looked past her standardized test score and treated her as a whole person, with strengths as well as weaknesses. This week she starts her senior year as a biology major with a chemistry minor and an English minor. She has a 3.3 GPA. In the areas she struggled with and was behind, she worked harder, and she succeeded. Thank goodness she wasn't dismissed as "not good enough" based on a stupid, worthless test score.

This is usually where I draw the line. My oldest dd decided it was way better to miss the bus and have Dad provide taxi service to school. Mean Old Mom eventually stepped in and told Soft-hearted Dad to knock it off and let dd deal with it on her own. That meant taking the public bus and being late. Eventually, when the consequences at school became severe enough, dd stopped missing the bus. If it hadn't inconvenienced dh to drop dd off at school, that would be one thing. But in practice it meant that dd would announce that she had missed the bus and dh would then scramble around trying to get ready for work early so he could leave early so he could drop dd off on time for school. What's the point of teaching dd that people will routinely pick up her slack and mess up their plans to accommodate her?

Yep. I seriously doubt there are actually parents out there who absolutely refuse at all times and in all circumstances to ever help their kids out, and I also doubt there are parents who turn everything upside down in their rush to assist their kids with every small problem. I think most people help out when they can and don't when they can't. When dd forgot her elbow pads and was playing ten minutes from home, I ran home and grabbed them. When she forgot her shin guards and was playing two hours from home, well, she had to scrounge around for other people's extras because I couldn't run home and I wasn't going to purchase a new pair.

This morning there was a headline in our local news that the Medicaid program that is headquartered in our city was rated the "best managed" insurance program in the state. It scored particularly high on children's health, chronic disease management, and women's health. Too bad government-run programs are so bad. :laugh:

I actually view it the opposite way. By not rushing in to fix things when my kids make bad decisions, I am not helicopter parenting them. I am not treating them like special snowflakes who can't survive the minor bumps and bruises of life. I am not the one who makes my kids' lives harder; they do when they make bad decisions. It's usually my lack of action, not my overt action, that allows a situation to play out. My oldest was the queen of "make a bad decision, blame everyone else." Eventually we got tired of that and started just letting the situation play out. Late for school? Take the late bus; I'm not driving you. Fail to complete the paperwork on time? Miss the opportunity; I'm not pleading to get an exception for you. Most recently it was: Drive unsafely and rack up a bunch of tickets? Lose the insurance; I'm not financing your irresponsible behavior. I think it's important for kids to know that they have the power to shape their lives and that they can't expect other people to fix things for them.

You might look at this book. The student makes his own literature selections.

And then there's me, who seems perennially destined to hold a dissenting opinion. :mellow:

I would go with the private school. I find it unlikely that a seriously introverted, always-homeschooled kid who gets thrown into a huge school environment is somehow going to blossom into someone who joins a bunch of clubs and plays a lot of sports. Free lunch and breakfast is not a positive. My dd went to a school with those things. Lunch was stuff like corndogs wrapped in cellophane and greasy pizza. Breakfast was stuff like donuts wrapped in cellophane and microwave waffles. I didn't allow her to eat it because it was too unhealthy.

I view pity as a kind-of helpless, "what can you do?" feeling. Maybe that's just my misinterpretation.

Looks interesting. Thanks! My dd wants to take Italian, so ...

We really enjoyed the Evan Moor books we did, and looking back, I wish we would have done more (or moor, as the case may be!) :)

I used to date a guy who had a horrible, horrible childhood that left him with mental and emotional scars. I did feel sorry for him ... for a while. Eventually I reached the point where I had to accept that he was responsible for his actions in his adult life and that pitying him didn't do anyone any good. It made me stick around for poor treatment far longer than I ever should have, and it gave him an excuse never to change. I don't think pity is a good attitude.

You could look at TabletClass. It's $100 for the whole year, but it's only $50 if you purchase it in July.