Oh, my goodness! What a ridiculous situation. You would think that an exception would be made. And to add everything else on top of that, poor thing. No wonder she felt so bad. ? I am so sorry. I truly hope things improve massively and your dd can feel safe and happy at school.

She had a good day. They had orientation first thing and the ASB member who lead her group, a senior, said he had never taken an AP class and that he had gotten a 2.8 gpa his first freshman trimester. She was shocked! She was also surprised by the amount of brand name clothing and makeup some girls were wearing, as well as by the amount of swearing, phone use, and pda. She liked all of her teachers. Her English teacher recognized the family name from when she taught my oldest. She has a science and a math class where there are sophomores, so that's a new experience for her.

My younger child started high school today. Same school my oldest graduated from 4 years ago. It's a good school so I have faith that things will go well for the most part. Picking her up in 20 minutes, so we will see how it went.

Oh, no! How is your younger one taking it?

I had my first at 32 and my second and last one at 40. I fit right in age wise with my older daughter's friends' parents. I definitely am much older than most of my youngest's friends' parents. ETA My advanced maternal age actually helped me on my last pregnancy. When I went to my obstetrician, she immediately sent me to the specialist due to my age. There, they checked my history of miscarriages and secondary infertility and went all out to make sure this pregnancy went through. Testing found the most probable cause of my previous miscarriages, I got treatment and close tracking throughout my pregnancy, and had a beautiful and healthy baby girl the week after I turned 40.

I began getting some gray and white hairs a couple of years ago. I am 54 now. So far I haven't done anything about it, it just looks like I have some highlights. The main problem I have with some of the gray or white hairs is that they feel like a different texture than before. Has anyone experienced this?

That is district dependent. All our 5 high schools are either on a trimester or a quarter system. The last one that was on a semester system transitioned to the trimester system last year. ETA We are in Southern California.

I am also in California, but my rising 9th grader is in public school. At school: English - Honors English (I &II) Math - Integrated Math II (a&b) Science - Fundamentals of Chemistry, and Honors Chemistry (I&II) P.E. - Marching Band P.E. and Freshman P.E.(I&II) Visual and Performing Arts - Marching Band I (clarinet) and Concert Band (II & III) (bassoon) Art I And Technical Theater I. Subject to change depending on scheduling and enrollment issues. She requested other visual arts classes as alternates. Social Studies - No social studies required freshman year. At home: Foreign language - Spanish as a heritage language using Break the Spanish Barrier, Destinos, and a lot of other resources. The emphasis is on grammar to be ready to take AP Spanish at school Junior year. Health - Graduation requirement. Planning to do online at home during the summer. Extracurriculars - Piano, weekly lessons. Dropping Certificate of Merit and just playing for fun. Kathak dance, weekly class and some performing opportunities. Girl Scouts, we will see how involved she can be. School swim team last trimester, they have three levels, including developmental. She also takes clarinet and bassoon lessons for her school band, frequency varies depending on season and need. She is my second child going through high school, but my first child was a very academic kid who had very light extracurricular involvement, so this is a new challenge for me.

What major did your daughter apply for?

I need to hear this, I think? Pigging back from your post, my 14 year old dd, like your daughter, is good at math but she doesn't particularly like it. She is in a competitive public school district. She could get to AP Calc BC if she did an extra year of math, which is easily doable by just taking 3 trimesters of math for two years instead of just two trimesters. She doesn't know what she wants to major in. She loves music, but she is scared of leaning that way professionally because she is aware how tough it is to make it. She also likes art, and science, particularly astronomy. My concern is whether getting only to AP Calc AB will be detrimental to college admissions if she decides to go for a science major, when many of her school peers will have AP Calc BC. I don't want her to do things just because everyone else is doing it, bu at the same time, I really don't want to handicap her in relation to her peers! She is not planning to apply at super selective colleges, but the UC system is fairly competitive, especially for science majors. ? What to do? For your daughter, who is very clear that math and science are not in her future, just AP Calc AB sounds like a great plan. The rest of the package is solid, particularly those national writing awards! Good luck!

Is there a link to the list of books discussed?

@Matryoshka My girls are now 21 and 14. I followed the one parent one language method from birth and have invested a lot of time and effort in providing a rich Spanish language environment for both of them. Neither of them have shown the inclination to do much more than what I required language wise. My older one took Spanish up to AP Spanish and got a 5. She was satisfied with that. She placed out of her college foreign language requirements and although she considered taking another language for a bit, she ended up not having space because she went in undeclared and did quite a bit of exploring. She is very thankful about being raised bilingual though and has thanked me repeatedly for it. My younger one is a rising high school freshman. Her district requires one trimester of foreign language, while the UC-Cal State system requires 2 years. We have just gotten started with our plan for me to prepare her grammar wise for AP Spanish at school during her Junior year. While she is not language resistant, I have not yet seen any enthusiasm to do the heavy work required. She will happily watch Spanish made movies etc, but grammar, and actively speaking the language are a different matter.

This might work. I will check it out. Thank you so much!

I would sit with her and calmly go over the whys of your goals. Listen to your daughter's point of view, why is she resisting? Sympathize with her if you can. You might be able to re-evaluate and adjust somewhat. If you will not change your goals, you might need to let your daughter have some degree of control over the how you achieve your goals. Too much pushing can result in outright rebellion and then, what do you do? It's always a fine line... Good luck, Edited to add: Go to the Bilingual Monkeys blog for ideas on how to make language fun at home. Adam Beck is incredibly resourceful.

I am glad my daughter didn't have summer homework. Her language arts and social studies teacher last year piled on the homework load. I feel she really needed to not have any expectations for written output this summer. Like I said, she is still doing math tutoring twice a week, plus reading, and Spanish, and some other stuff of her choice, but it's different than official school homework.

I just wanted to let you know that I admire how much you manage to get your girls to get done despite your incredibly busy life.

? in sympathy about the sand. A mom showed me recently how effective talcum powder is to get sand off of kids feet. It's a wonder product!

I hope your move went well!

I am so jealous! Your summer just sounds fabulous!

I have required my 14 year old to do regular reading of her choice and to keep up with her two hour weekly online math tutoring. Since she will not be taking Spanish this year at the high school, she agreed to doing Spanish at home during the summer; right now, other than our regular routine, we have settled into a three day a week more formal session with grammar and other activities. Everything else she is doing is her choice. She is alternating instruction in her three instruments -piano, bassoon, clarinet- one lesson a week. She is in her third and final week of theatre camp which gets her super tired but super happy too. She is still participating in her Indian dance weekly lesson. Her group just performed in our city's fringe festival, which was awesome, and they have already started preparing for their next show in a few weeks. She is managing to hang out with friends a couple of times a week too. We have our family vacation at the end of July, then nothing until the week before school starts when she has her school band camp. She likes to keep busy! I am much more laid back but I have learned to go with the flow!

My daughter's merit scholarship was a fixed annual amount dependent on gpa and full time status only. Her living arrangements were irrelevant. She got merit scholarships at other universities that required her living in the honors college dorm for two years. I am not sure how moving out would have affected her scholarship. You will definitely want to read your son's scholarship offer and or contact his college.

I identify with you all. I am 54, I never homeschooled, but I had a couple of big relocations, and I have not worked full time since I had my first 21 years ago. I don't know which way to go next. I hope you won't mind my joining you guys.

This is what I meant, thank you!

If you can get in, depending on major, and if you are full pay in the U.S. yes, they are a good deal even with the overseas rates. Also, they are three year degrees. The only thing is that you can not apply to both, only one or the other.

EU citizenship is irrelevant for tuition fees at OxBridge. It’s residency that counts. My kids can claim British citizenship through my husband. Our oldest is British too and was even born there. They can also claim Spanish citizenship through me. You have to have residency in the U.K. to be entitled to the lower tuition fees. That means that you have to be a resident there for at least the last three years prior to college admission. I am assuming you are in the U.S. If you are in the U.K. or EU, please disregard.