It seems there are a lot of things they still don't know about greying hair... For example, I can have grey on the end and then the shaft turns brown again two inches up...Meaning it was producing grey then produced brown again on the same strand of hair... I know what you mean about some people not turning grey...dh just has some spots tho well past retirement...

Yes I've found myself doing this when thinking about a stressful problem and have wondered if lack of oxygen was causing greying hair :-) As soon as I catch myself, I take some good deep breaths.

Dh did a lot of reading to dd when she was young and it went well... It is the growing up part that he doesn't know how to handle... Not even sure if he'd read a how-to book but it might give dd some ideas....

Talked with dd and she said that the girl is too young....Dd is beginning uni age....so more advanced issues....

She's read that so I'll have to see if she notes anything helpful in it... I was thinking of something they could work through together.... Thanks!

Thank you everyone who posted. I shouldn't have started the thread when I did because I got so busy it was impossible to continue thoughtfully. I was thinking of putting this on the College Board and even doing a poll. But one thing that happened in the meantime is that I've signed up for a "Bilan de competences" which is something like an assessment of your skills.... We work in a group and look at all our past activities and put them into different categories to see where we would fit best... To be continued!

ETA - their relationship has problems and we need ideas about how to help things get better...Do all your husbands have great relationships with their daughters? If not, where did you get help? (Counseling is not an option due to dh) just did a search and nothing stands out.... Ideally it shouldn't be Christian as dh is not.... On Amazon I found Strong Fathers Strong Daughters and Be the Father She Needs You to Be.....Any strong feeling on either of these? Any others to propose? Or perhaps a website or web pages? Thanks!

I'm guessing you meant Laura Corin as there's no Lauracolin and have written her....but which Jenny did you mean? Thanks!

Thank you! I did search in several ways but couldn't find anything. I'll try now with their names. Joan

To all those who have finished home educating and have or are preparing for getting a job.... I've been trying to do self-assessments of my skills or lack there of that I'll need for the working world..... When I look at the different branches of experience, certainly the biggest after 24 years of home educating is actually 'administration' :-) besides preparing for different courses but they are so diverse that I'd say I'm a master of none.... I'm thinking I'll need to learn MS Word inside and out, and probably some other kind of computer skills.... Does anyone have any recommendations of what you think foundational to apply for administration type positions? Or are there other jobs that you found fit well with a home education experience - and if so, what kind of continuing ed did you do to get up to speed? Also, if you did apply, how did you describe your past experience? On my resume, I want to tailor it to my real experience - after all 'homeschool mother" doesn't tell people much over here as there are very few of us, so the general public is very uneducated. Do you have any advice about this process? Thank you! Joan PS Not sure if this is the right forum for this but besides the bilingual one, it's the only one I spent enough time on to know people...

Hello, I'm sorry that I don't know you so this isn't such a personal recommendation - but I did have enormous problems with my eldest in relation to handwriting and in the case that you have a child like him, I would not recommend the French style handwriting. He's an adult now but when we moved here, I was enamored with the French script (and he actually was as well) and so changed him from one of the simpler American ones to that. But we did not put in the 'time' and he actually turns out to not be very manual at all (even though he could manipulate all those little Lego pieces endlessly)....Eventually we changed back and spent even more time in writing but it continues to be a disaster and painful for him. He has ADHD. A section in this article discusses it a bit: http://brainhe.com/staff/types/dysgraphiastaff.html#underlyingThey do recommend cursive for ADHD but from our experience, I would not recommend the French cursive...... Just in case it can apply for anyone's children..

Did you end up teaching Calculus this year? I don't know how much you paid for you book but I found lots of syllabi for Larson's 8th ed Calculus and as you say, it's very important to have some guidance about which problems to do....They do a small percentage of them! If you haven't taught yet, you should know that they'll change the exam in 2016-17 so then you can't use the older syllabi...

Both mine used the 2nd edition 'on their own' in the sense that I basically just corrected their work and assigned any additional pages. And I agree with Kathy In Richmond about the Explorations in the Resource book. I could sell you the books cheaply but actually wouldn't recommend the second edition because there are some errors in the answer keys that got mine irritated (though I have to say that I've not used a solution book that doesn't have at least some errors !). By the time I got to the second, we could always check back on previous DS's work to see if he'd had the same problem.

This is very typically the experience. After the children start attending school, that becomes the language among the children themselves. There are the rare exceptions - our family is one. The two that attended public school were never in the same school at the same time as they only started in 3rd grade. This meant that they never met on the playground among French speakers, so they were never in settings where it would have been more appropriate to speak the local language together. And they both still have accents even though they've been in local schools for years and years - so another exception. Something that might interest you is that the two homeschooled ones have 'less' of an accent (but still have accents). But they were born here so have had years to integrate. In addition, my spouse is still not speaking the local language - so there is a very strong English tendency at home. I know other families where a parent didn't know the local language, but because the children were together in school, the local language became the children's language. Most families end up having the children answer the parent in the local language - unless the parents are so completely resistant that they never learn the local language. But you probably don't want to do that as it would cause other problems of integration and daily life issues in the community.

Good point Dialectica.

There are supposed to be LOTS of home educators in Russia at least according to a contact there who told me 30,000 several years ago. I haven't read that statistic anywhere else so can't be sure. But it's legal according to HSLDA's website. With that many - of course it would depend on whether you are living in an area where there are lots - you could have lots of Russian contacts and exposure. The tricky part would be whether they would be wanting to practice English with your children. I agree with Monica about focusing on two languages - at least until the children can choose themselves if they want to invest in a 3rd.....We only have so many hours in a day and some of your children might prefer science or math or arts rather than languages.

You could check the grade level on the Wikipedia French education page and then search Amazon.ca or .fr for that level... Otherwise there are the Francais facile books by CLE...For example it shows on the left side of the cover the number of words... Can you see '600 mots' on the left side of Cinq semaines en ballon? Here's the results of a search I just did for that series. Sometimes it is possible to get a recording with the easy readers, perhaps on the website of CLE...It seems like I looked for them once. The link you posted " I also found this link but I know for a fact a few of those are above DS's current level. http://libguides.eco...941&sid=4820808" says it's for 6e and 5e which if you look on the French education page is actually about 6th and 7th grade. So you're right about the reading level...You said you want 3 - 4th grade which is about the level that loesje posted for her book CE2 or 4th grade CM1...

You could look at the list they use for the Swiss matu... This link is in French so it will have German literature as a second language and will therefore have weeded out the really hard stuff. If you scroll to page 5, that's where the German literature is listed. Listes des œuvres littéraires, valables dès 2015 This link will take you to German as a first language literature list...which should come first with a much larger selection. Literaturlisten im Bereich Sprachen ab 2015

I forgot to mention that I'm quite close to the EU border so can easily go to the Post there if shipping is cheaper...Have to check... Very busy sorting books here! (besides having some vacation and helping kids with projects and other HE families)

Hi Dialectica! I have some materials for younger students as well....as soon as I get lists and pictures, I'll let people who contact me know more details...I have so many books that it's a little overwhelming....but I'm sure people can benefit...And I'll list the books in categories of free, 1 chf, 2 chf, and up but the prices won't be so high... I forgot to mention that I have lots of Great Courses/ Teaching Co videos.. Thanks!

Posting here for Europeans...I know it should be in the classifieds but thought it would get lost before it got seen and it's a little unusual since we're overseas... In case you're looking for books often mentioned or recommended on the forums or by SWB, we have to greatly downsize....so if you're looking for literature, high school science, precalc, calc, AP, SAT, SATII books, please let me know....Some will be given, some sold... See sig for location...

Thanks for your answers.... about this part I completely remember this same feeling when dc were younger and I was being faced with the local tests - I was balking the whole way. There's something about how that test prep for a test you don't agree with, just saps the energy and joy from the process. But now I'm in full agreement with the tests so even though there's effort, it doesn't feel at all like when they were younger. I don't think I'd enjoy it either if every subject was for a specific test....We have great fun going on rabbit trails in literature and following interests in biology...

Hmmm...first - I'm glad to hear that you are so active as a professor :-) a. Second - I'm wondering more about the phrase "teaching to the test".... Of course there's the obvious 'faux pas' of having a test in hand and preparing practice questions that are the same or only minorly different. But then there is having a certain body of knowledge that is supposed to be taught, teaching towards that body of knowledge, and then testing accordingly. So then of course if you never got around to teaching "x" you wouldn't test "x". But if your course description says you'll teach "x" and you make sure that you do, and then test it, I don't really see the difference for the AP exams... b. I don't think I was ever trying to discuss student led approaches to learning (not that it's not interesting to hear about your dd) For student led learning - what do you do for subjects where they don't want to learn the subject - where there's no passion? With the AP courses (carefully chosen so not doing too high a level to young, etc), I found mine getting excited about material that they weren't excited about before. But about not liking tests - you don't like the Abitur? even the older versions (as I have some vague recollection of you not being happy with the new system - but maybe that was university level)?

A. SM3 (swimmermom3)'s dc and mine had a class with the same instructor - which was really excellent. When she wrote about the "process" - I immediately thought of this course which was more than anything I could have concocted from a book with worksheets pulled from the internet. Of course all AP courses are not equal nor are the subjects able to be handled in the same way... B. But of course there are school ratings and people compare teachers and programs. Agreeing there is not a standardized test, but school districts, Dept of Education, etc around the world put themselves in knots about this type of problem.... C. Now of course I'm not you, so I don't know all the ins and outs of your years....But isn't it possible that at some point in your career, you would use the same materials as you used the year before? So, you would have originally developed the test based on what you taught. But the following year, when you retaught the same material and reused the same exams, you were effectively "teaching to the test", no? D. Of course intrinsically a course designed to match a test is not necessarily superior. But what I see in actuality, in my brief encounters with the 'real world', is that it's completely possible to learn much less when there is not a clear goal. It is completely true that there are brilliant teachers who construct courses that are not tested with a standardized test which are in every way superior to those that are. But what is accessible to us home educators who are usually overworked, overextended, and underpaid? :-) We have to make do with what we can and very gratefully to Susan Wise Bauer - we have this incredible platform to share information and hopefully make the home education experience better for our dc.....

That's really important to know! Is it possible to go back to the UK to take the GCSE's instead of doing the IGCSE's or are they linked to a school? And I didn't know the language level was so low. No wonder UK universities look favorably on the SAT II's...