An article from the Smithsonian about new free lesson plans available on indigenous cultures. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/inside-new-effort-change-what-schools-teach-about-native-american-history-180973166/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=socialmedia&fbclid=IwAR0_eBi_pxwYyw8ml9s6w-j9Y3cTiQYMJmsy4A5tfrpI0fMp25SvIKscx54 Here's the direct link to the lessons and resources page for the museum https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/resources.cshtml They have options for various grade levels.

An article from the Smithsonian about new free lesson plans available on indigenous cultures. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/inside-new-effort-change-what-schools-teach-about-native-american-history-180973166/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=socialmedia&fbclid=IwAR0_eBi_pxwYyw8ml9s6w-j9Y3cTiQYMJmsy4A5tfrpI0fMp25SvIKscx54 Here's the direct link to the lessons and resources page for the museum https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/resources.cshtml They have options for various grade levels.

Mine is in a 4 person on-campus apartment this year, individual bedrooms, bathroom for every two people. When we got to the dorm, we discovered it was one of the handicapped-accessible units so the bathroom assigned to the bedrooms for herself and another roommate had a roll-in shower instead of a tub and no cabinets in the bathroom. We had to run to Target to get a set of plastic drawers. I've also warned her to be prepared that if they get in a transfer student who needs the accessibility mid-year she might end up needing to move. If they are responsible for their own bathrooms, check to see if they need a shower curtain and hooks, and bring toilet paper and hand soap. Even if they don't have their own kitchen or bath, at least a small bottle of dishwashing liquid is useful to be able to wash any dishes they use in their rooms.

Mine is a sophomore at a school with a bit over 16K. She did really well, and found her group through several paths--martial arts club (she's been training since age 6), a creative writing class, a volunteer group, and being in the honors college. In her case, since she is more of a minority in this area in several ways (just not racially), being in a larger school gave a larger pool of potential paths to fit in and find her place. As part of the search process, we took a close look at clubs and organizations on each campus that would be supportive and how accepting/supportive vs. just tolerant the campus administration and overall atmosphere were. Things like the campus newspaper (often accessible online), looking at lists of clubs, checking out activity notices on campus bulletin boards, etc were helpful. We wanted to know the key groups were actually active and not just a name on a list. Her biggest concern with a large school was being in huge classes. That's primarily a concern in the general ed classes. It helped that she'd been in community college classes for two years, so got most of her gen eds out of the way in smaller classes there. The honors college also offered a way to get those requirements in smaller classes (20 vs 100+).

If it helps, I had a conversation with Davidson College's admissions people about 4 years ago and asked whether DE or AP was preferred. Davidson is listed as "most selective" in the US News rankings and not known to be very homeschool-friendly. In our case, DE is taught at the cc with regular students and tuition is free. In order to get AP, we'd have had to pay something along the lines of $600-$900 per class plus books and AP fee for an online class, so DE was a lot more affordable and gave in-class experience. The admissions person said that the important thing was to explain in the application why the choice between the two was made. They don't accept CLEP at all. My daughter didn't end up applying there, so I can't give a report of how she would have fared.

Mine is going from a traditional double dorm room with bathroom down the hall to an on-campus apartment. She'll be sharing with three others, one she knows and the other two they think will likely be freshmen, as they haven't been assigned yet. The school lost a substantial amount of housing due to the hurricane (a set of apartments had to be torn down a year earlier than expected) so things are a bit jumbled. She's excited that she'll have her own bedroom with a *door she can close*! 🙂 They'll have a shared common room with couch and chairs as well as a full kitchen, so we're going with a meal plan the first semester that works out to about 5 meals per week but can be added on to if needed. We can re-evaluate for the spring. She and the known roommate won't have cars, but they do have friends with cars and there's a shuttle that includes a local grocery store. It's about $1k more expensive per semester but hopefully some of that will be offset by lower overall food costs and not having to rent a microfridge. She's already eating some of her meals in her room even with the required unlimited meal plan for freshmen. I'm anticipating primarily having to send a few more kitchen items, since the bed size is the same. We've been decluttering our kitchen and putting things aside for her "moving out hope chest" anyway, supplementing with thrift store finds, so I expect a lot will come from that. I like the safety net of on-campus living still at this point.

Thanks, but that's one of the sources I checked when I went looking for the Moravian candles. They're how I found out that, to my surprise, the Moravian candles are 20% beef tallow: "As with all of our candles, they are hand poured in North Carolina using a mixture of 80% pure beeswax and 20% beef tallow just as our colonial ancestors would have used. We use only 100% cotton wicking to insure clean burning." Given the percentage of our congregation who are vegetarian, they wouldn't work very well for us, I'm afraid.

We have considered checking with the local beekeepers' association to see if they have anything that might work.

If your church or house of worship uses beeswax candles in a fair quantity and you are in the US, where do you get them? I'm trying to find resources to transition our church from using paraffin to beeswax. We currently use primarily small votives and tealights, along with a few pillars and dinner-sized tapers except for one candlelight service a year where we use a lot of short tapers, but are open to a possible change in the mix. Our main use is a sand table set with multiple votives, a single pillar, and two tapers we use as lighters, but we are considering whether it would be more practical to shift to something like a couple of large sand bowls and go to the longer thin candles that are more the size of incense sticks. Bonus would be if the source is near to NC to cut down on transportation costs. Being close to a number of Moravian churches and having participated in several Lovefeasts, I did check some of their suppliers, but the ones I found are 20% beef tallow, which wouldn't work for our congregation. We are a mid-size Unitarian Universalist church, but are open to secular or religiously-affiliated suppliers of any group. My best current option seems to be either Holy Nativity Orthodox Convent in Massachusetts or Saints Mary and Martha Orthodox Monastery in SC. Thanks!

You might find it under the term "catalog rights."

At all the schools I've seen, you should be under the requirements that were in the catalog for the year you first enrolled, even if they changed the degree requirements later.

DegreeWorks is no guarantee, you still have to monitor it closely. My daughter went into a medium-sized state school with a bunch of DE credits, including two semesters of college-level ASL. This was in addition to the two years of high school Spanish and two years of high school Latin (started in 8th grade), so the ASL wasn't needed for either high school graduation or to meet college admission requirements. When she asked the college, she was told that the ASL would cover her foreign language gen ed requirement (two semesters of college level foreign language *or* at least one semester of a language if studied for high school). Cue first run of degree audit to check how credits transferred---ASL is listed as her high school language and shows she needs another language class. She emails the registrar, they agree it is incorrect, and fix it. Latin is now correctly listed as high school foreign language, and no more foreign language needed. Check DegreeWorks and it's fixed. Cue another run of degree audit mid-semester to start thinking about classes for next semester--back to listing ASL as high school language, need another foreign language. She contacts registrar again, they agree it's incorrect, fix it, and it shows up correctly in DegreeWorks. Cue another run of degree audit after end of first semester--back to ground zero--ASL is high school language, need another foreign language, get it fixed, and it shows up correctly. Cue most recent run of degree audit to see how changed classes impact---rinse and repeat---ASL is again high school language, foreign language required, and one of her classes is not showing up as meeting a particular competency requirement although it is listed as an option for that. Back to the registrar's office...... Very frustrating, and obviously a programming issue. Lesson for us is you can't depend solely on the college software or your advisor, you have to have a deep understanding yourself of how things work for your degree so you can stay on top of it, and it becomes even more important if you are going a bit out of the box--dual major, transferring in credits, etc.

It actually worked out fine. They did end up with two microfridges, but as they are in a corner room that's a bit larger, it worked out spacewise. They have gotten along fine, not best friends (which was never expected) but occasionally doing things together. The roommate is involved in dance team and likes to go to a lot of parties where my daughter likes more time in the room, so no big issues there and my daughter gets some alone time, something she's used to as an only child. They're in a class together this semester and sharing a textbook. They both have found friends to room with next year. Housing for next year has been a bit of drama, but not compared to last year (at least so far!). Evidently previously UNCW has opened housing applications by class, so with staggered times. This year, for some reason, they opened it up to everyone at the same time, resulting in lots of issues in being able to get into the system, getting booted out repeatedly when trying to pay the housing deposit, and all application spaces filling up in about 3 hours. Luckily both my daughter and her roommate made it in, though it took my daughter about 2 1/2 hours and a *lot* of stress. Some of her friends weren't that lucky and had to sign up for the waitlist. That was last week. Today, they have been given time slots to try to sign up for specific rooms. The roommate got in earlier, so hopefully they'll be able to get in at one of the apartments with individual bedrooms, which is what they want. They're shooting for a two-bedroom, but may end up paired with randoms for a larger apartment or in a traditional dorm. I'm just glad they'll end up somewhere on campus, even if it's in another traditional dorm. I did point out to my daughter that RA's are guaranteed a room on campus......

Thanks for the additional suggestions. I forgot to add that I also have access to BJs.

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of, particularly with kids. The turn out is pretty low right now, so trying to make it appeal to as broad a base as possible. It looks like Krusteaz does a gluten-free as well. Anyone tried that one? It'd be good to have that as well. I know one family who does gluten-free did it last month and brought a separate griddle to do those.