I really like milk chocolate too but dark chocolate is my absolute favorite. My brother loves dark chocolate too and has the budget to buy bars pretty often. He likes to try international chocolate and always shares with me. The last time he found an incredible Russian dark chocolate at a European food market. He and I have shared a LOT of foreign chocolate but this was by far the best we've tried yet!! I wish I had saved the wrapper. I'd like to have some more. Wow! What a great thread. :-) Christi

I can't remember what the Kia van name. We had a Honda Odyssey for 7 years but it began to have quite a few quirky electrical problems that began to multiply over the years. It also went through front brakes pretty quickly (heavy van = new brakes often, told to us by Honda). My dh started looking around and found the Hyundai/Kia vans to be highly rated in consumer satisfaction and safety. The price was affordable and we were able to buy new. If we had gone with another Honda we would have had to buy used or lease to make in within our price range. I've been driving my Hyundai for almost 5 months now and I'm very impressed with how it handles and the features it came with. We have owned two Dodge (same company as Chrysler, I think) vans in the past. Both started having transmission trouble in the first 2-3 years. We vowed never to buy a Dodge van again. HTH, Christi

My son used the Real ACT prep book with 3 ACT practice tests in it. He felt like it prepared him well for the test. He took it for the first time in April as a 10th grader. Christi

I'd echo everything you had to say! Christi

My dd took two classes each semester in addition to the course load she was taking at home. The difficult part came when she had a lot of work and deadlines for her college classes, her homeschool work had to slide some. She found it hard to juggle both when both were very demanding. She thought her first semester at the CC full time was a LOT easier than juggling both homeschool and CC the previous semester. :-) The idea to graduate her early was not in the works when she was beginning to dual enroll. It started to be an idea when we saw how she was thriving at the CC. We initially thought to graduate her at Christmas of her senior year. The program she wanted to apply to only accepted students once per year in April. That changed our plans very quickly and she graduated at the end of her junior year. Nan had a lot of great advice. Pay attention to drop/add dates and things that might help your son if he gets in over his head. Our CC treated my dd like an adult from day one. I could access her files or request info sensitive information (like Pell grant amounts) for my dd if she wasn't standing there with me. I had to walk my dd through handling things like that the first time but after that she did it all on her own. Christi

NC doesn't have any requirements for graduation so that helped. With the classes she had at the CC plus the classes she had at home she graduated with 26.5 or 27 credits, I think. The CC never questioned my transcript. This year she has been able to take on a full load of classes and has continued thrive. She's well respected at the CC for how she does in class and with her classwork. She was able to apply (and receive) scholarships and some gov't help with school this year. We are not regretting our decision to graduate her early. Since she did skip her senior year she left high school without taking chemistry. She applied for the RN program and needed chemistry to be considered. She was able to pick up a night adult education chemistry class and has learned a lot. In other words, something that she missed by graduating early were easy to make up at the CC. So now, at 18, she sits approaching summer with her summer clinicals in front of her. She scored 25th out of 110 people who were invited to sit for the nursing entrance exam. They take the first 20 into the RN program but she has a chance to be selected if 5 people ahead of her drop out. If not, she'll be fully employed by August as a CMA. At 18 she has some really incredible options ahead of her! It's really amazing to see your oldest step out of homeschooling and into the world of higher education and adulthood. Christi

She started dual enrollment with one class when she was 16. She had an incredible professor who become her biggest cheerleaders and eventually her advisor. My dd went to the CC to begin taking classes to fill some pre-req's for nursing school. With that first class she found her "home" in medical assisting and began to pursue that field. She thrived in the CC classes in a way that I could not have predicted. She loved all she was learning and threw herself into it. She did the same with all of the classes she took as a junior. It was such an amazing, perfect setting for her that we made the decision to graduate her one year early and allow her to apply for the medical assisting program as a full time student. She was one of the 20 students selected to join this highly competitve program. She began full time in August and will be nearly finished with her AA after clinicals this summer. This year would have been her senior year. She learned so much in the classes that we did not get to cover at home. She's done more presentations in front of various classes than I could have ever imagined. She's written more papers, participated in more discussions, completed more projects and learned more than I could have put together in these last two years. I hope your experience is as good as ours has been. Our CC is pretty small and while there are other homeschoolers dual enrolled there she has never had a class with any. All of her friends are my age--mom's going back to school once their kids are in school themselves. My son is 16 and will be registering for classes for the fall semester sometime in May. Christi

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Did you have to request the copy of the test at test time or did you do it after the fact? In other words, is it too late to order a copy at this time? Christi

I looked at quite a few but ended up getting "The Real ACT" from Amazon.com. It was the latest edition and had several practice tests in it. My son felt it prepared him pretty well for the test. HTH, Christi

Thank you for taking the time to look that up. I appreciate it! Christi

Your post in that thread was the one I was looking for! Thanks so much for taking the time to read this thread and reply. I was going to spend my evening looking for it. I am going to print it off and put it in the ACT prep book. He got a 21 in both the English/reading sections. Those aren't terrible scores and the CC where he will dual enroll next year will accept a 21 in lieu of the college placement test. However, I know he can do better. He is a slower reader and I know he could be helped by learning to mark up the passage the way you suggested in the other post. What things will help on the English section? Have a lovely evening, Christi

I use Abeka Math for the elementary years. I have used Horizons (very good, IMHO), MCP (good) and Singapore math too (excellent). I like Abeka. I decided to use it because it suited all of my children's learning styles, it was/is easy to use and doesn't require lots of supplementation. It fit my needs for the time. Horizons is a another workbook math. It's thorough and easy to use. HTH, Christi

I take Zyrtec at night (OTC now, yeah!!!) and Sudafed during the day. I'm still congested though and my reactive asthma thing is flaring up in response. I'm so happy to see nice weather though. I'm keeping a few windows open even though I know I shouldn't. It's hard to resist! Hope you feel better soon-- Christi

I thought I remembered reading a post here about how to read a paragraph on the ACT reading portion and dissect it. It was a post about tips to improve your score in that section. Did anyone save it? My 10th grader's ACT scores were up this morning. It was his first time on the ACT and he did well. His math and science scores were excellent; his reading and English scores are the ones that he'll need to focus on for next year. Thank you-- Christi

My 8th grader is using Chalk Dust Pre-Algebra this year. I have been very pleased with it but then again, I haven't found a CD math program that I didn't like! Christi

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Cranford! I have that in my Blockbuster queue. I'll go ask the kids to TIVO it for me instead. Fun! North & South is one of my favs. What a great movie! Christi

I have toyed around with every kind of schedule there is to come to what works for me now. We start school at 8am each day. It's a push to do it but everything runs better if we start on time. The day gets away from me pretty quickly if I get on the phone first thing or start to do household stuff. The kids (I have 5) all have schedules (Excel sheets) with each days work planned out for each subject. They know weeks in advanced what math lesson they have on any particular date. I plan those out for about 10 weeks each time. Making the schedules takes time but it's time well spent. If science is scheduled, I can't skip it. I never used to schedule the peripheral subjects like science, PE, Spanish, etc. and somehow there was never any time in the day to do them. They were the subjects that never got done. My schedules are just lists of subjects and assignments in those subjects. The kids are free to complete them in any order they wish. I don't have timetables. I'm not that organized! :-) I am flexible in that I build in lighter days if I know we have an event coming up or give the kids random days without a math lesson. The kids can work ahead if they want to take a Friday off. We can rearrange things if one of them gets stumped on a math lesson and we need to spend more time on it. The other lessons get bumped and the schedule is changed to reflect that. I build in vacation days and holidays so that we can have breaks during the year. When the kids were younger I was a lot more relaxed but as they began to hit highschool and had full school schedules, work, volunteer opportunities, etc., I needed to have something more rigid to work from. Gone are the days that I call off school because I'm tired or I need to run errands. In our house it benefits all of us to stay on schedule and get things done as planned. FWIW, my kids are 18, 16, 14, 12 and 10. HTH, Christi

My son is a math-y kind of kid and really gets math. He hasn't needed my help in math much at all his whole life. He's just that kind of kid. My oldest dd, on the other hand, is not math-y and need me beside her for most of her math career. How much involvement you'll need to contribute to CD will depend on the learning style/math readiness of your son. If you think it's likely that he'll need your help during the year you'll want to make time to watch the video with him each day so you won't get behind. Christi

My son also used the Real ACT book to prep. He started it in January and worked on it a little each day. He'll use it again next year as he preps to take it again. In NC we have to administer a standardized test to our children that are over 7 yo. My kids have taken the CAT/5 or the IOWA test each year so testing hasn't ever been something to worry about. My son had no idea that others were stressed out or anxious about the ACT. He thought it was just another test. I'm grateful now for all of his past testing experience! We'll see (when his scores go up) how that looked like on paper. In NC the ACT can be counted as the annual standardized exam for the year. The SAT does not. He's a 10th grader now and will likely take the ACT twice more before graduating. He can work to bring up his scores, if necessary, but can also satisfy our state's requirement doing it. Christi

I have checked 4x and my son's scores are not up yet---neither are my niece's scores. I'm hopeful they get added this week. Did your dd take the writing test too? Christi

Thanks! Christi

I logged on the website and clicked on the "View Scores" link. I didn't see anything except a page about viewing scores that included test dates and information about test scores and reporting. Where did you find your dd's scores? Christi