I wasn't required to give grades to my kids when they were young but for high school I have had to keep grades. My feeling was that since I taught to mastery grades are rather meaningless, or rather, every grade is an A. If it isn't an A-excellent understanding of the material, then we reviewed until it was there. Carole

:iagree:

Last couple years the scores seemed to arrive first to the west coast, then mid-west, the south and new england. Seems the folks I know in PA, DE and NJ were the last folks to receive their scores last year. Based on last year, I won't be at all surprised if DS' scores don't arrive until next Friday. We did call, $8, first time. JFS, since you're in IL I would expect they'd arrive very soon, very soon :) Carole

Hi Jen, I haven't had any luck finding online classes just for Delawarians within our state. Instead we sought classes outside the state. U of DE does have a few online classes, as does Del Tec however none suited our interests. Friends have sent their high schoolers to Del Tec and DSU with fine success. We didn't pursue either due to driving distance. Attending any classes at the local public high school was not an option since they are not homeschool friendly. Some of the private schools in the Wilmington area (Tall Oaks, Red Lion) welcome-for a rather large fee--homeschoolers for a class or two and it isn't limited to only high school kids. There are alternatives too, such as City Gates or Towle, if you want to pursue taking a class or two or more from a homeschool satellite school. Carole

Just found this site while answering DS's question. Maybe someone here will find this useful. http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcI/CalcI.aspx Carole

Have you looked at The Land of Fair Play by Christian Liberty Press? Carole

Reading Reflex is the one we went with --- used it with four kids (my own two and two others). If I was asked to teach a child to read again I would turn to Reading Reflex in less then a heartbeat. It works for me wonderfully. Carole

The counselor essay was the hardest document I had to write last year. I'd be happy to send you my counselor evaluation essay. Just drop me a PM with your email address and I'll ship it off to you. Kareni helped me a lot on this. The key for me was to realize that first, the college folks reading the essay would know that I was DS' mom so I didn't try to hide this fact. Using Kareni's suggestion I and dh looked at character traits and picked the ones that best represented our ds. I even picked a negative character trait for ds :) which I turned into a positive. Then I used concrete examples or little stories to illustrate how DS had displayed this character trait. For the ratings section I rated him as I saw him. Also another group that was really helpful last year was the yahoo group homeschooling toward college or hs2coll@yahoogroups.com; Carole

One idea is to look into AP Human Geography. You could look at the course content to build your own course for your ds. PA HS'ers (as well as other online providers) offer an AP HG course. Taking the AP test may or may not earn college credit. Here's the CB's description: Carole PA HS'ers Statistics teacher

I would wait. My DS applied to 9 colleges and none requested official AP scores from the CB. I did list all the test scores on his transcript. The college he will attend in the fall is the only one receiving his AP scores from the CB. On the other hand, all 9 schools did receive DS' SAT scores from the CB. We took advantage of the four-free scores when he took the SAT in Oct and paid for the other 5. Carole

:iagree: put the scores on the transcript.

It was good news :) The computer asked for his SS OR AP Code and thankfully DS had written his SS on his paper. I also had to provide a few other key pieces of ID and then the computer told me they had located DS, did I want to proceed, pay the $8 and get his scores? YES!!! I really did not want to wait another 2 weeks for these scores. That's how long it was last year and it seemed like such a long wait. I also called back to a different number, spoke to a very nice woman who asked tons of ID'tion questions before confirming that DS had written down his college's code. DS could not even remember back in May whether or not he had recorded the college code. (Now, if DS would just finish his university's calculus test he would then officially be finished with one year of college calc. He Ace'd their first calc test and was told at orientation to take the next higher calc test :lol: and he thought back in May that he was finished with tests until the fall :lol: ) Carole

We have his scores :) thanks, carole

I'm PA HS'ers AP Stat teacher. No, we have not received the AP scores for the students in our class. The last I heard the CB is not making the AP scores available to online providers. We rely upon our students to let us know the score they achieved. Carole

What IF you do not have the AP Code #, the one that was on the student's pack?

Here's what DS took and when: Freshman: NONE Soph: Oct, PSAT practice, May AP Bio test Jr: PSAT fall Mar: SAT Apr: ACT (we didn't know whether he would do way better on the ACT or not. That was his only reason for taking it) May: AP tests --- he was taking AP classes so it was part of his curriculum June: 3 SAT2 tests --- a couple schools DS planned to apply to wanted SAT2 scores otherwise he would have skipped SAT2 tests. He took the tests in Chemistry, Biology and Math 2. He had just completed the AP Chem test and AP Bio the previous year. He studied the month of May for the SAT2 tests and was quite pleased that he did do that. Senior Oct---SAT May: AP tests --- again, he was taking AP classes so it was part of his curriculum Carole

I listed DS' senior year classes on his transcript and the appropriate credit for each one too. The classes were described in our course description document too. Mid-Year the colleges want an updated transcript with mid-year grades for these courses. The colleges my DS applied to wanted to see that the senior was taking just as heavy a load as he took junior year --- or at least that's what they told us when we did our college campus visits Junior year. Listing his senior classes on his transcript demonstrated this. If memory serves me the Common Application has a place where you list the courses the student will take fall semester and spring semester. DS had 7 or 8 credits each year. I believe 5 or 6 credits/year is 'normal'. That would be one each for history, science, math, English, Foreign Lang, PE or art or music. Carole

Bike riding Bowling hiking walking karate classes women self-defense classes swimming Skating (ice or wood) --- Our hs support group has a monthly ice skating and a monthly roller skating afternoon. We always do this. skiing (down hill or cross-country) --- two winters ago my boys purchased a 6-pack-season pass. It permitted them to go skiing 6x, when they wished, on week-days. That was a quick 42 hrs of PE time. Carole

This will be your first year home, correct? We found that we were healthier as a family away from all the ps germs. I hope that is what you find too. Carole

Well, my ds was in 2nd grade when HP hit the US market. He read the 1st & 2nd book and waited for the 3rd to come out----which he promptly read---and on and on. My 2nd ds started reading them in 3rd grade. He was a bit slower to get into reading anything on his own. I had read them outloud to him when he was 4 or 5yo. Carole

addall.com is what I use to search for used books. It searches bookstores for the lowest priced book and returns the finding to you. Then I know whether to head to amazon.com, half.com, or some other bookstore that has the book used. It doesn't have every bookstore in its search engine but it does a pretty good job for me. abebooks.com is the other place I check. carole

Read books that you didn't have time to read during the school year. Read more books from the history time period you were studying or in the science subject you studied or will be studying senior year. BTW, have you checked out PBS' The American Novel? I've used their site to find books to read. Carole

:iagree: My son had a similar experience receiving a merit scholarship from every college he applied to. The merit scholarships from the public schools were not only smaller but were also smaller on a percentage basis. At the local high school he would not have had the flexibility to tailor his education as he did at home. I would think this helped him land those merit scholarships too. Carole

We just went through this this past year and if you look at my signature you'll see that DS won 3 scholarships which at this point more than covers his tuition at U of DE. The one scholarship was from the university, 2nd from DE Engineering Society and 3rd from the DE DOE. For the DE Eng Society scholarship we attended an award banquet. Very nice affair. One thing I noticed was that the recipents were from around the state, some private, some public and only one student from each school. It appeared to me that they were looking for diversity in which schools the recipents were attending. DS was the only homeschooler. Perhaps being homeschooled helped him as they looked for their 'homeschool' recipent. I don't know. The 3rd scholarship, from the department of education required an essay in addition to sending the transcript, school profile, letters of recommendation,..... Being homeschooled did not prevent him from applying it also did not mean that he had to supply DOE with any additional information because he was hs'ed. We looked into applying for local scholarships, such as 'ABC' Garden Club, Rotary Club, 'ABC' Mothers Club........ What we found was that these scholarships required a lot of information and required at least one if not 2 or 3 essays for a possible award of $250 or $500. The scholarships were also not renewable and were only for the freshman year. DS decided that he did not have the time to spend on all the essays (and they were all quite different) for what they were awarding. Yes, there were a few awards that were restricted to only the students at the local high school but they were few in number. That was our experience this past year, YMMV. :) Carole

My library doesn't have this book so it is now on my wish list too. Thanks for the tip and say HI to your dd for me. Carole