The ACT is fine for NC's annual testing requirement, but not the SAT -- it has to be an "achievement" test, and the SAT is considered a "reasoning" test. Hope this helps!

DS has been a voracious reader FOR EVER and strongly visual, but only this year (8) has started to improve his spelling. I'm hoping it's a maturity thing... I know there are words that he spells by sight and that he rarely thinks to sound things out (sigh), but fortunately it seems to be working...

I like all of his, but especially the pineapple! We get those for eating with chips, but just for "regular" salsa (like for adding to burritos or whatever) we use Pace. It's good, but not as much fun as the Paul Newman pineapple salsa. :)

Is that it might be really hard to switch if she gets good at Dvorak and later wishes she could do Qwerty.

You know as soon as I hit "submit" I thought... "I bet Macs have added right click since I last used one... uh oh..." LOL!! I'll have to come up with another reason now ;)

I can't stand Macs. DH and I have been in various tech support fields forever and have never liked Apple since the getgo. I grew up on Commodores (I had an Amiga in college! LOL) and my high school had shiny new Macintoshes, so I learned to use those... but once I met my first PC that was IT! The kicker for me is that I just HAVE to be able to right-click. Everything has properties and I want to get to them NOW. That said, we have three computers in the house and none of them have Vista and if we can help it they never will.

What we did was to rent a used flute from a music store where they apply the rental fees toward buying when you decide. We're about to do that. If we had bought used, his flute teacher offered to come with us to check out the flutes, but I think we're going to go with new, because the price difference isn't substantial (and we've paid 2/3 of it already with the rental!) We didn't actually ask anything about the rental because it was guaranteed -- if there had been anything wrong they would have just switched it out for another.

There's a book, too (I think you can get to it from the site, but I can never find the link when I'm looking for it...) It's on Lulu so you can print it out too: http://www.lulu.com/content/658644

But it looks pretty much like what a friend of ours was doing for homework last week. She's in 2nd grade, but on the older side (8) and IMO a good writer. Hope this helps!

Replace "went to #2" with "rented #2", and I had my 12th birthday party at a Detroit Tigers game, but other than that we could be twins... LOL I agree -- watch the original three and skip the prequels.

I had a few in my teens, more in my twenties (that's when I started dyeing my hair...) and now in my 30s they're in a STRIPE. Which could look dramatic if only it wasn't quite so, well, skunk-like. I wouldn't mind going grey if it was all over, or at the temples, or something normal, but it just looks dumb the way it is... so I'll be "Navaho Bronze" for a bit longer. Fortunately the grocery store has me figured out and about every six weeks the register printer spits out a $3 off coupon. Imagine that. Of all the "big brother" freaky data collection schemes... it's better than the Oil of Olay coupon I got for my 30th birthday. :glare:

I would definitely avoid him!! If you found him creepy and she generally finds him weird and overly friendly, that is more than enough IMO.

Just that would be enough to mention it to your niece... But one thing that comes to mind is that he might have had another motive -- like I've known some parents to be way too complimentary to other people's kids as a sort of sideways criticism of their own.... so like if he thought his own DD had been obnoxious that day, he might have gone out of his way to compliment other girls, especially in her hearing. I don't think it's a great approach, but I've seen people do it.

I get ours mostly at a local shop that does their own roasting, and I get whatever they have on sale, which generally runs about $6-7/lb. If I'm at Trader Joes at the right time I'll pick up a can of Ethiopian Fair Trade which is a bit more -- about $7 for 12oz. We go through about a pound every two weeks.

We started when DS was 6, but we could have done it earlier. I would absolutely get the activity book, and do every single activity and extra reading suggestion in there (within reason of course... LOL) There's no rush to get through, so you can wallow in whatever strikes your fancy. We spent an inordinate amount of time on silkworms, ourselves... and then on knights and castles when we got to that (SOTW2? I can't remember now...) When we got to SOTW 3 we slowed WAY down and added in a ton of US history. We're still stuck on that bit... LOL That has been our solution to not hitting modern times too soon -- just spend as much time as you like on whatever time periods fascinate you!

DS is working ahead of agemates generally, so I imagine he'd get As, but we're not doing what they do in school, so it's hard to say exactly. I know from other moms here that we do a BUNCH more history and science than our local schools do (to hear them tell it there's hardly any until at least middle school). And we do more essays and writing, but less spelling and handwriting. Our language arts in general is just different. Math he's way ahead, but might not pass all the timed fact tests (he can consistently do 20 problems in 1 minute but not always 30)... so it would depend on how much that counts and what their standard is. There's also very little foreign language (or Latin) at our local schools unless you're in one of the immersion programs... so just the fact that we're juggling three languages should count for something... and any art and music that we do is also a bonus. I think it comes down to the general idea that those things that I think are important we spend time on and work hard at, and in those areas he does extremely well. The things that we don't spend the time on right now are things that either I don't think amount to much or that I think will be better addressed at a different time or in a different manner. So I don't think the PS way is better, even if it's harder, for those particular things. Clear as mud? LOL

we did the B&B -- actually we did that for our tenth AND our eleventh! ;) Twelfth is coming up but I think we'll scale back to just a really nice dinner... we only actually get away overnight if my inlaws are in town to babysit. We've also done cooking classes as just a regular date night and that has always been fun.

For the four or five interesting foreign bills we have, we bought glass picture frames (where the picture, or in this case the bill, is pressed between two pieces of glass). They were at Linens & Things or Bed Bath & Beyond or somesuch, and I need to find them again because we have two new ones to add to the collection! :) Interesting coins we've always just had in a nice dish so you can paw through them. LOL

There was one guy in my cohort who was known for his general lack of social skills -- completely harmless, just a little awkward and insensitive in general. And then I met his parents. I was having Easter dinner with his family and a bunch of other students from our cohort who weren't doing anything else for Easter, and about halfway through the meal his mom burst out with "Oh I know who she looks like!" (referring to me) "Isn't she just the spitting image of Chris??" And her son says "Mom, Chris is a GUY" :glare:

www.quickstudylabs.com There's a "younger" class using Snap Circuits (might be light for high school -- I don't really know) and an "older" class using a different kit. A friend of mine has her 12 year old doing the Snap Circuits class and finding it very good, challenging, etc. I'm considering it for DS in a year or two, when we're done with some other things. Hope this helps!

DS is 8 and likes to start his day with cartoons at 6:30... so he needs to be in bed by 9:30 or he'll fall back asleep in the morning on the sofa and get irritated that he wasted all his television time snoring. :D If there wasn't any reason to get up at a particular time in the morning I wouldn't be too concerned about his bedtime.

Not too far from Raleigh... suburban, normal... LOL I asked a bunch of people this afternoon in case it was just me and no one I asked has noticed any particular change in grocery prices (but now they think I'm nuts... LOL)

For five pounds of regular flour??? Weird -- here it's $1.95 at one store and $2.39 at the other, and it frequently goes on sale for something like $1.50. Milk (gallon) is $3.49 at both. I set up our four grocery lists when we moved here three years ago to aim for $100/week, and as of today they're at $90.75, $71.68, $55.83, and $61.39. The first week is higher because some of it covers the rest of the month (like mayonnaise, wine, frozen veg., etc.) but I'm still well within the budget, and not noticeably different from when I set them up.

I've actually NOT seen the skyrocketing grocery prices I hear about here. I have four weeks of grocery lists saved on my local supermarket online shopping page, and I just checked the prices -- they're really not significantly different than they ever were (and I've had the same lists saved there for three years!). I have no idea why... but this messageboard is really the only place I hear about all of this. Gas is bothersome... I spend $50 to fill the tank now, and I do cut back on driving as much as I can... but it's an irritation, not a big problem. DH barely has to drive at all, so our total monthly budget for gas is $200, which is less than it was two years ago (when DH had to drive a lot more). Now I'd love it if gas were cheap and I could get by on $80 a month, but I also know that if I were really desperate to avoid driving I really could. If would be inconvenient, but not impossible in our particular situation.

Most of the labs are fine, although some call for specific equipment... a few we skipped and a few we substituted regular household stuff (boiling water on the stove instead of over a bunsen burner, for instance). I think we've done about 90% of the labs though, and we're just a couple chapters from the end of Interactive 1. I didn't get the teachers editions and haven't missed them, although I think I would have liked to have the answer key to the workbook -- I don't remember if that was a teachers' edition or a separate thing. It hasn't really been a problem, but it would have saved me a few minutes every week. :) Our schedule has been for DS to read and outline the chapter on one day, do the labs over a day or two, and then the workbook over a day or two. We have 45 minutes scheduled for science, and it doesn't take any more than that (sometimes much less, and sometimes we skip for a couple days). The plan is to continue on with Interactive 2 next fall. I've only flipped through the books so far, but they look comparable. Hope this helps! :)