Principle. For years, Sonlight touted their Christianity as a major selling point. I think even one of their 24 smarmy points was "if you don't want to use Christian material, then Sonlight is not for you" kinda statement. Now, they totally dump that and sell out for profit. It's just the principle of it all. Anyhoo, it's like I used to love Burts Bee products....then they sold to Colgate or some other major pharm company.....Burt's Bee isn't who they used to be anymore.

Greenville is very inviting...you'll find that there are ALOT of people who've moved here, NOT from South Carolina. The fact that two very large corporations, BMW and Michelin, have corporate headquarters here, means we get alot of transplants for those companies. Not to mention several mid-size companies in the area as well. Then we also get the Northerners looking for a bit of the south. In my little cul-de-sac, over half of the people are not originally from South Carolina. You'll find that to be true quite often. So you won't be an outsider. Swimming pools: Most communities, subdivisions, have neighborhood pools. Some offer summer memberships to people who don't live in the community, for a fee. There Y pools, and one City pool. We have three small water parks...fun for a day activity. Dog Parks: Two current, new one being built. Neighborhood safety: Not too many that aren't safe, really. For $1900, you can get a HUGE house. We rent a 2100sq foot house, in a newer subdivision, for $1275. If you have the budget for $1300-$1900, you will be in some really nice subdivisions. As far as Fountain Inn, cute little area, but on the outskirts, and really nothing there. You will be driving into Simpsonville for most of life necessities, and even further for homeschooling activities. It's a small little town on the outskirts of Greenville. Your DH will likely deal with rush hour traffic on I-385 on a daily basis. Though NOTHING like you have in DC, still going to take a good 20-30 from downtown to Fountain Inn during peak hours. If you are looking for a slower, country type life, Fountain Inn is a good option. Also Traveler's Rest is another small country suburb, though north, so you get great mountain views. If you prefer to be more in the thick of things, closer to everything...consider suburbs of Greenville, ie Simpsonville, Mauldin, Greer, Taylors, and of course within the city limits of Greenville itself. Within any of these areas, you are probably 15 minutes at most to any given activity, barring peak time traffic. Theater: Lots of good options. Peace Center is the huge fancy performance art center in downtown, that gets the bigger names. There are several smaller facitlities, including Shakespeare in the Park, Greer (another suburb town of Greenville), etc offer theater options. Libraries: Eh, mediocre. A nice big one downtown, but most of the locations in the suburbs are small. I'm not amazed by our library system (I've lived in other states, so I've had better libraries), and I'm thinking compared to DC area...you won't be either. Homeschool Community: As I mentioned on my other post, Greenville has a very active homeschool life. Several support groups that offer park days, field trips, etc. Several co-ops. Places that offer Homeschool P.E., homeschool Art, homeschool bowling, homeschool lego classes, homeschool choir, homeschool band, homeschool sports teams (middle school and up), etc etc etc. You could be busy every single day if you choose. Everyone is not a Christian, and everyone does NOT use BJU curriculum. It's a very diversified community, but welcoming. No one will likely ask you if you are a Christian, or what exact kind...in the four years I've lived here, no one has asked if I'm Methodist, Catholic, divorced, etc. Just not happening. Yes, I've been asked which church I go to...more in terms of them wondering if we go to the same church, or know the same people...not because they were judging me. BJU is here, a very strict college, but honestly they mostly keep to themselves. They don't necessarily encourage their students to mingle with the community. They do have a great art musuem, that offers homeschool days, but that's about the extent of effort BJU makes to reach out to local homeschoolers besides selling curriculum. Yes, BJU sells curriculum, but you wouldn't find any more users there than you would find anywhere else (having HSed in Fl and NC, there were just as many BJU users there...BJU just had a big share of the market due to the fact they've been around for a while, have a marketing budget, and are a major player...that's like saying that everyone who lives in Colorado must use Sonlight, since they are based there, or everyone who lives in Pensacola FL must use Abeka, cuz they are based there. Just simply not true!!) And I swing in and out of Christian and secular groups. Secular groups are smaller around here, and don't seem to be as active or organized. They tend to die off after a few years of no one committing to show up to the park day, lol. Two groups I'd recommend: Family Touch.org....a homeschool support group that offers field trips, park days, etc. And then Carolina Homeschooler...this is not a local to Greenville group, but a woman who offers homeschool field trips on a national basis, ie trips to NYC, Italy, DC, etc...but she also does more local trips in the general Charlotte area (which is only 90 minutes from Greenville and sometimes her trips are in Greenville too). I recommend her because she has a forum on her page, where you can chat with local homeschoolers, so you'd get more specific info from actual people who live here in Greenville....versus people who've driven by, or people who once knew someone who once knew someone who lived here, lol. You can PM if you'd like more info or help with Greenville! I'll give you the names of the Facebook groups that Greenville area homeschoolers participate in. That's kinda where all the action is these days :).

This is so completely off-base. While BJU is here and some people use that curriculum, in no way is the HSing environment exclusive, nor hostile. You may be talking about the BJU college, which has litte if anything to do with the local homeschoolers. You must not actually live here to be saying this. OP, as far as where we travel, Everywhere!! I just got back from DC...easy 7 hour drive. Atlanta, 2 hours, Charlotte, 1 1/2 hours, Asheville 1 hour, Gatlinburg 2 hours, Charleston 3 hours (beach), Myrtle Beach 4 hours.

My son's high will be doing it this year, though only incoming 9th graders can do it. I had looked into it quite a bit before I realize it didn't apply to my son (he's a 11th grader). At his school,,it will be a "school within a school". Really not sure how that will work, in the past, many classes were blended, depending on what level a student could do. So a class could potentially happen 9th,10th, 11th etc in ken class. Since 9th will be New Tech, still kinda confused as how it will all function. Frankly kinda glad my son doesn't have to worry about being the lab rat :).

Nope.

I'm another that's never used RR. As a matter of fact, I can't even get them to send me a catalog,,even having requested it for multiple years! I compare pricing at CBD and Amazon, free shipping with both, and quick too! Just got a box from each this week, my final,school order for the year! Love CBD!

That's the Beautiful Feet book list for American history exactly.

I have drain phobia, and avoid looking at any shower drain, ever. The last thing I would ever do is touch a shower drain in a locker room......that is where all the dirty water ( and any other liquids) from everyone who ever used that shower goes....I'd never bend down to clean the drain.....horrifying. You probably saw my hair there. Oh well, you could have seen worse....it's is a public place after all.

We have two Ikea beds here, both the Malm platform bed. We've had for 2 and 3 years. Overall, no complaints. We did break our bed, as I was rearranging my room, we were sliding the king size bed across the carpet, and near the headboard area, where two pieces met on the bottom, it kinda snapped at the "joint"....it was composite wood there (I think that is was the particle/pressboard wood stuff is called). Kinda our fault, and we were able to fix it enough it's still functional,though we won't be moving it again and lesson learned. We get our mattresses from Overstock.com, memory foam, love them!

I think I will do that, JanOh, I was just watching a few tutorials on the HSTOnline and it seems to be pretty similiar to HST+, so I should be able to jump right in. It's not as pretty as some of the other online planners that give pretty fun colors for backgrounds, but it does everything I need it to do. White hawk, I want more than an excel spreadsheet, I want attendance tracking, book lists, easy report card if I needed to make one, and for my weekly schedule to look very similiar to the way Sonlight's look, ie boxes for subjects. With a few clicks, I can get all of that withinf seconds with most online planners, and with HST+ that I'm currently using. Just that HST+ isn't compatible with Mac, so I'm having to run it on a laptop that is on it's last leg...prefer to get an online planner that can be accessed from any online device :).

Thanks, I heard back from the admin of HPlanet actually, this morning. They have confirmed there is NOT an option to do lesson plans without assigning them an exact due date at the time of planning. I do not want that. I do not want to have to rearrange and move lessons around, and have a big red exclamation point next to it that it was reassigned (per the video tutorial), because they do not offer the function of non-dated lesson plans. If I wanted to have my plans dated from the beginning and go through the process of rearranging dates after the fact, I'd just go with a paper planner. My OCD brain does not sit well with having that chaos :). I want the ability to assign a lesson plan to a certain date, when I am ready to assign it to that date, and the ability to choose from week to week how often we will do a subject, based on what else we have going on that week. I'm headed off to a different online planner :).

Thank you all! Good advice from both points of view. After sharing it with my DH, we've decided that we will have our DS15 attend for four weeks, and after that it will be up to him. As a norm, we do that "family attends together" that others have mentioned, for most things. Sibling's events, etc...we all go. No one stays behind because we go to support each other. But for this scenario, church is really a personal experience, and if he's not going to open his mind to the experience after a month, there's no use to force it at this point. Perhaps he'll come around, or perhaps he won't. The church we have in mind appears to have a really active high school youth group, and I'd love for him to participate in that...BUT...it meets at a different time than regular service, which means specifically taking HIM to it, and dropping him off, and leaving him in a room full of strangers who will want to welcome him and interact with him as the "newbie"...he is just going to be a big "NO" on that, I'm pretty sure. We'll see how it goes. thanks again for all of the advice.

I'm trying out Homeschool Planet, in my 30 day free trial. I think I have found a major hurdle for me, and trying to see if I am missing something (I've sent in a question to the admin of HPlanet...but since it's Saturday, I assume I won't hear back until Monday and I'm impatient, lol!). I want to plan out my plans for a subject, let's say History, for the whole year, a day to day of what we will do each day...without assigning it to a specific day. Then I go in throughout the school year, on a weekly basis, and assign a daily lesson to a specific day, based on what we have going on that week. For example, Sunday evening, I sit down, and assign the next four History lessons, to Mon-Thursday, because we will be on a field trip on Friday, so no History happening ( I like assigning on a weekly basis so that I can be fluid depending on what we have going on each particular week). But for the following week, there is nothing assigned yet, because I will do that next week, once I know how that week looks as far as out-of-the-house activities. This is how I currently do it with Homeschool Tracker Plus, and I love this. I do NOT want to have it auto-scheduled for a specific date, and then I have to go in an rearrange all year because we didn't match up to what HPlanet had scheduled. I tried to set up some lessons, and HPlanet is requiring me to give a start date, and then it wants to schedule the lesson for specific dates, based on that start date. Am I missing how I can set up lessons, without a specific date assigned to begin with, or is this just not a function of this software? Any other online planners that offer the function I am wanting. I've been using Homeschool Tracker Plus for several years, and while I am used to it, and no true complaints, I am looking for something that is online, and well, pretty, lol :). I know HST offers an online option now and I'm actually off to check that out too.

DH and I have never really attended church. Oldest DS went to Awana's and children's choir for a few years at a friends church when he was 9-10ish. That has been the extent of our family's involvement in church. DH is not really a believer, and I'm just not educated enough about most of it (my family also never went to church when I was a child). We are thinking that we'd like to start attending church for a few reasons 1. To learn more about the Bible, 2. The community of fellowship that a good church could offer, 3. So that our boys have a good base of knowledge (we do live in the Bible Belt and most people we know are Christians, and we don't want our children to be uneducated about this) and can decide for themselves as adults having knowledge (unlike me having no base of knowledge). Our youngest two DS do consider themselves Christians just from the general exposure they've gotten from homeschool co-ops, a few VBS we've done, Upward basketball, etc. Anyway I already know DS15 is not going to want to go. One, he dislikes new situations with many people in general (introvert). Two, he won't be interested in going to church just because it is church. I'd think he may enjoy the high school youth group once he gets comfortable. I think, as it's new to all of us, we should attend as a family, though the youth group gathers seperately from service time. Anyhoo, do you require your teen to attend church if they are not willing?

Having done Adventures, and now owning BF with plans to use this fall (several years in between and different children), I don't see how you'd consider going from ADV to BF as "going deeper". If anything, BF is more on the light side, if not at least level with the content of ADV. You may want to consider another curriculum altogether if "going deeper" is your purpose. On the other hand, how many years in a row does one need to do American History??

I see organic peaches at the "organic" stores every year, during peach season. Have been buying them the last few weeks actually.

Exactly why I never sent my son to the Cub Scout day camp during the summer. Run by volunteers, with little training, and no guarantee they could, or knew how to, handle large groups of children for a full week.

We saw Two Gentlemen of Verona a few weeks ago, Shakespeare in the Park. Great, lively comedy!

I used it,with DSjust-turned-11, and DS8, this past year. Both got from it what they could at their own level. Ds11 was quite a bit more independent on his labs. I don't think there is a wrong age for these topics especially if one hasn't covered them before. Btw, I'm selling the Teacher pages :), quite cheaply...you'd just need the student pages.

Can't go wrong with the Gatlingburg/Pigeon Forge area of TN. Tons of outdoors to do, touristy things if that floats your boat. Beautiful Smoky mountains!!

Tampa. Devils Rays, Gulf of Mexico beach, lots of other toursisty things if one was so inclined, and there are nature things to be found and even historical things to do.

I also work part time for a professional pet sitting business. We do a one time meet-n-greet, to meet the animals and go over specifics with the owner. I've sat for dogs that never met a stranger, and I've sat for dogs that literally wanted nothing to do with me, for the first day or two. I remember a little Yorkie, I literally had it trick her with a treat x4 a day, for the first two days to get anywhere near her to get in the leash. By the end of the week, we were best friends, and she'd meet me at the door. I'd think that if the sitter was staying in the house with the dog, the dog would get comfortable even quicker. As far as the dogs quirks, just be sure to discuss AND write it down, so the sitter is reminded.

We've done Vol 1 and 2, and each took us a school year, ie Aug-April. Usually 2-4 times a week. We did the activity books, other books to add in, videos, a few crafts/hands on (more of these with Vol 1 than Vol 2).

Ocala, no way. Pockets of rural meth all around. I know there's money around too, but the rural meth population is abundant.

Nope, you will pay a good deal of money for a tutor who could have little to no education beyond high school.