With everything unknown, not being able to visit colleges, not knowing what college will look like going forward, and having lost most of our income, we have no idea what schools dd might apply to. I guess testing will be part of the puzzle. If we cannot get a safe testing scenario without doing some sort of computerized version, perhaps that will be a selection criteria for what schools are still on the table. The scarier this gets, the more likely she will either take a gap year or just attend one of our local schools. I am guessing many people are starting to have the same thoughts.

No. Anyone who has taken algebra should be fine. Understanding of slope, tangent lines, and reading multiple types of graphical representations are the most important concepts.

When do you start getting concerned that time is getting too short, should June be canceled?

Yeah. 16yo drivers are very expensive! We do start it once a week or so but dh says that it really isn't necessary....which I have to believe because we once inherited a car that had been parked for over three years and it started/ran just fine, aside from the flat tires and a few dried out belts.

I finally got through! It is super easy to put a car on a "storage plan," which is about 1/6 of the full coverage cost. So, the car is still insured should a tree fall on it in the driveway or it gets stolen. But we cannot drive it. A single phone call can have it back to fully insured at any time and it still qualifies for the multi-car discount. All in all, we are saving $800 should it stay this way for the full 6 months of this coverage period. For us, even when restrictions are lifted, we likely still won't need it due to what is likely to be a long period of unemployment.

I posted earlier this year about a free online economics textbook: https://www.core-econ.org/espp/index.html We are currently in the last unit and I thought I'd update with our experience. This is meant to be a "college level" text but I think it is suitable for most high schoolers. It covers what would normally be found in an Econ 101 class but each topic is tied to modern issues that one would hear on the news. Dd (11th grade) and I worked through the book together. There are a lot of exercises embedded in the text that are best done with at least one other person to discuss. If that is not possible, I suggest making the exercises into short essay written assignments. Each unit has a project at the end. We have used the projects as homework. They are quite involved and I would suggest previewing and paring down for younger students. In the early units, there are exercises that focus on spreadsheet use. The projects are also very heavily dependent on advanced spreadsheet tools. I say this because if you plan to use the projects, don't skip the in-unit spreadsheet exercises. The book is secular and should be suitable for all political flavors everyone aside from climate change deniers. The huge bonus to this book, if the projects are part of the plan, is that the student will walk away with excellent Excel (or Google Sheets or....) skills. As a former university instructor, I can tell you this might be even more useful to a student than the economics education. The economics content is presented very accessibly and in a very relatable fashion. I learned a great deal. And now with the economic fallout of the pandemic, both dd and I are able to understand everything we hear on the news. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants a free option and has the bandwidth to participate with your student on some level.

My dd is rescheduled for the June date. She is finishing her 11th grade year and this will be her first time testing. She does not plan to take the SAT. How much trouble are we in if it gets cancelled or we choose not to risk it? Will this start to be a problem for applying to schools if we have to wait it out for the test at home option? I am not up on the timelines for any of this as this is our first time through college applications and other things in our family life got seriously derailed even before the pandemic. I am losing confidence that they know what is going on or are adequately keeping people informed. I know from unrelated sources that the test location dd is scheduled for is not scheduled to re-open before the test date. Surely they know this? Why have we not been informed?

Thanks all. So no one has mentioned anything about costs or hassles with taking a car off and having to put it back on later. I am assuming there are no costs or risks. I have left another message but I believe my agent is working from home and they still have not called back. In our case, it is easy to determine which car to drop. One is more versatile in every way and is our family car that the 16yo can drive comfortably. The other one is a commuter car that really has no purpose right now. Even if restrictions are relaxed, with one unemployed person and the other working from home, we have no foreseeable need for the second car.

I have left a message so just waiting. We would leave our older car on with no collision. That should drop our bill by more than half. Our insurance company has not offered any rebates yet.

Anyone else thinking of temporarily dropping a car off of insurance? Our income suddenly dropped to 1/3 and we have a car that has not been started in over a month. Our insurance rate is really high because we have a 16 yo driver in the house. Since restrictions of some form or another are likely to go on for at least months, it seems like a smart move. But we've never done this before so I don't know if there are drawbacks I am not thinking of.

I live in MI and have avoided contributing to this thread because I am furious at the protestors. I will refrain from sharing my opinions about who is behind these protests and the politics involved. But being one of the rare souls that actually lives in the UP, I would like to address the comments about why having different policies by area does NOT make sense. First we DO have it up here. The numbers are very low but we also have almost NO access to testing so there really is no telling how wide-spread it is. Our hospitals cannot handle this. I promise. The few cases we have had have been transported out of our area for this reason. As bad as things might be downstate, I would much rather be there if I need medical attention than here....even in the best of times. With great dismay, we are seeing lots of people traveling here to get out of hot spots or to simply enjoy their "time off." People are moving into their summer homes and cabins despite the requests to not do so. They simply do not care and the locals are noticing. I would not be surprised if hostility breaks out against these people. Literally no one I know IRL up here has a problem with the restrictions despite the fact that golfing or fishing or boating would be very low risk in our area. Our governor is doing her best even if I do not agree with her politically. I am quite sure there are many people up here who do have a problem with it all....I just do not know them. But despite this, they are not running around with guns and protest signs in front of a HOSPITAL because frankly, this is not the time. Write your reps, do online petitions/demos, whatever, but don't do things that spread the disease or put others at risk. Yes, the restrictions are confusing but not nearly as confusing as people are making them out to be. The whole "can't buy seeds" crap is seriously dumb. A trip to any hardware store, feed store, or even most grocery stores will disprove that complaint. I have witnessed first hand the behavior that the tighter rules are meant to curb....unnecessary shopping, browsing, etc..... Perhaps we would still have the garden and paint sections open if people could have been a bit more responsible. But they weren't and we have a sizable number of people running around claiming this is all a hoax (thanks, POTUS) so now we can't have nice things. None of this is fun for our governor.....or any governor. I cannot imagine even what people think she gets out of having to slap restrictions on everyone. Does anyone really think it is her goal to take away your freedoms? That does not even make sense.

Thanks! No, I don't think she was headed towards seriously overweight. She was just starting to cross the line between chonky kitten cuteness into maybe-too-round. She has lost a little weight over the course of a month....about 4 ounces. She is still a bit of a chunk. Not sure how to tell if she is ravenous vs. hungry. Every cat we have ever had begs for food, steals people food when they can, and eats quickly but none have been anywhere near underweight. I have just never done the kitten thing before and some things I read alarmed me...some saying kittens should always be gaining and if they aren't, they are not getting enough food. But what I cannot find is what defines "kitten" when it comes to this advice. I've seen "kitten" to mean up to 24 months and I am quite sure if this cat gains, even a little, up to 24 months, she will be seriously overweight!

From what I understand, raw food guidelines are similar to grain-free canned food. The nutrient profile is about the same by weight. She eats the full amount no matter what I put down. She has never been given free access to unlimited food but at the height of her kitten-hood, I was feeding her double what she currently gets and she ate every last morsel. But she was often burpy afterwards and even threw up a couple of times which was another factor that led us to reduce the quantity slowly to where we are now. She has never been very interested in running games with us but she does like jumping games, which we do several times a day. She and our older cat chase each other all over the house for what seems like the ENTIRE night. Since we are home all day and often are bored, she is getting pretty constant attention when not napping. For reference, older cat has been eating raw her entire 16 years, is a significantly larger cat in both weight and size, has been eating the same quantity the entire time, and is still slightly overweight despite being very active for an older cat.

We have always adopted adult cats but somehow we ended up with a kitten after a friend had to give her up when she was about 10 weeks old. She is now one year old and very fun. We feed all of our cats raw food, including the kitten. I had been following the feeding quantity guidelines I find online. We have been weighing the kitten weekly to make sure she was on track. About two months ago, we started to get concerned because she was still gaining linearly but had stopped growing in height/length. She was getting quite chubby, actually. What I cannot seem to find on any feeding guidelines is at what age do you transition to the amount you would feed an adult cat. I have seen everything from 9 months to 2 years. So at 10 months, being concerned about her continued weight gain, we cut her food quantity to slightly more than what an adult cat of her size should be eating. She seems fine in every way, healthy, active, alert, etc.... She is always hungry at meal time and consumes her food quickly then patiently stares at the other cat while she eats. The first handful of weekly weigh-ins showed the slope flattening. Then the last two weeks, there has been a slight decrease in weight. She is still on a chubby side and there is for sure no definition of "waist" or ribs that the guides say to look for in an adult cat. Can anyone tell me if we are on track here? At what age does a kitten become a "cat" when it comes to feeding amounts? Our vet is closed for all but emergencies....and also 100% disagrees with raw food for cats....so is not a great source of advice on this issue.

Wasted food has always been a pet peeve of mine so our normal food management results in very little waste. And I am not worried about eating the occasional unbalanced meal during times like these. In fact, the first thing I stocked up on was crappy frozen junk food....mostly as a "replacement" for our 1-2/week restaurant habit. I never EVER buy this stuff so being able to produce a frozen pizza, ice cream, or some french fries is an "event" in my house. Being spring, most of the food I put up in the chest freezer for the season has already been consumed, so that is where I have the most storage space right now. There is still plenty of room for leftovers and the frozen veggies I am now uncharacteristically buying to carry us for a few days after all fresh produce is eaten. The biggest shift in our house has been trying to use up what we have on hand to lessen trips to the store. This has resulted in some bizarre meals. I always have an assortment of whole grains, storage veggies, infrequently-needed condiments, and nut butters in the fridge but I am trying to use them up so that I have more room to accommodate larger-but-less-frequent grocery trips and also to buy more time before I need to make the next trip. I want that space for fresh produce and other frequently-needed perishables. So, when I served up bottom-of-the-bags rice-buckwheat-bulgar hot cereal this morning, I got some looks. Last week's winter radish, beet, and storage carrot slaw was also an eyebrow lifter.

We also LOVE this game and everyone in this house is 16 yo and older. Dd's friends all play it but with regular playing cards rather than the game itself. There are "advanced" rules that you can add to make it very challenging for people of all ages.

My dd is dealing with both. She is a skier and is still skiing on her own but all team practices have ceased. She does occasionally see teammates on the trails and will "chat" from afar but it is not the same as training together. Her coaches have been sending out training plans and goal setting discussions. We do not allow dd to rollerski without coaches so if they go into dryland training season and still cannot train as a team, dd will be stuck running alone. The more painful thing is her music. She is in two bands and both have lost all of their gigs for the next few weeks. Luckily, she does not rely on this income to eat. Even some of the festivals into mid-summer have started to cancel. She auditioned for and was accepted to be a soloist in a classical festival and was VERY excited about it. I think it will be cancelled. I have not mentioned it yet. Meanwhile, she is plugging away on her own doing Skype lessons. One of her bands did a live stream gig and that went well but that was before shelter-in-place. Now even that is out of the question. She has a lot more free time right now so has been focussing on working with the instruments she is the least skilled at playing. As this progresses, she is looking more carefully into how to play music with others via video.

Safe forever, probably. But the quality (flavor, texture, etc....) will probably noticeably decline by 3 months and on depending on type of freezer.

We have the same issue with Physical Science. It is required in 9th grade locally but dd took it in 8th. I have left it off her transcript but did include foreign language and advanced math taken before high school. I did not factor those credits into her GPA but they do count in total credit load. I did leave the option to add Physical Science in during a time when we were considering early graduation. In that case, I was going to need a 4th science credit and would have used it. But in that case her 8th grade year would really have been her "9th grade" year so that would have been a different situation. All that to say that while Physical Science may not be typically considered "high school" level to many colleges, if it was indeed taken in high school, it can and should be listed and counted just like it would be in a B&M school transcript.

We used this for our 8th grade pass through US History. I still have it, I think. That is an option.

I did! Phew. But that was why I had DO as an option as we would have gone there if necessary.

Last year for making a homeschool plan here too! I really cannot believe it. This is what we have so far: Math (1-2 credits): Calculus I and II (DE) or Derek Owens Calculus or homegrown Calculus or or or...... Physics (1 credit): Clover Creek or Derek Owens History (1 credit): US History (homegrown or online....need suggestions!!!!) Government (1 credit): US Government (DE) English (1 credit): Public Speaking or Creative Writing (DE) Elective (1-2 credits): Watercolor Painting, Self Defense, Music Theory, and/or Jazz Improv (all DE) A lot of our decisions are hinging on how dd feels at the end of her DE pre-calc class this semester. If she does well and feels good, she will take DE Calc I and II which means doing less electives. There is even a possibility she might take a consumer math or high school level stats class. I wish she had a better idea of her future study plans but they are currently all over the place so it is hard to decide the math vs. freedom balance. And the English and elective choices are partially dependent on course availability and schedule. If anyone has suggestions for a home or online US History class/spine, I am all ears. We need to check this box but dd is not super invested so I need something engaging but not time consuming.

Thanks! I will put that out of my head for now.

Dh is unexpectedly unemployed as of today. We are confident he will get another job eventually but it is likely that his salary will be much lower. Sigh. Dd is in 11th grade. I think I understand from what I can see online that her FAFSA will be based on our 2019 taxes? That its not likely to accurately represent our a actual income when she attends college. Is there anything we can do or is this just the way it is going to be?

That's an interesting approach that I'd like to consider. Thanks for sharing!