Hit me with any tips, suggestions, rules, regrets, surprises, words of wisdom, BTDT advice for teenagers dating - anything relating to kids between the ages of 14 and 17 would be very welcomed. Do we get to know the parents of the boy in a "come on over for a bbq?" or is that weird? Sending my dd over to the house of a boy I've barely met without knowing his parents at all just seems weird. But, friends of ours with kids in public school say that's pretty common? So many stupid questions I have. I'll hold off on those in case someone accidentally might answer them.

Thank you for the input!!! Looks like any of the choices would be positive, then! That's good news! :) She will likely take AP Studio Art at PAHomeschoolers as well - which is a very time-consuming class from my understanding. Our original plans were CC her junior year, but due to time issues (the drive time back and forth 3-4 times a week for just one class...), we're instead looking at online AP courses. She wants to take AP Comp Science, but I am thinking a rigorous English class would be better and she can do another non-AP option for Computer Science languages. We also have considered AP Biology... This year has been a BEAR! Knowing there are only 2 years remaining and so many things she wants to fit in... :/ Not enough time!! So, she would also be taking Pre-Calc, AP Studio Art, Physics, French II, Computer Science, and Environmental Science or Psychology (I have AP-level coursework for both of these though... hmmmm...). She also has music classes/commitments for 8-10 hours per week. Next year, she'll likely take AP Chem and possibly AP Physics alongside (or take one of them at the local univ). So it dawned on me that the best time for a rigorous English class would be this year and I always hear such positive things about the APEnglish classes.

Blue Tent: http://teacherweb.com/USA/BlueTent/Thompson/apt21.aspx PA Homeschoolers with Emily Mulvihill: http://www.aphomeschoolers.com/cgi-bin/choose.pl?class=englang Debra Bell/AIM Academy with Lili Serbicki: http://debrabell.com/online-classes/course-schedule/ AP English wasn't even on our radar to consider a few weeks ago, and so I'm kicking myself for missing Maya Inspektor's class that I've heard such glowing reviews about. :( Everyone else is just seeming blah by comparison. Hoping someone has some firsthand experience with any of the above classes or teachers or other suggestions? Lili Serbicki also teaches at PAHomeschoolers, but her class there is full.

My oldest is going to be a junior this year and has used Saxon all the way through. So, we're not as far ahead as you were asking about - but she is midway through the Advanced Mathematics book. I'd heard the same comments and was nervous about continuing with Saxon through high school, but we briefly tried something else and flew back to Saxon. She self-teaches for the most part (uses Art Reed's videos when she feels the added explanation will help). She's taken both the PSAT and the ACT tests and several practice tests for each of those plus SAT. Last year (beginning the Adv. Math book) she would get perfect scores on the questions that covered things she'd covered via Saxon (would miss, skip, or have a "lucky guess" on the questions asking about things she hadn't yet learned). She's studying for the ACT again and hasn't taken a practice test recently & I'm anxious to see the difference in her score now that she's covered many of those topics. I read on this board over and over again "If it ain't broke - don't fix it" and decided to stick with Saxon for this dd. We are SO happy we did. She is a mathy kid, though. For many, Saxon doesn't click. But, when it does, it certainly seems to do the job and well.

Oh how I remember those days. I feel your pain. Family vacations finally feel like vacations again, though, now that my youngest is 9 years old!! :hurray: DH always had nice vacations. :glare: Probably the biggest bone of contention in our entire marriage. He could not understand why I didn't like to travel. (just packing for 4 kids was enough to want to cancel the trip and we weren't even out the front door yet!!)

I have a few friend requests I am ignoring because I can't figure this out. When I share a status update or picture, I can choose who I want to see it. I usually have it set to "custom" and have a few friends who are always on the "do not show" list. For certain posts, I add names to that list so that they do not see my post or photo. (most of these are my kids' friends and sometimes I post things I don't necessarily want to share with a bunch of teenagers) When I ADD a new friend - they can see everything on my wall, right? Do I have to go through my wall posts (which is SO ANNOYING to do) after I've accepted them and put them into the "do not show" list? This is way more complicated than it needs to be. I am thinking surely I am missing some magic button somewhere that shows... something. help?

I don't want to read the link (cannot handle stories like this-) but going to read more about Slenderman & ask my kids questions. My kids have mentioned the name offhandedly and I paid zero attention because I thought it was part of a minecraft discussion (and I generally ignore ALL Minecraft discussions because... borrrrring). Yuck. Just - yuck.

Poll attached - you can vote multiple times if you have more than one teen who have different types of phones. Note: I use the term "dumb" phone with love. Have one myself. ;) We're phone shopping - and i am curious. Seems every kid we know over the age of 8 (except ours) has an iPhone & we're wondering if that's the norm elsewhere & how often parents update those phones for said kids. :)

In some cases, sure. I just can't believe it's that strong in all cases. I know of several adopted/step-children families and their bond is concrete - no biology involved. In my case, I'm total mama bear of 4 kids who bear VERY little resemblance to me. lol Two of them look just like their dad and the other two are hybrid creatures who really don't strongly resemble anyone in either of our family trees. Someone shows up at my door, saying one of them isn't mine, they're going to have a fight on their hands. I would have zero natural curiosity about what other child may be out there. I'm probably the weird one, though. :p (and heck, *I* never felt like I fit in with my family! lol But, I definitely, 100% belong to them biologically. I just got all of the recessive personality genes. ;) )

No way I would switch out kids, and honestly my interest in the biological child would be as much interest as I'd have in anyone else's child. I'd want to know that they are safe, loved and leave them be. I'd keep the one I brought home with me and let the other family live their lives - perhaps arranging get togethers from time to time... maybe. "My" baby would be the one I've been raising, simple as that!

:D I only asked the question based upon some new information I've recently been told by several people that peaked my interest... got the input here that I needed... and within hours scratched that off the list as an option... simple as that! :) DS will be entering the public or private school system in 8th or 9th grade - the school is across town and dds senior year is going to be a scheduling nightmare due to many factors I'm not going to get into... so the thought of navigating a school system for the first time ever, fitting in all of ds's extracurriculars (that we can now schedule around his schoolwork), plus helping dd maneuver all she will be juggling her senior year is daunting, to say the least. So... I briefly thought, maybe, there was a way to push the pause button on the boys - NOT holding them back academically (still doing the-next-thing courses-wise), but yes, holding them back grade-wise... the older son has a list 8 miles long of things he wants to accomplish and that year would have given him more breathing room in which to accomplish at least some of those things. But, I get it - it's a bad idea!! okay, okay! :smash: :tongue_smilie: Uncle! Both boys will graduate at 18! Promise! :D :biggrinjester:

Yes, this has been one of the options we have had on the table & is the current front-runner. I'd love to keep him (and his brother) home one more year, though, which is why, when I thought maybe 19-year-old seniors were becoming somewhat "commonplace," we should at least put that into the ring for consideration! :) I'm sure that, by the time the boys are graduating at 18+ years old, I will laugh and laugh that I even briefly considered keeping them in high school until they were 19! lol That teenage independent streak hasn't hit either of them yet, and it's easy to imagine them just-as-they-are in the future - all cuddly and sweet and dirt-and-Lego-obsessed. Logically, I know that the reality will be very different. :p

Thanks - this was very insightful! This was not something I'd seriously considered until talking to several moms who knew of/had several 19-year-old graduates who had had a gap year earlier (not held back due to learning differences or anything like that). 19 seemed old to me, as I'd stated in the OP, but a lot has changed since I was in school, so thought maybe it had become more commonplace than what I was thinking. That doesn't seem to be the case, so we'll keep on keepin'-on. @wapiti - My limits are just fine - just exploring options, which is never a bad thing. Sure - we CAN have a freshman in school and a senior at home... but it'd be a heck of a lot easier to have an 8th grader and a senior at home, so I thought I'd ask some questions. :ph34r:

Aah! I'd mentally blocked the fact that they were changing the AP Physics exam. Off to re-research what I've obviously forgotten! :) thx!

If I did the poll correctly, you should be able to vote more than once if you have/had more than one son graduating. (edited because I have the information I need!) Thank you! :)

DD & I are still hashing out her schedule for her upcoming junior year. She will most likely be taking AP Chemistry (PAHomeschoolers)-- She'd also like to take Physics this year. The PA Homeschoolers AP Physics prerequisites say she needs to have already taken Calculus, or be currently enrolled in Calculus. She will be taking Pre-Calc this year, so I don't think that will work. Now we're thinking of doing both the Apologia Physics and the Apologia Advanced Physics books in one year. The pre-req for Advanced Physics says that they need to have completed pre-calc... which she technically won't have completed, but will be halfway through by the time she begins the Adv. Physics book... Has anyone used the Apologia books and then taken the AP Physics exam?

Apologia has a high school Marine Bio course.

This machine is wonderful! I have dozens of machines, ranging from solid, old, metal tanks to delicate, complicated machines. This is the one I bought for my kids to learn on and we now have two of them. It has speed control (which is AWESOME) for those just learning how to sew. It is easy to thread, super easy to use. I recommend buying high-quality thread. I use Mettler or Gutermann thread. The cheaper stuff can cause all kinds of headaches with the bobbin and with it breaking in the midst of a sewing project.

A little over $300 here. Two days in-class instruction and three two-hour driving sessions included. I balked at first, but it actually was a really beneficial experience overall.

Thank you guys so much!!! And here I thought this would be a complicated thing to put together!!! Thanks for making that job a million times easier! :) So many good options!

Thank you! Off to check it out... :001_smile:

I know this is lightly covered in Biology - we're looking for something... different. The text itself could be "simple" as it won't be the only book involved. We are putting together an elective course that will cover Botany and Landscape Design/Landscape Architecture. She'll volunteer at a garden center, already has guinea pigs available for hands-on landscaping projects, and a text about the actual landscape design/architecture itself - so the rest of the course will be fleshed out. I considered using Apologia's elementary Botany book in combination with gardening texts, maybe? She needs to learn about native plants, and specific information about various types of plants themselves. So I thought maybe the Apologia book could be a refresher for her to remember the basic mechanics of "how things grow" (lol) and the basic plant-stuff, and then a gardening text and working with a garden center to learn the best plants for the area and their ideal planting locations, and then onto the landscaping/architecture/design part of the course. At the end - several projects to put all that information together. Has anyone put together a course anything similar to this? (It will be her one "fun" class, but it is a college major she's looked at with interest, so we figured a solid year of it should give her a good idea of whether or not she really enjoys this kind of thing.)

Apologia has a high-school level Anatomy course that is separate from its Biology. I believe the common stance is that it an honors-level course if you do both books in one year (which, imho, is entirely do-able), or you can do one year of Biology and one year of Anatomy (which is the way a ton of high schools around here do science - a year of Botany, a year of Biology focusing on microbiology, a year of Anatomy...). The dearth of brightly colored pictures and graphics in the Apologia Biology book was what caused my first negative reaction. It just seems, by all that is good in the world, that a Biology text should be jam-packed with beautiful pictures, illustrations, and graphics! The Bio book was just so... wordy (in the literal, there weren't many pictures there, sense). BJU and Miller-Levine understand that need for (non-busy) illustrations for Bio. The lack of colorful stuff doesn't bother me or my dc nearly as much in their Chemistry textbook. It just isn't as necessary, somehow.

BJU is more definitely rigorous than Apologia for both the biology and chemistry texts. The BJU seemed to go more in-depth on topics, and covered a few more topics than the Apologia and the labs are more in-depth as well. I'm not that crazy about the Apologia high school textbooks, BUT I've read MANY threads here about the Apologia texts, and many, many kids have gone on to college-level science and felt very well-prepared after using Apologia in high school. One dc used BJU/Apologia for biology because she was in a co-op using Apologia, but used Miller-Levine and BJU at home. Next dc will likely use Miller-Levine and Apologia for biology (same co-op using Apologia again). For Chemistry, first dc is using Apologia, BJU, and the Chang text, depending on the topic being discussed. Next dc will most likely use Apologia only - the Chemistry explanations are very clear to read and she isn't going to be a science major in college like her older sister. We use labs from the HomeScience labs book (can't remember its exact name off the top of my head), though, not from Apologia. I haven't yet looked at the Physics for either, so cannot comment there.

OK, I have the cart ready - after talking with the girls, we decided to order the deluxe packages of both the Ancient History (for high school) and the Creation to the Greeks for the boys instead of piecing it all together. Thought long and hard on the discussion factor and decided that the discussions this year have been especially meaningful because we've been covering modern history. So many rabbit trails that the kids have been able to see the connections in what is happening today. I don't think that will be as much of an issue for Ancient History and the Bible study will be the focus of our discussion and I won't need a guideline from them for that (already have plenty here). The oldest dd will just be doing the Bible reading/discussions, as she's already done Ancients for high school, so that makes the Rhetoric discussions even less applicable to our current situation. So - feeling good about the decision and excited to get a big box of stuff (we've never done that before, I always buy a little here... buy a little there), but less excited to hit the send button on an order of this amount! *faints* :svengo: