So, knowing how great the VP program is, did you use anything similar for high school?

Has anyone used the Veritas Press Self Paced Online ancient history for high school? I know it is meant for younger kids but we used it in middle school and my kids learned so much from it. Do you know if it would qualify as a high school history credit?

So awesome!! That is a big jump and takes so much courage! I have several friends who practiced law and got out. Nursing is such a big change from law!! What I love about nursing is the variety. Are you planning to do family nurse practitioner? I'm sure it's hard to say at this point till you do clinicals and decide on what type of population you want to work with. I did neonatal ICU and pediatrics mostly. A little ER and some outpatient clinics. I planned to go back for FNP because of the variety and the hours. I started applying and talking to the schools and bought the textbooks and tried to get a jump start on studying, but my girls were younger and my studying was derailed because they needed me. So awesome that you are almost ready to start your 2nd term! Good luck! Nursing is a fabulous career. Oh, just another idea - my best friend is a CRNA and has worked part time and prn making a killing, so that is even another option!!

I actually just forwarded my resume to my friend who is a physician that works for an insurance company. The nurses that they hire work from home and they are looking for a nurse with my background!! I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've also considered taking some medical coding classes and certification exams. I am super excited to learn a different side of nursing that I can do till I retire. I'm scared, though, to transition from a season of life that I love so much. I love the idea of working in insurance. Hopefully I have the experience needed!!

After taking YEARS off? Once your kids were older? Did you give up your career and then go back? I'm feeling so antsy. My story - I was a dental hygienist and then went back to school for my BSN. I worked as an RN for 10 years in the hospital and in outpatient clinics. After my 2nd daughter was born when I was 35, I worked very part time for 2 more years and stopped when I was 37. At that time I took over the bookkeeping for my husband's business and still do that till this day (almost 10 years later), as well as homeschool my 11 year old daughter. When my mom died, I found a 1 day a week program for my daughter and signed her up for online classes so I could handle my mom's estate. Now that it is settled and my daughter can do a lot of work independently, I find myself bored or anxiously busy. I'm either casually helping my daughter with her work, driving her (and my other daughter) to lessons, doing the bookkeeping for my husband, cooking, cleaning, running errands, etc. Part of me wants to get a job, although not working nights, weekends, etc - killing myself, and part of me wants to just continue to go along as I am now. There is part of me that feels like I could be using my degrees and earning an income and part of me that worries that if I do that, I will be missing out at home. I'm 47 now, and just don't know if it's worth it to go back at this point. Anyone else in the same boat? What did you do?

There are many procedures that can be done by general dentists, including root canals and implants. Implants are so common now that there are many dentists who do them and do them well, and they have very intensive training to be able to do so. I would not hesitate to allow a general dentist who is well trained to do a specialized procedure. A good dentist would refer a more difficult case to a specialist. As far as having to come back for an exam by a dentist, I think you should mention it to the scheduler that it is inconvenient for you to bring your family back in for an exam. In the correct scenario, the patient would have the exam done by the dentist prior to the cleaning or any other treatments because the dentist is the only one who can diagnose.

The really vivid dreams that feel like they really happened are called "visitation dreams". They seem so vivid and real that you wake up thinking/knowing they really did happen. There are other regular dreams where the deceased is in the dream but it is of a more vague quality. Those are supposedly regular dreams. I personally believe in visitation dreams and have had them about my mother and others who have died.

I make fruit salads all the time. No dressing needed. I count on the strawberry juice to "marinate" the other fruits. I usually just do strawberries, blueberries, and either red or green seedless grapes. I always cut the strawberries (either in half or in quarters depending on how big they are), mix all the fruit together gently to not damage it, and let it sit for a few hours so the juices from the strawberries can mix with the rest of the fruit.

I find myself trying to beat them at their own game most of the time. There are some things I have figured out and some things I'm still trying to figure out. The first couple of times I took in huge plastic bins of clothing and they only took a few pieces. Some stuff they gave back still had the tags on them. Then once I took in a banker's box and they wanted none of it. I waited till the weekend when there was different staff, took the same box back in, and got $47 for it. That's when I figured out I should keep trying to sell the same items instead of donating them. I know they won't take anything with stains or excessive wear so I donate those. Now this is what I do: 1. Take small boxes of items. I only use banker's boxes now instead of large plastic bins. I find that they take a larger portion when they don't have much to choose from. 2. Whatever they don't take, I drive over to the 2nd location in town and see what they will take. 3. I mix up whatever they didn't take with a few new items and then go in a few weeks later and try to sell again. They will usually take items that they didn't take the first go round. 4. I found with the store in the last city I lived in, the staff that worked on the weekend would take more and pay more. This has become quite a game to me. I am always trying to figure out how to hack Once Upon A Child, lol! I'd love to hear some other ideas!!

I am the executor of my mom's estate, and I have been in contact with a company that does estate sales and auctions. I'm going that route. They recommended not throwing anything away. Not even to donate old clothes or electrical components, chargers, etc because they can auction off every bit of it. I would imagine you could get a good bit if you put them up for auction. ETA: They come to the house and pack everything up (for a small fee), so it is a win win as far as this busy mom is concerned.

It’s $289/month and you can go every day if you want. Ours is open 5 days a week during the summer and 6 days a week during the school year.

We just started using Essentials in Writing, and I love how simple it is to use. They just watch a DVD lesson, read the lesson in the book, and complete the exercises. The DVDs are in the back of the book so there is only the student book and (in some levels) the teachers guide. The lessons are presented in short manageable chunks. I think they also offer grading services (but I haven't looked into it). I really can't give a full review on it because we have only completed one week's worth of lessons, but I can compare it to IEW with respect to the materials and the ease of use. IEW is another that we have used. I like it, but to me, there are just too many materials. I have DVDs, a student binder that we had to set up, a TWSS teacher manual, the workbook for the history based writing lessons, a student resource notebook. Ugh! Too many components to juggle around!! I am finding that the longer I homeschool, more gets done with a curriculum that is more streamlined (as in not so many components). I do like the content of IEW though, and if EIW doesn't work out for us, we may go back to it, but I doubt it. Lost Tools of Writing is what my daughter used in Classical Conversations Challenge A and it was just too much of a learning curve for me. I didn't like having to watch the Vimeo videos to learn how to help my daughter with it. While she was in class learning it, I was in another class with my other daughter. From what I did see, it seems like they were taking simple concepts and making them seem really complicated. "ANI Chart", "Exortium", etc. Some people might like this, but I just like straightforwardness. So, for ease of use, I pick Essentials in Writing. It is independent, streamlined, the content looks great, and I can pick it up and know exactly what it is talking about.

For those of you who have used CLE for Language Arts through 7th grade, did you feel like it got to be too much during 7th? I don't know if it is just me or if it is my daughter not being very motivated this year, but it just seems like a LOT. It is so good, don't get me wrong. I've had so many issues going on this year that instead of going over each and every lesson with her, I've allowed her to correct all the lessons herself except for the quizzes and tests, which I think she should be able to do at this point. Maybe I've fallen behind on the learning myself. If you've found it to be almost too much in 7th, did you keep with it or try something else?

My daughter just started Mathnasium this week. We had switched from CLE to Saxon this year and it just didn't work out. She had about 20 lessons left in Saxon 8/7 and it was just going downhill so I took her to Mathnasium where they did an assessment to determine where she needed extra tutoring. She loves it so much that she begged me to go every day this week! They said they could take her all the way through calculus without my having to use any other curriculum. Has anyone had experience with using Mathnasium as their only math curriculum? If so, how did you document the lesson plan? (Also posted in General Education)

My daughter just started Mathnasium this week. We had switched from CLE to Saxon this year and it just didn't work out. She had about 20 lessons left in Saxon 8/7 and it was just going downhill so I took her to Mathnasium where they did an assessment to determine where she needed extra tutoring. She loves it so much that she begged me to go every day this week! They said they could take her all the way through calculus without my having to use any other curriculum. Has anyone had experience with using Mathnasium as their only math curriculum? If so, how did you document the lesson plan?

We've always used CLE Reading. We took a break and tried MP Lit Guides and just reading novels and discussing, but have come full circle and we are back to CLE Reading because it gets done and is super easy to implement. It teaches vocabulary, poetry study, and figures of speech. Then we also just read novels for fun as bedtime read-alouds or we listen to audiobooks in the car. I've purchased Essentials in Literature for 8th grade and plan to try it out for our 8th grader once we finish with our current CLE Lightunits. I'm excited to try it out because we are really enjoying Essentials in Writing by the same author.

Is Science the only one you use? Any recommendations for any other subjects using ACE? How do you schedule it? I'm thinking 3-4 pages a day. The few projects they do have look super easy to do!!

BJU Distance Learning Online (if you're ok with a Christian based science) is awesome! ETA: if you like VP History, then obviously you're ok with Christian based. We use VP History and BJU Science.

I just unboxed this new-to-us curriculum today. We've been using BJU with the DVDs for Science but need something a little more portable since we do a lot of going during the week. I have to say, it looks impressive! We are trying the 6th grade level Science. I love the simplicity, the portability, the independent nature of it, the ability to supplement as desired, and the content seems awesome! Has anyone else tried ACE Paces for science??

We've done 4 years of Foundations and 1 year of Challenge A. From the start I've been ambivalent about it. I love picking out my own curriculum so I used CC as a supplement. That worked until Challenge A. Our first year of homeschooling, we did a co-op on Friday afternoons that had rotating classes depending on what the parents felt like teaching. It was a great social experience, and looking back, I can see the value, but at the time I felt it wasn't consistent because the classes were just random from semester to semester. Knitting, cooking, painting, etc. I wanted something social, but consistent, with a classroom setting, where they could do the projects so I didn't have to do them at home. CC fit that bill. For some people, CC is the spine and they add books, history lessons, etc based on what they learned at CC that week. For me, I needed a more stable history curriculum and nothing followed the random history sentences closely enough (maybe in Cycle 3 - US History, but no other cycles). So I did SOTW and the Veritas Press for history. Science seemed random, so I did BJU for Science. I just didn't feel comfortable using CC as a stand alone. We did listen to the memory work CDs over and over in the car and they learned so much from them, but they supplemented what we were studying at home. By the time my older daughter started Challenge A, we had all of our tried and true curriculum in place, and to try to switch to using only their curriculum was a disaster. There was no history other than reading some historical fiction, the science was learning about an animal classification and picking an animal from that class to draw and research, a science fair project, and drawing and labeling the human body systems, there was Latin (which was not the curriculum I would've picked), map drawing and labeling the countries and capitals from memory, and more. My point is that although it was good in so many ways (and we decided not to go past ChA, so I don't know what would have evolved past that), I had my own curriculum in place that I loved and trusted more than I trusted what my daughter was learning. So, with all that being said, my ideas for: Foundations: Pros: Social, Consistent, Classroom setting experience, memory work helps with all other subjects, Presentation/Public Speaking experience, Science Projects I might not do at home, Art and Music Appreciation, Geography and map drawing is awesome, social outlet for parents Cons: Content can be random, I feel there are gaps, wouldn't use it as sole learning or might find ourselves behind in certain subjects, felt a little Kool-aid-ish/cultish. Essentials: Was awesome. I wouldn't hesitate to do Essentials again. So much to learn about sentence structure, awesome math games, and it is the best thing to happen to us as far as writing curriculum is concerned. Challenge A: Pros: Full Curriculum if this is the curriculum you choose, Map drawing and memorization, Science fair project experience, good literature and essays based upon that literature, rhetoric, awesome discussions and deeper thought. Cons: I felt it was lacking in History and some in science. I would've chosen different foreign language curriculum, does not include any English grammar - only Latin (I felt we still needed English grammar after only 2 years of Essentials). I know this is long, but the short end of it is that I loved the social aspects, memory work, presentation experiences, geography, and essentials program. I am too much of a curriculum junkie and a control freak to let it dictate my curriculum though.

I have no idea how to tell you to modify a Christian curriculum for a charter school, but I can weigh in on a switch from CLE to Saxon, because we did just that this year. It has been a disaster. We were so spoiled by the streamlined format of CLE with the self contained lightunits and the teachers manual. The problems were all written out in the light unit (workbook) all neat and tidy and it was so easy to check answers. The teaching was 1/2 to 1 page at most in nice little bite size chunks, and very easy for my 6th-7th grader to understand. We switched to Saxon because I wanted to use the same curriculum through Calculus and got great feedback from here on the curriculum. First, I felt the need to make copies of the answer forms so we could keep the work neat and straight. Then we had to wrangle a huge text book, a test and worksheets book, the answer key, and the huge 2 inch binder for the work. On top of that, the teaching is usually 2-3 pages, and then we need to watch the Art Reed DVDs (which we love - it is the ONLY (optional) part that we love). CLE is spiral and it just worked for us, but Saxon is spiral, and it is just overwhelming. I don't know if it is the level that we are on now, but it is leaving us both in tears, so much so, that my daughter thinks she needs to repeat 7th grade! I have an appointment at Mathnasium for extra help because we are so lost at this point. I am great at math, but to give my input and try to incorporate it with Saxon, trying to figure out where this lesson was on this and that lesson was on that - it's making us crazy. I might add a disclaimer that I went with the recommendations to allow my daughter to use the solutions manual to correct her lessons while I correct the tests. Possibly, it would've been easier on us if I corrected all of the lessons but that would've required me reading 2-3 pages a day, which would've been ok for some people, but being used to only having to read the bite size chunks of CLE and having some other family issues to care for, I just didn't have the patience or the time for Saxon to work properly for us. All that being said, I do like the conceptual basis in the lessons. I regret our decision to switch, but I'm not sure what we would have done when CLE Algebra is over. BJU?

My tried and true is Veritas Press Self Paced Online History. If I want to supplement, I play the SOTW cds in the car. (My girls LOVE to listen to the CDs once they've learned the material from VP! It makes it come alive even more for them)! Veritas Press comes with history cards and an online program that my girls have learned so much from. It is so crazy - we went to an antiques show and one of the vendors had ancient coins from the Byzantine era and my daughter was able to explain to him all of the faces on the coins, who they were related to, and how they were important in history!! It includes the teaching plus games in a format that my girls love. They do the tests online and it keeps the grades for me as well. The program includes level 1 and level 2 literature that can be read along with the lessons if you choose to do that. We do some of the literature. There are also some suggested projects, which we don't usually do. My plan for the next year was to incorporate Medieval Based History writing lessons from IEW along with it, but I found Essentials in Writing so we are going that route instead of IEW. So my recommendation for Middle Ages is as follows: Veritas Press Self Paced Online with suggested literature, SOTW cds to listen to (in the car for us), and Medieval Based History writing lessons from IEW (which also includes literature suggestions, which you can either read or enjoy as audiobooks).

Well, I went ahead and ordered BJU since I am already familiar with it. I felt like even if the teacher isn't as engaging as some of the previous ones, the videos are only approximately 13 minutes in length, so it's quick. I know BJU science and I absolutely love it. Well, the materials arrived today and let me just say that after looking through the text, I am SOLD!! I think it does an awesome job with human anatomy and physiology. I was a pre-pharmacy and then a nursing major in college and there is definitely upper-level coursework in this book! I know I made the right decision. I can't say anything about Abeka since I only saw the online samples. I know I would want to continue with BJU through high school so that was another factor in deciding to go ahead and order the 7th grade materials. I haven't watched the DVDs yet, but would be happy to come back and update after watching them.

Aw, this makes me sad. I wish these boys were that sweet.

In the past 2 months my 12 year old daughter has had 2 occurrences with boys her age being aggressive and mean to her. This is two separate events with completely separate groups. I mean like trying to hurt her. The first incident, the boy was throwing things at her face and during the second, a boy was shining a bright flashlight in her eyes while his friend restrained her during a game of capture the flag. The first time it happened, I told her not to worry, he was just playing like middle school boys do, but parents and kids who saw said he was being mean and seemed to be targeting her. The second time, I was not there, but I took it seriously and reported to the adult in charge. My daughter has always been nice to everyone and has never had trouble making friends. She asked me tonight, "What is wrong with middle school boys? Why are they so mean?". I don't have boys, so I can't answer that question. If it were up to me, I would just keep her away from social situations with boys until later in high school, but that would deprive her of lots of fun. Is this just normal middle school boy behavior? What should I do? I don't want her to end up really hurt. ETA: I probably shouldn't say Middle "School", but I mean the same age group