No, but if I consider myself the primary teacher I do read everything. I am a fast reader so I have not had an issue reading everything that my kids read for literature. For History I sometimes did the reading aloud method and then we discussed as we read. For a few resources we had a a curriculum guide so I didn’t feel that I had to read all the text in order to discuss it. But I had to be fairly familiar with it. My oldest taught himself Math with AOPS and then had a tutor for a year. My other two will outsource Math. All three kids outsource foreign language. For Science the only class I’ve taught at home has been Biology. I’m a physician and was a Bio major. So I did read the text before lecturing/discussing with them. But it was more like a review for me which was way easier than really learning something with them.

For my 1st for History: 9th grade- 20th Century World History 10th grade- Ancients 11th grade- US Government 12th grade- Global Perspective Studies (Farrar’s humanities core which we really liked) We did the Year 1 which was Africa/Middle East/India and China/Japan. He also did Economics so came away with 5 Social Science credits. For my now 10th grader 9th grade- Global Perspective Studies 10th grade- We are doing American Studies which is self-designed. We’re focusing on the idea “What does it mean to be an American?” and exploring themes like Open Spaces, Freedom/Independence, Equality, “Melting Pot” and The American Dream. For us, I ask them what they would be interested in studying or I come up with a few ideas and see what intrigues them most.

1) I would list non-core classes if you gave him a credit for them or a grade. My son had what sounds like a similar transcript. He is a competitive swimmer which we listed as a activity. We also listed theater and piano as activities. His electives were things like Computer Science and Economics. He had no fine arts type of credits on the transcript. I also listed 1/2 credits for Personal Finance and Driver’s ED which are typically given at public schools around here and he did classes for both. 2) I listed math and foreign language taken before 9th grade. I didn’t list other high school level classes that were taken before 9th. I think Farrar is right and they would just assume he had the prerequisites but it made me feel more confident at the time to put them on there. I didn’t include them in GPA. 3) I reported both weighted and unweighted but knew they would likely recalculate. I only called things Honors if it was either an outside class that was called Honors by a teacher or if it was a program/curriculum that was is widely thought to be advanced (AOPS Math and Lukeion were the only two that I called Honors that weren’t a specific AP class). I used the scale where you add 0.5 for Honors and 1.0 for AP. I stated that on the transcript so it was clear. And in our school description I stated that all his classes were taught at what I considered an Honors level but that as it was hard to define for homeschool they were only listed as such if designated that way by an outside source. 4) Ds had the same classes and I did 1/2 credit for each Physics class and 1/2 credit for each of the Econ classes. He had enough credits without them and I felt like it looked more like I was padding the transcript to list them each as a separate credit since they were all taken the same year.

I don't have specific info on that class but ds took Physics C (both Mech and EM) last year with Dr. Kernion. He really liked him a lot. Ds has always thought he'd be a math major and he is still leaning that way but he started to think about possibly studying physics after the class.

I’m in VA...couple of thoughts having done this during the pandemic with a homeschooled teen... *You don’t have to do the in person lessons in the car with an instructor. You can apply to be the instructor with the state if you are homeschooling parent. And then once you get approved you do the lessons yourself and they take the test at the DMV. For you, that probably wouldn’t be helpful since he’s almost 18 and you could just do the test at the DMV pretty soon anyway. But for others reading who might be in VA I thought I’d mention it. *It was a bit of a pain to schedule the driving test during Covid. That would probably also be true after he is 18. At the time we did it last summer, there were not a lot of options. I just went online ever day for a few days until I got an appointment. We ended up driving about 2 hours away to do the test but the nice thing is that we went to an area that clearly had more homeschoolers and was really aware of the law. Here in NOVA, I’ve had friends who went to do the test and knew way more about what was allowed than the DMV people. But that was last August and things had just opened up. It’s probably easier now to get an appointment. I know other people who have done it and were able to go locally. *They waived the court thing and did it as a Zoom thing with the judge. It was literally about 5 minutes and no one yelled. 😃 I don’t know if they are still doing the Zoom thing but I’m pretty sure they are waiving the court requirement. They just mailed him his license after taking the exam. I also know a lot of people who did it before Covid and they didn’t say it was yelling.. they described it more as a ceremony that was supposed to emphasize how driving is a big responsibility. So maybe it depends on the judge you get. *I grew up in VA also but back in the day where I feel like they just handed us a license and said “have fun.” At least compared to now. 😂

Hi! Both of the other posters mentioned above did have kids who ended up swimming in college as well. I think MysteryJen’s kids did D1 which is a different experience. Lisa’s kids looked into swimming, not sure if either ended up actually swimming in college. My son knew he wasn’t going to try and do D1, we discussed it before high school. I knew the NCAA requirements were stricter and I didn’t want to plan our high school around them if we didn’t have to. He was more interested in a small school anyway and he didn’t really want the pressure of D1 so that made the decision easy. We also knew that a lot of people get to school and then decide to quit their sport. So we advised him (as did his two coaches here) to pick a school for the school and secondarily for the swimming. It helped focus the college process...he only looked at D3 schools with swimming which was a good way to start to narrow down the field. He got significant amount of merit aid everywhere but no money for swimming. He started contacting coaches in junior year just to get information about them and to put himself on their radar. Most schools have a recruiting form you can fill out on their website and he started with those. He then emailed the coaches of the places he was more interested in. He put something in the subject line like “High school junior sprint butterfly specialist interested in ____”. He would include in the first email his best times for his best events. They definitely will want to know what strokes they swim and their times in those strokes. You can go to collegeswimming.com and find all the times for the schools you might be interested in. We were advised that you ideally want your times to be in the range to score points at their conference meet. So we would look at the school, then look at the times for his events (he’s a spring butterflyer primarily) and then look at the conference times. You can still contact places out of the range but it gives you an idea how realistic it is. He found for the most part that the coaches were honest. For example, he had one who said he could have a spot on the team but he wouldn’t be on their travel team and it would be a different experience than if he was at a school where he was contributing to the meets. That was helpful to hear up front. Once he had heard from the coaches he just kept kind of keeping them up to date. For example he would write emails after a big meet and let them know how he did. We had some visits set up in the spring of 2020 and several were the kind of things where you go and spend the weekend with the team, but then Covid canceled them. Because of that our experience was probably a bit delayed than other years. Several coaches wanted him to make a commitment by the fall but he hadn’t visited everywhere and didn’t feel comfortable doing that. We did find that applying as an athlete gave him an advantage this year. Several places that were closed to tours were able to get him in to visit by having him meet privately with the coach. That was nice in a weird admissions year. A slightly weird thing for him is he is taking a gap year. We weren’t sure how coaches would feel about it but he was very upfront about it with all of them and they all said it was fine as long as he didn’t take a year off of swimming. That was also something we werent’ sure about when applying. I would guess D1 coaches would not have been ok with i. So he’s committed to a college now but won’t be starting until Fall 2022. The coaches have been great and have sent him workouts to do on his own and have hooked him into things like the team chat so he can kind of meet people. You can DM me if you want..but we are also in Northern Virginia. It’s not unlikely that we know each other or have mutual acquaintances somehow. My son swims year round and we swim in the NVSL in the summer. One thing I would say is that because swimming is so competitive here I think we have a skewed view of things. My son is fast but not one of the top swimmers in the area by any stretch. He also isn’t at the national level and never has been. Many of his friends do go to the national meets in Florida and are at that level. So early on in high school I thought swimming in college was probably not realistic for him. But what we found when we started looking is that there were a LOT of schools where he was a very good fit academically and swim-wise. Two other quick thoughts...D1 is a whole other ballgame and I can’t really give advice on that. Another is that we did get info on one of the recruiting websites where you put your information and then coaches can supposedly access it. The info came through PVS when we were signing up for club swimming so you might also see it. They market themselves as being essential. We started the free process and put his stats on there and he did get emails from coaches, but none were schools he was interested in. It may have been more useful if we paid the premium amount but I asked several friends who had gone through the process and had kids who were swimming in college and they all said it was unnecessary (some had used the sites for one kid and then weren’t for another, some just didn’t use it). So we ended up not paying for it and I think in the end we didn’t need it. Good luck and feel free to DM me if you want.

Actually in VA you can do it all yourself as a homeschooler and avoid the $$ class. You have to apply to be the official instructor which you can do as a homeschooler (but not if you are a private school or public school parent...it’s the one weird area where the state gives us the advantage). Then they take the test at the DMV which usually only offers it to people over 18 getting their license for the first time. We did this route for my oldest and it was a bit of a pain because of Covid making it difficult to find a DVM that was open for the testing. The actual test was ridiculously easy. Because of Covid (and it was pre-vaccine) they didn’t get in the car but watched him drive in a parking lot. Essentially he had to park twice and then do a few times around the lot. But it saved us a lot of money over taking the behind the wheel class.

We liked them both a lot. He ended up picking Centre. In the end it came down to Centre and College of Wooster and it was a really hard decision that took up to the very last minute to make. I liked Hendrix a lot. It felt more quirky that the other places we visited. It’s really small. Every student mentioned the size as both a positive and a negative. We heard a lot of “by senior year you know everyone which is both good and bad”. I thought the campus was very pretty but the immediate surrounding area seemed economically disadvantaged. I wondered if that would create some town/gown tension but when I asked people they kind of avoided the question. They talked about going into the downtown to do stuff (which is not the area it’s located in). The quirkiness seemed a plus to me. Everyone and I mean everyone talked about the freshman dance competition between dorms as a highlight. There is also a specific group that is dedicated to providing more introverted alternatives to big campus wide events. So they said that there is always a game night or something like that going on if you aren’t into the big things. That was kind of nice that it was intentional. I had thought that ds was deciding between Centre and Hendrix at the end (he was very close-mouthed about his process) but it turned out he knew pretty much after visting that Hendrix wasn’t right for him. It was one of those gut feeling things...which is weird because he is not a gut feeling kind of guy. The price was definitely right and he liked the swim coach a lot. He is planning on majoring in Math and that might have swayed him, the department is very tiny. But I think it was mostly gut. Centre feels more traditional collegiate in the way it look and the people we met. It feels more conservative. It’s in a cute small town. I think the main thing that swayed him to choose it over Wooster was one Math professor there that he talked to a lot and who was apparently impressive. Everything else about the two schools was pretty similar and he really liked them both. He also was impressed that every alumnae from Centre that he talked to was incredibly enthusiastic. They sell the school well. Other things we liked: they have a strong emphasis on study abroad- their dining hall is decorated with flags from every country that students have studied in. It’s a lot. It’s also small but not quite as small as Hendrix. Centre does have a Greek system, Hendrix does not.

I did not put PE or health but mostly because we didn’t do these in any way I would consider a class. On the other hand I did put Driver’s Ed. Most of the schools around here give a 1/2 credit for Driver’s Ed and our state requires what to me is a ginormous amount of time doing Driver’s Ed. So it seemed worth a credit. He got 1/2 credit for Personal Finance the same year. Oldest had 6 credits a year, which is less than a lot of people here. He had 5 credits a year that were solidly academic (Math, Science, English, History, Foreign Language). And then most of his electives were more on the academic side (Comp Science, Economics, extra Math). That represented his interests. He had no Art/Music/PE. He is a competitive swimmer so that went under extracurriculars and he plays piano which we also chose to put under extracurriculars.

Me Three! It seemed super obvious to me. OP, your boys sound like mine in that mine like to take completely illogical weird stances about things and passionately argue for them. It’s kind of how they bond. To me, it sounds like your kids aren’t really using gender stereotyping to exclude people or to stop from doing things they enjoy. I’d probably roll my eyes and tell them they are weird and enjoy their weirdness.

I saw this post yesterday but didn’t have time to respond. And now...I don’t want to wade through all the responses. So responding just to @Quill OP....I had a very similar situation in our family. Our nephew told the family when he was in college that he identified as a man. He went on to have top surgery and has now also done hormone therapy. He has also married a woman. It was not easy for everyone in the family and I think the best thing was for people to be honest about it and loving. I’m not saying a “love the sinner hate the sin” kind of attitude but just an acknowledgment that it is hard. Even if the person has known this about themselves their whole life, that doesn’t mean other people have and won’t find it difficult to adjust. Our nephew was at a women’s college when he let us know he was trans and he was the flower girl in our wedding. Family photo albums all have photos of him as girl. We had to explain that to our kids when they were quite young. (he transitioned about 10 years ago). I’m not at all saying that the difficulties for the relatives are equivalent to or as important as the feelings/struggles of the person...but I also think it’s a mistake when people act like you should just say “oh, ok, great, I accept you” and ignore that you might have feelings or that you are a bad person for feeling grief for the loss of the person you knew. The honest but loving kind of responses we saw...my husband basically said “I don’t really know much about all of this but I know I’m your uncle and I love you.” We made mistakes in pronouns all the time for the first few years. He was very understanding about that. My SIL (not his mom but dh’s other sister) is very religious (as are my husband and I) and felt strongly against him having the top surgery. She is also a doctor and I think felt similarly that it was just wrong to do to a healthy body. In their family, there is a culture of her giving medical advice and she actually told him that she was opposed which caused a rift between them but then she also volunteered to care for him after the surgery, using her medical expertise. She did that and he later said that it was a very tangible way that she showed him love especially when he knew she didn’t agree with the surgery. So,I’d say, it’s ok to feel grief. Only you know the individual and how honest you can be with them. Our situation was different in that our nephew was older. But I’d say find someone that you can be honest with and talk about it. Let yourself feel grief and confusion and also all the love I’m sure you have for this person in your life. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

I did the FabFitFun box last year after our house fire. It was kind of a pandemic/house fire trauma thing. We didn’t have much stuff where we were staying so it seemed like a fun thing to do and I kept hearing about it on various podcasts I listen to. It was fun to get a package...it feels more like a gift when it’s a surprise. But I ended up being very underwhelmed by what was in there. I wasn’t sorry I did it in the situation and it took away the curiosity but I won’t do it again. I might do it if it’s a company that I knew well and liked their products. Or I would do it for a bookstore. Basically, I’d say do it if you are looking at it as a fun present to yourself. But if you really are looking to get specific things or are hoping for it to be a great deal, don’t do it.

I had it done on one eye and one the other had to have surgery for thyroid related exophthalmos (eye bulging). I did the both at the same time. Both were covered, they did the test that Bambam describes. The funny thing was that at first I passed it so it wasn’t going to be covered but then the eye doctor looked at me and said “Do it again and stop raising your forehead.” I hadn’t realized that I was basically walking around all the time using my forehead muscles to keep my eye open wider. When I relaxed my forehead I failed. 🙂 The surgery wasn’t that bad, especially on the eye that just had the ptosis. The other eye was a more involved surgery and was a little uncomfortable. Afterwards, I was surprised that I had to basically have ice packs on them and lie down for a full 24 hours. I could get up briefly to eat or go to the bathroom but he wanted me to mostly stay reclined with the ice packs. It wasn’t horrible, just boring since it was both eyes and I couldn’t see so couldn’t read or watch a movie or something. He hadn’t told me that ahead of time so I wasn’t prepared with something like audiobooks. I ended up listening to NPR all day. Afterwards, my eyes were pretty bruised appearing for about a week. The surgeon had said something like “oh, sure you can go back to work the next day”. Which was true but I looked pretty shocking. And as a pediatrician, I had to do a lot of explaining to my patients about why I looked scary. I probably should have expected that but I didn’t and I think surgeons often downplay recovery. I was glad I did it. My doc was an opthomologist and plastic surgeon...he was a specialist in the thryoid condition which is why I went to him. I will say that now the ptosis is coming back. It’s been about 10 years since the surgery and I’ll probably have it again. I think it’s fairly common to have it again, but they don’t always tell you that either.

I read this yesterday and then for some reason kept thinking about it. It struck me that this could look very different if told from a different perspective...imagine someone posting this story...”My daughter has been on a swim team for 8 years and very close to her best friend. About 6 months ago, another girl got moved up to their practice group and BF started really getting close to her as well. My daughter got sad when BF hung out with the other girl and not her and she told her BF and now the BF has started to hide when she goes out with the other girl. They do things together that they know my daughter wouldn’t like. They lie about whether or not they have plans so they don’t have to include her. BF’s family seems to support the friendship with the other girl more...we think it’s because she is a Christian and we are athiests. They invited the other girl to a church event and left my daughter out even though she would have liked to go and wouldn’t have cared that it was a church event. My daughter is really sad and has tried to talk to her friend. Admittedly, my daughter probably put too much of a guilt trip on BF at first and it caused issues. She isn’t perfect and probably is too jealous but she is just sad. She’s tried to apologize but is hasn’t worked. What should she do?” I think people would have responded very differently to that story. Sometimes it’s just looking at things from a different perspective. I’m not saying that is the actual situation, and I don’t think your daughter and her friend are doing anything wrong. I just think there is a lot of drama among 14 year old girls. Daughter’s friend said “other girl” would “punish” her if she doesn’t get invited or knows about daughter and friend hanging out. But what does “punish” really mean. Maybe it just means the other girl expresses that she is sad and friend feels guilty and interprets that as punishment. People on this thread seemed to get really triggered by the word punish but we don’t really know what that means. Of course your daughter and the friend can hang out alone...but I also think it’s kind of normal for someone who has had a BF on a team to feel jealous and sad if that BF seems to want to do a lot of other stuff with someone else. And stuff that she isn’t interested in. I’m someone who has a hard time making friends and I know as an adult I’ve felt sad when it seems like people who are friends are moving on. I’m an adult and I deal with it, but as a 14 year old I might have had a harder time with that. It seems like there is some judgment around the other girl. Perhaps that is fair. But it also could be that she is sensing that and acting out even more.

I may have missed this, but could it be practical but not educational? Like is there something he needs that could also be sort of present worthy. I get the idea that giving him other hobbies is just giving him the message that he’s not who she wants him to be. But could he use something like a really good winter coat or a new backpack? I also think the idea of something like a laptop or ipad or tablet could be good. I know he’s young and you may not want him to have that. Or is there something that you know you need to buy for school and you could ask your Mom to buy it “for” him and then you use the money you would have spent and buy something super awesome you know he will actually like? If he likes Math (which I’m guessing he does by you saying he signed up by choice for a math camp) this website has tons of funny and fun Math things...https://mathsgear.co.uk/pages/about-us. There are a bunch of books on the site that my Math-loving son has loved. Another set of books both my boys like are the books by Randall Monroe...he has one called What If, one called Thing Explainer and one called How To. The What If book has absurd scientific questions that Monroe answers in a scientifically accurate but ridiculous way.

I totally get this. My middle son is like this. I say that teaching him has been like dealing with a shy woodland animal...”Oh, nothing to look at here, I”m just leaving this book about this thing you might like over here on the coffee table....totally not school...no worries...” He’s also a kid who values his freetime strongly and really hates lessons or anything that might cut into that. For gifts...magazine subscriptions? Lego has a whole educational section...I know people have already suggested that but the education website has lots of ideas and maybe would make her feel like it was educational.

Oldest: 9th- Ancients using SWB’s History of Ancient World 10th- 20th Century World History 11th- Government, started with Thinkwell and hated it so used a variety of sources 12th- Global Perspectives Studies from Simplify Homeschool (Africa, Middle East, India and East Asia); also did AP Macro and Micro Econ from PA Homeschoolers 2nd son: 9th- Global Perspectives (same as his brother); Psychology 10th- planning to design my own Humanities course that will be called The American Story- he’s planning on traveling a lot next year with his brother who is doing a gap year

Late to post...but just adding you don’t have to wait after or before Covid shots anymore. Some people are still choosing to but it’s not a requirement which is nice for scheduling.

I would say yes. I think the risk in this situation with her being vaccinated and everyone in your family being vaccinated is really low. The vaccine is not 100% but it is almost that against severe disease and transmission. So even in a worse case scenario where she contacted Covid, the risk of severe disease for her or anyone else in your family is tiny. It's not zero, but is probably pretty close.

Don’t you know anything can become an argument here? And I’ll leave with... SHOES IN THE HOUSE

My oldest did the WTMA Statistics course this year. It's one semester. He is likely to be a Math major and found it really easy. But enjoyable. He liked the teacher and had a lot of fun doing the required project. He's taking Intro to Number Theory this semester from the same teacher and really enjoying it as well. They are both light options for high school math (Ds was also doing Calc this year and these were electives) but if she has already taken through Calc and just wants something for the transcript they might be options.

I would agree that you should ask admissions. We ran across a couple of schools that had things listed as being needed for homeschoolers on their website but when I wrote to ask they were happy to waive the requirement or interpreted it very loosely.

Yay! I can finally post. DS decided on Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. It came down to that and another college and he spent all day going back and forth before finally making the decision. Then today, he got an email from the other college saying they had “found” an extra $3000 a year scholarship for him! It didn’t change anything but was interesting to see them do that, especially after he had sent in the form declining. The decision wasn’t financially based in the end and Centre is still cheaper than the other one as they gave him a nice merit package as well.

Jousting Armadillos was not a good fit for us, but I know others have liked it. IMO, it’s probably better for strong writers/verbal kids than kids who love math. It has a lot of writing and reflection. It also is geared towards being used in a classroom so you have to adapt that. And I was ttoally frustrated by the number of mistakes in the solutions guide. I used it fairly early on so those might have been corrected but it was completely frustrating. So much so, that I threw the book across the room on more than one occasion.

17 year old graduating senior is working as a pool manager and swim coach. And swimming a lot himself. And planning his gap year. He also has the goal to work through a Beast Academy book 😄. He's a Math guy and likely Math major and he just thinks it will be fun. He never got to do BA because it came out at a level below where he was at the time. But he's used AOPS and loves it. He also wants to get an AOPS competition math book and work through the problems. 14 year old rising sophomore will spend a lot of time at the pool. Hopefully he can work at the pool. He'll swim on the summer team. 11 year old rising 7th grader will dive and swim at the summer pool. And she has a few weeks of summer dance lined up.