and I believe Obama will, and I want health care reform. I worry also about McCain's temper and what it may indicate about his ability to control it when the chips are down or when provoked. For me the VP choice is also critical, given McCain's age. I can't imagine him choosing someone I'm likely to support, because I think he's likely to choose someone more conservative than himself.

impossible. Maybe you could ban threads about people running for public office? Everything we say and do has political significance. Personally I think people should agree to disagree about politics, and remain polite. I think links to propaganda videos and sites should be banned, period. Spreading that stuff only makes the jobs of PR folk easier-they call it "free press".

I totally support a nationalized system. It is fair. It would prevent many of the abuses we have now that increase costs. It would return the focus to prevention, where it needs to be. It would certainly not be perfect, but in my mind it is more just than what we have now. Health care is not a "good" or service in the same way that groceries and electronics or banking are and IMO should not be handled the same way economically. Our current system incentivizes the wrong things-getting sicker, staying longer in the hospital, having expensive procedures, and de-incentivizes preventive measures like mammography and pap smears that are known to save lives. It encourages people to gamble with their money, because they know that the state will pay for the cost of any catastrophic illness. They cut corners on preventive visits, because they are still expensive. It's all wrong. Good health care should provide each person with a minimum of reliable preventive care, rather than only pay the cost if they are sick and hospitalized for a week. Delivery of health care is economically more similar t

in danger. People CAN change. He might, with your loving support. I know is one of my boys did this, I would be very very sad, scared, worried, everything. But none of that helps either of you. Don't express your fears and worries. Tell her you love her, apologize for judging, say only what you can honestly say that is positive. No situation is all bad! My friend was HATED by her IL's for years, because she was not Catholic. Fast forward a decade, and she is the favorite DIL-because she was patient with them, showed them she was a good mom and wife, a honest, reliable DIL who loved their son. The other DILs have all revealed their petty, dishonest and unkind hearts, and the superficial reasons they initially were favored have grown less important. I can imagine how hard it must be to see your daughter's potential seemingly thrown away, but as others have said, grieve privately and show her a brave, accepting face. No one knows the future. Supportively, Catherine

the CC won't allow anyone to take college level chemistry without this class. I plan for him to do AP chemistry next year, so a basic intro is OK-he hasn't seen this subject before. Thank so much for your input!

My ds was homeschooled for 7th and 8th grade, in school for 9th, now wants to remain homeschooled through high school. He is very interested in science, math, and languages. No definite career plans but I can imagine him an academic-he's interested in things like linguistics and theoretical math. He's also a swimmer. Math-I will attempt with Lial's precalc. We will use Lial's Intermediate Alg as needed, and Schaum's Outlines for Trig, Alg 2 and Pre-cal as we need them Science-high school level chemistry in one semester at CC. Spring??? English-Literary Lessons from LOTR, VCR and online Classical Writing course Spanish-online tutoring program, self-paced Chinese-through a local "chinese school" American History-TC course, variety of resources including A People's History (Zinn) and A History of the American People (Johnson). Will attempt AP if we both feel he's prepared. Linguistics-he's designing his own course Rhetoric-I will attempt using the New Oxford Guide to Writing, A Rulebook for Arguments, and Thank you for Arguing He also plays the violin. Visual art??? Is this remotely doable? He is fired up to take on everything but I don't want either of us to be overwhelmed or discouraged. Have I missed anything? Thanks!

Looking at any other responses! I'm so glad to hear it is working for some of you already.

and this was extremely effective for me. I had quick intense labors and what I most needed to do was to "get out of the way" somehow to let my body do its thing efficiently. Once I had mastered staying totally limp and relaxed, I just practiced doing that with every single contraction. My dh also learned how to rub my hands and feet, very gently, for an hour straight-LOL. It felt heavenly. When you get to transition, it is important to still relax as throroughly as you can, which I managed, but started moaning to manage the pain at the increasingly long peaks. After I moaned-Loudly-for about 2 minutes straight, I just felt a huge push happening. As soon as you begin to believe you can't possibly manage it any longer, the baby comes. Progressive relaxation is an anxiety control method that you should be able to find lots of information on. It is very helpful during labor.

Thank you especially to Lori for taking your time to write out such a thorough list. I confess I've spent so much of August trying to put together tenth grade on very short notice that my second grader's supplies have been overlooked. This will really help me. Catherine

I found TWTM recommendations for this age group vague-is it me? We have a Robin Hood, and will bet St. George and the Dragon, and a retelling of Beowulf, and of Sir Gawain. It seems like the year's focus was very heavily on Shakespeare. We will do some Shakespeare, but what is missing? Any ideas for historical fiction or retellings of other great stories that are not included on SWB's second grade list? We are a predominantly secular family, but will learn or study almost anything : )

From him, I immediately learned that babies are people and have minds of their own and some very definite ideas about what they do and don't like. Like bottles for example, and pacifiers, and sleeping alone. I learned that some kids just do NOT do what seems to be "usual" or "normal". I learned that a strong will is a hard-wired phenomenon, and that despite my desperate hopes, it was not going to be grown out of. I learned not to give advice to women who were expecting their first baby, because it would be impossible to persuade them that they are not different from everyone else. Reality is a far far better teacher!

I don't know if the Chemistry course has the workbooks; for Bio there were 2 for the year, and 2 teacher workbook guides with answers. These were definitely the most useful aspect of the course-lots of critical thinking questions and problems to stimulate looking at a particular set of facts in a different way. One example was to write out the course of a red blood cell in one complete round trip from the heart through the body and back to the heart. The Bio lab book came with a copy of answers\solutions and a lab guide that I did not order-perhaps it comes with each lab book. The Bio labs were useful and perhaps more doable at home than Chemistry labs would be. We extracted chlorophyll from a leaf (very cool!), dissected preserved organs (order cheap from Carolina lab supplies or homesciencetools), sketched a dissected kidney, demonstrated diffusion, etc. I love Singapore's critical thinking approach to math and science. HTH.

His neighborhood, Rodgers Forge (though in the press, they place him in Towson, which is the much larger town surrounding it) is 5 minutes away from mine. The pool record board at Meadowbrook still lists many of his childhood, records, like for the under 8 fly and 9-10 back. So, no, I don't personally know the guy, but I feel close at least! Did anyone see the finals of the men's 400 free relay?? Wow, wow wow what an amazing race! I will *never* forget the look on the French teams' faces. If you are interested, look it up on NBC's website. We are swim geeks here!

that I found for my son when he announced that he wanted to take Chinese. yes, for those who are careful readers, you'll remember a few months back he wanted to study Arabic...anyway, our city has a Chinese School for learning the language and culture, mostly directed at Chinese-American families whose children are not fluent in Chinese. I wouldn't be surprised if there are similar schools for Korean. Our local Chinese school welcomes any student so ds will take the language there. Best of luck!

I am checking all of them out. Any other suggestions anyone?

but youngest is not a natural despite excellent reading skills. I found All About Spelling and it is great! It is a phonetic spelling program, using the Orton-Gillingham phonograms used in reading instruction for dyslexics. Ds is just 7, going into second grade, and we finished level A and will start B this fall in second grade. I highly recommend it. It teaches explicitly spelling rules, and I SEE him remembering and implementing these when he is writing. AFter school starts and we review, and make sure he has retained through the summer, I'll sell level A. Best wishes. I was stymied too!

I just rather quickly started labor, and within 3 hours, he was born. I walked plenty during that time and had some pretty good contractions during those walks, so maybe that helped. The baby has to come out sometime! I'll be thinking of you and hoping you get a quickie like I did. Hard and fast is my style.

I plan to use more than one book, and would really like to get at least a couple that are pretty biased toward one point of view. I've got Zinn's A People's History as my lefty choice sort of already chosen, but are there other good ones? I'm looking for books that are well-regarded by the audience they are intended for. So lefty or righty-give me your recommendations. I want my son to read both, so that he begins to appreciate the way that things can be slanted, yet still true, if you know what I mean.

I do know aobut the time requirements for credit, though our school only requires 120 hours. Still, we will probably use the 160 hour definition, just to fit subjects in. I am going to encourage him to start Chinese in the spring when Chemistry is done. I agree that one science is probably. Computer scienc in the summer is what we will do, too. He wants to work or volunteer, so I want to keep s little time for that during the year, then if he chooses a summer course, he won't miss out totallyon w rok or volunteer experience. I didn't mean to make it sound as if he's never been homeschooled. He was for 7th and 8th grade. He knows now that the social experience of high school was definitely not all it was cracked up to be-LOL. Thanks again for your help.

I have the child who cant' say no to anything and he wants to take *everything*, right now. One year of public school has done that... So what he wants: CC chemistry, one semester course, Physics with Mom in spring Lial's precalculus, supplemented with Schaum's Outlines and Thinkwell Computer Science, one semester at CC Online Classical Writing course-thank you to the person who recommended this! English-see above, plus VCR, and another course, maybe Literary Lessons from LOTR? Chinese-beginning Spanish-level 2 self-designed linguistics course-???? he hasn't worked on this much yet AP American history-still trying to put this together. I'll use several texts, Teaching Company, History of US, and primary sources violin\orchestra swimming, squash, karate Can one person do this?? I am trying to urge him to curtail his ambitions and delve deeper rather than dabbling in too many things at once. He only decided to homeschool 3 weeks ago so I am scrambling a bit. I think both of your plans look much more sensible and focused.

I am investigating your ideas right now!

I think I will order these. They are in expensive on Amazon and will serve as supplements.

Ds got several of these from the library yesteday and they look like good, nuts and bolts listings of topics covered in each discipline, trigonometry, college algebra, etc. What I am wondering is if they are complete. I am thinking of using them for definitions, for guides to make sure we've covered everything. I know that is impossible!

suggestions? He'd like to take the AP exam, and I'd like something as self-guided as possible, and I just don't know where to begin! I don't object to using religious sources like Notgrass, but I do prefer a range of secular and non-secular materials. Please help!

younger, lost 2 when he was a little over 6, now is 7 and still no more loose ones. It never occurred to me that it was not normal!