Jane Austen. The Brontes. Tolkein and modern fantasy.

I eat South Beach egg-and-veggies to go every morning except Saturday (when DH and I go out for brunch at The Good Egg). 8 oz steamed broccoli (or spinach, but cooked spinach is not for me - other greens would do, too), 1/4 C both green pepper and onion, 3/4 C low-fat (not fat free) cheddar, 3 large eggs, grated hot peppers, to taste (or use tabasco sauce) and if you like it, a bit of cilantro). Mix together and bake in non-stick muffin pans (12) at 350 degrees for 20". Serves 6 - or you can eat 2, freeze the others, and take them out, 2 at a time, and heat in microwave, which is what I do. I don't like cooking in the morning.

Do you have a temperature baseline for her? Everyone should have one. 100 is not really a fever in some people. My husband's baseline temperature is about 99.5. It has to get much higher to mean anything. On the other hand, my baseline temp is about 96.1 and my basal temp (in the morning before I get out of bed) has been as low as 94.something (although that was before I took thyroid supplements). A temperature of 99 is a fever for me. Working in nursing, even on a pediatric oncology floor, we didn't consider a temp of 100 significant (we didn't run any blood cultures), although with cancer patients, it did make up keep at eye on them to see if it went higher. Sinusitis is also a possibility if there are allergies, though.

I know this sounds lame, but we are so sick of the same things for lunch! So, what do we eat? Usually, a very large spinach/lettuce salad with various veggie add-ins and some kind of meat or cheese or beans. Or, sometimes hummus with veggies, although that isn't very filling. Wheat, of any kind, gives me diarrhea. I have diabetes and stay away from white rice, potatoes and corn, as well as from most fruits. They just up my sugar too much. I eat eggs for breakfast and don't want them again at lunch. I love veggies of almost any type but they just aren't very filling. In fact, I can easily get into trouble with low blood sugar if I fill up too much on them. FD is willing to eat almost anything but she is really sick of my two cups of salad every day. Any suggestions? I used to eat a lot of soup but I live near Phoenix and that isn't too appetizing when it's 111 degrees, like today, let alone when it gets even hotter. In fact, in this climate, the less cooking, the better. I've turned Pace Chunky Picante sauce into mock cold gazpaccho soup in desperation when I didn't want to take time and effort to make it but that's expensive. Not exactly a home schooling topic, I know, but it is sort of related. We are doing "Home Ec" this summer - much will involve preparing meals - so some good ideas would be appreciated. Before DFD came, I just ate leftovers from the night before. Alas, she has an appetite and I don't have leftovers anymore.

Audible.com has audio versions of a few Great Courses (not as many as I'd like!). Here are some of those and other books I've enjoyed there: The History of Human Language by John McWhorter. I had seen it and passed it by until my son recommended it. It was quite fascinating, esp. if you like history/geography/anthropology, etc. Cultural Literacy for Religion: Everything the Educated Person Should Know by Prof. Mark Berkson. I am not very far into them, and to be honest, I really didn't expect to learn anything (I think of myself as better informed about comparative religions than most) but I've learned quite a few things and it is sort of bringing together what I already knew. I haven't gotten to the Christianity part, yet. As a Christian myself, am looking forward to seeing how he covers it. Regular books, not courses: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skool The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (I'd never read it, although I was born in the early 50s and therefore, very affected) The #1 Lady Detective Series by Alex. McCall Smith (great narrator!) American Nations by Colin Woodard Maphead by Ken Jennings Lots of classics Lots of more recent offerings Lots of history - oh, one of best books from the history section I listened to was Unbroken (it will come out as a movie sometime this year). It was horrible but also a story of triumph of human spirit that was really touching. For students - classics and a lot of Robert Heinleins' earlier (and non-sexual) fare -- Actually, I love it, too. I've been a 2-book/month member for at least 3 years so that would be at least 72 books I've listened to there. I listen to audio.com when I only have my mini iPad. Quality varies. We've done all of the L.M. Montgomery offerings and listened to some 1920s-1930s YA fiction (although it wasn't called that then). I can't recall the names. I listen to audio books with an earplug when going to sleep at night. I have to backtrack every morning to the point where I fell asleep.

I read it when it first came out but that was long after I began homeschooling.

See Shogi Tabuchi, if possible. I used to live near there and his show was definitely the local favorite!

My foster daughter pretty much worked her own way through Lial's. She had some trouble on chapter 8, I think, and my husband helped her. She did fine in a real calculus class this year.

I know it isn't popular on this website (many think there isn't enough practice) but I have a friend who has a son who sounds like yours and he has done well with Life Of Fred. The chapters and assignments are short but when I looked through it, I thought it looked well explained. All the math problems are incorporated into the life of Fred, a 5 year old genius professor at KITTENS University in Kansas. If you don't use it, just reading it is a kick. After doing Lial for several year (my foster daughter IS a math person) and finishing calculus earlier this year, we have now started in Statistics. But we decided to take it easy and we are just doing Life of Fred Stats. It's a hoot.

okay, a have a 2xE child. She just finished her junior year. She is already all the way through calculus, she has done Biology and Chemistry, Child Development (her choice since she wants to go into social work. 10 grade we did World History, this past year gov/ec. Next year we need to do American history and finish statistics, which we started after finishing calculus. She also had 4 years of Spanish and has some opportunities to use it. Now the bad news. She had trouble writing papers. She has great grammar. She knows the parts. She just freezes and can't do it. She says she can't think of anything. She has never really written a satisfactory paper for her age, imo. However, I am very torn. She is bi-polar. She is doing very well in that respect since getting on the right meds. She also has a history of abuse and I'm not sure the damage from that is healed yet. I think she is terrified of writing her opinions. In the past, they were criticized and she felt she was stupid. Obviously, she isn't stupid but she is still afraid she is. And finally, she is socially immature and had problems sometimes with working memory (and severe distraction - distraction is how she protected herself against abuse -- she just shut it out. Now she shuts things out from habit, sometimes, i think. Anyway....this is new for me. My sons, whom I schooled, were both natural writers. Has anyone had a similar experience at a similar age who can offer some advice on what book/curriculum I might use this las year? I have both The Elegant Essay and I have the Lovely _______of Writing (sorry, can't recall the name but the one from the 50's or 60's that people like. We have used EIW in the past, but only the intros, not the subject ones. This child (okay, young woman!) has ability -- i just don't know how to draw it out in time. I am of the opinion that if you know how to write and learn, you don't need anything else for college. Yes, lab sciences and calculus are nice but if you know how to write and learn, you can and will learn them if you want to. But I do fear what is going to happen on her college papers if things don't get much better in the next year. She will be going to the community college at first (9th grade, before she came to us, pretty much put an end to any thought of a scholarship) - actually, she is already accepted there - she had to take their entrance tests to take a choir class she took - but I want her to write like a first year college student in any school -- or better!

I wasn't crazy about it myself. But I think if I'd done a curriculum with more literary analysis first (like Windows to the World), It might have gone better.

Take mine! Still, I am so sick of math. My student, who will be a senior in the fall, has finished calculus and most of statistics. This year, chemistry was also full of it and next year, it will be physics.

I bought a downloadable book for home ec. Does anyone know anything about paper? The paper I normally use in my printer is thin and the edges sharp. I want something weightier but not too weighty (isn't that description useful?) because not only does she have to write on some but I would like for her to be able to keep it as a reference. I know paper is measured by thickness/weight/color/opacity/and sheen (or lack of). Matte that is not opaque would be fine with me - but I have no idea on weight/thickness. It doesn't nec. need to be like a normal book but close would be nice. Does anyone here know?

I've kind of homeschooled 3 only children (at least, for part of their lives). DS1 I homeschooled from Junior High onwards. He graduated 1988. DS2 was 15 years younger, so I homeschooled him K-12. He started when DS1 was still college and graduated 2002. DFD went to public school until 9th grade. She will be a senior this fall. DS1 was a quiet kid, who liked the freedom of helping direct his own education. He did have friends at church, but there were no support groups for him at first and even later, none with kids his age. With his personality, it wasn't a problem although it would have been nice had something been in place. DS2 was very social and also was the kind of kid who loved to challenge everything. I had the most problems with him but they were not really HIS problems, they were other peoples' and it was because of the kind of people we were surrounded by. For example, because he was sort of an "only child" (his brother being in college or out during his schooling), even with a lot of time spent with friends, he had more spare time than most. This time he usually spent playing an MMORPG called Meridian 59 (kind of like World of Warcraft, but simpler - it was the original MMORPG. I (and he) were criticized about this a lot but he needed something "active" to fill his mind and this worked for him But others thought I was letting him rot his brain, etc. Well, he learned a lot from that game about getting along with others, co-operation, statistics, and story-telling. He got to know the creators and we were able to meet them on a trip we took and they even offered him a job if he decided to go into game design). It was a major influence in his later career. (he doesn't design video games, lol, but it was still an influence). But people put us down. Their kids learned cooperation by having siblings - mine learned it in an online guild! We were also more prosperous than many homeschoolers we knew. We were one income, like most of them, but we were a bit older and more established, plus my husband made a very good salary. People were quick to judge him as being spoiled because we could afford a computer, a special class, etc. But spoiling isn't about how much you get - it is about how much you appreciate it. As I said, he also liked to challenge people and this didn't help. When I say "challenge," I don't mean he was disrespectful. He just liked to be - excuse the term - the devil's advocate. Or sometimes, he really did disagree because our entire family does not exactly tow the line in everything. One instance comes to mind - he caused a sensation by telling his friends that he thought Nelson Mandela was great for South Africa. In the culture we were in at that time, Nelson Mandela was considered a Communist agitator and although no one believed in Apartheid, of course, they thought Mandela was going to be horrible. His homeschooling friends (and their parents) were quite scandalized. But it so happens that our pastor intern at that time was a guy from South Africa, whom all the youth really loved and respected. They told him what my son said, and he agreed with my son, so that was sort of the end of that. But I guess what I'm saying is, we seemed to experience more judgment than other moms and kids. Then again, I think this was a result of where the homeschooling community was at the time and where we lived -- lots of people we knew were Full Quiver. I think some even assumed that I didn't have more children on purpose, which wasn't the case. Actually, son # 2 was pretty much a miracle, medically speaking. But homeschooling has changed now -- there are usually lots of groups to choose from, unless you live in a small town, and you can avoid this kind of legalism/pressure. I did have to make sure DS2 got to hang out with other kids a lot but since I only had him, it wasn't that difficult for me. I am/was able to give all my "only kids" more individual attention - that was a plus.

I, too, have used the AP Chemistry as a supplement. Sometimes it helps to have an explanation from two different sources (we are using Spectrum).

nm

I had two friends whose children used Schola and they thought Callahan was not very organized. This was years ago, though, when he first began, so it might be better.

Thanks for the info and the link to the thread. Too bad about the Kinetic curriculum.Do you know the reason why it isn't available to homeschoolers? I see homeschoolers can do their math. Perhaps they feel the physics needs a "real" (haha) teacher to pull it all together? I looked at Conceptual Physics and it does look interesting. DFD is currently waffling between wanting to be a pharmacist and wanting to be a caseworker with CPS. LOL. Yeah, I know. CPS isn't everyone's favorite but she was let down by several CPS workers and really, really blessed by another, so she thinks she might want to be a good force there. It would be sad to see all that math talent go to waste, but seeing as a couple of years ago, she wasn't sure she wanted a future at all, anything she wants to do is wonderful. But physics isn't really important for either of those paths.

Is there a genius :-) out there who is able to list and evaluate physics curricula out there there the way Dicentra did chemistry last year? We are managing our way through chemistry but physics scares me even more. I know little about it (did not take in in high school or college). I also did not take trig or calculus either place, although DD is already about to finish calc. I do not live near a co-op and cannot afford an online tutor. We do not want an honors or AP course. We just want the basics. I have thought about going with Apologia but would like to hear opinions. The Georgia Tech physics approach, as presented on EasyPeasy, looks like a really boring way to approach it (download and read this graph, that graph, this list, etc, etc). Plus it is honors or AP. We just don't want the extra work in a topic I am unfamiliar with and she doesn't absolutely need. Has anyone used the Conceptual Physics from Kinetic Books (online)? What did you think? Suggestions? A volunteer for a Physics thread?

I'm a person who refuses to meet anyone at Starbucks. Ever. The prices are ridiculous. I do have a coffeemaker. Still, I'd be more concerned about this: << It calms and seems to soothe>> I mean no offense and of course, what you do is your business, not mine, but have you considered that this is probably not good for your children? It's a drug. Not a strong drug, but a drug, if they feel a calming affect. I would seriously consider not allowing children to drink coffee until they are at least 16 or so - and then not often. Again, just my opinion. I don't mean to imply that you are a terrible mother for allowing it. Just asking if you've considered it.

I don't know for sure what happened here, but I doubt that it is a case of the school just suddenly deciding to get strict. You have no idea how many parents just let lunch bills go, telling children to charge the food when they already owe much money and have been contacted by the authorities again and again. The thing is, if they are really that short of money, they can get lunches for free or at a reduced rate, if they will just take the time to apply. Or, they can send a sack lunch, which is cheaper yet. But many people just hope if they don't pay, they'll get freebies. Here, students can get the standard non-a la carte lunch for several days if money isn't on your card. The student is told of the situation, but not in an embarrassing way. The parents are told of the situation. They are told each time a lunch is eaten that isn't paid for. After about 5 lunches, the child gets a cheap sandwich for which the account is charged $1. I think, although I'm not sure, that they'll get the sandwich forever, whether paid or not. I'm afraid I don't see anything unfair about that. I'm sorry if the kids were embarrassed, but it was the parents who embarrassed them, not the school.

If nothing else, this is a very unprofessional organization to allow a driver to come in while you were talking to the office and yell at you. You were taking the correct step - going to his manager. When the guy's wheels weren't completely off the road, I don't know what the rule is but common sense says that any time you deviate from your lane, you watch out for traffic behind you. On the other hand, anytime I see a person in front of me deviate, I am always extra careful about passing them because you never know, especially if he didn't use his turn signal. Drive defensively, as they say. It's especially irritating to me to hear this story, though. A couple of years ago, I saw the following happen: About 20 people in a motorcycle club (mostly retirees) were riding together on a road where motorcycle clubs often ride. They came to a major intersection and stopped at a light. A guy in a large dump truck was speeding and not paying attention (we believe due to drug use) and plowed into them. He was going quite fast and he hit about 7 or eight of motor cyclists, one after the other. The first ones he hit were dragged along the ground under his truck. It was horrible, horrible. Five people died. I am a nurse so I got out to see if I could render aid. There wasn't anything anyone could do for three of them - they were already dead (and mutilated, I must say). 2 more died and 2 more were injured. It turned out this driver had a long record of complaints which his company had paid no attention to. He'd also caused at least one other serious accident. I couldn't believe the state allowed him to have a commercial license. It was sickening - pure carnage and it could have been prevented. It makes me mad and sick every time I think of it.

One concern I do share with this teacher is the money making business models of such schools. Yes, I understand many private schools have always earned profit, but opening a private school that is geared toward the rich is not the same model as mass marketing. I fear some of the same things that plague the for profit universities will also hold true for these - those problems being putting unprepared students in classes, making promises that cannot or at least will not be fulfilled, charging more than it's worth, etc. On the other hand, this woman seems to have started out with a negative attitude. "While I had misgivings about the nature of the school, I thought perhaps if I were diligent, I could serve my students well," she says, from the very beginning. She then dives into negative comments about the founders and about Wm Bennett, for example. I am not even saying I disagree with her but I didn't go to work for them! And I have to wonder why she did, if she felt this way. Maybe to write a negative review? I would probably never put my child in K12 just because it would not be a good vehicle for my educational philosophies nor my FD's needs (nor would it have met the needs of DS2. It might have worked well for DS1 but since he graduated in '87, there was nothing like that even on the horizon. Nothing else she said really surprised me.

One concern I do share with this teacher is the money making business models of such schools. Yes, I understand many private schools have always earned profit, but opening a private school that is geared toward the rich is not the same model as mass marketing. I fear some of the same things that plague the for profit universities will also hold true for these - those problems being putting unprepared students in classes, making promises that cannot or at least will not be fulfilled, charging more than it's worth, etc. On the other hand, this woman seems to have started out with a negative attitude. "While I had misgivings about the nature of the school, I thought perhaps if I were diligent, I could serve my students well," she says, from the very beginning. She then dives into negative comments about the founders and about Wm Bennett, for example. I am not even saying I disagree with her but I didn't go to work for them! And I have to wonder why she did, if she felt this way. Maybe to write a negative review? I would probably never put my child in K12 just because it would not be a good vehicle for my educational philosophies nor my FD's needs (nor would it have met the needs of DS2. It might have worked well for DS1 but since he graduated in '87, there was nothing like that even on the horizon. Nothing else she said really surprised me.

We're kind of Arminian neo-anabaptist, lol. I have found many of the "world view curriculums" are very Reformed. I mentioned Reformed in another post and so want to make sure to say I am not against Reformed people - I just don't agree with some of the doctrine and emphases. Anyway, we used The Universe Next Door by James Sire as a jump off point for World View. Actually, we had a basement full of teens we used it with. After we finished the books, we continued to meet and talk about various related topics. The group had kids from Bible Church, a couple of Baptists (before the Baptists were quite as visibly divided as to Reform and not), charismatics, anabaptists, one Nazarene, and two non-believers. It was one of the most fun times in my life.