My travel agent recommended booking tours with Project Expedition. She said they were professional and reliable.

I'm so sorry Scout. I said a prayer for you and your church community ❤️

Oh, I can't believe I forgot to add this part - we also went to Xcaret park. We are not really amusement park type people, but I really wanted to see the end of the day shows. It was a.m.a.z.i.n.g. They acted out scenes from Mexico's history and then had singing acts from each region of Mexico. It was just so good! The rest of the park was fun too. We enjoyed seeing the animals and swimming in the underground river and exploring the Mayan village. That required a long bus ride too, but we thought it was worth it.

We just went for our 25th anniversary in November. The traffic around Cancun was a bear with construction and some sort of kerfluffle between taxi drivers/Uber drivers/other types of hired transportation services. I don't know if all that is cleared up by now or not. We stayed south of Cancun and it ended up we could not go into Cancun proper at all because of it. So depending on where you're staying transporation might be an issue. Snorkeling was incredible! Highly recommend. We went to Puerto Morelos Native Park, but I'm pretty sure any snorkeling excursion in Cancun will be great. We also went to Tulum and Coba to tour the Mayan ruins and that was amazing. It was a loooooong day with a long bus ride but very worthwhile. Have a great time! 🙂

I am definitely scared of what an extremely AI-influenced culture looks like. But it won't change our educational plans at all. I'll still teach my kids to appreciate whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. I'll still teach critical thinking and literature and music and math and science and technology the same way I always have. The way you teach cashiers/clerks to tell the difference between counterfeit $$ bills and real $$ bills is not to teach them all the ways a fake can be made. You teach them the hallmarks of a real $$ bill and then they'll be able to tell the difference no matter what new ideas the counterfeiters come up with. It's the same with AI. I don't have to keep up with all of its iterations as long as I know Truth.

Do you usually school year round? If so I'd just go ahead and start Alg if you think he's ready. No need to wait til Sept. If not then I'd ask why you think you need to do so in this case. If it's because you're worried he'll forget pre A then I'd go with a review from something like MM. If it's because you're worried he needs more time to ease into Alg, then I'd go ahead and start Alg 1 now. And if it's just some vague feeling that you feel like he should be doing something, then I'd ignore it and let him have a summer off 😊 I would not do AoPS with a student who has never used it. It's not a review it's an entirely different way of looking at math.

Our 4 oldest kids were in public school until the end of 7th, 5th, 3rd, and PreK. The longer they were in public school, the more the school schedule/activities/homework took over our lives and the less time I got to spend with them. Bottom line: I missed my kids and I wanted to be with them and I wanted our family time to be the priority, not something that got squeezed in to the evening hours when everybody was stressed and the weekends. That felt like a crappy custody arrangement, not a family. All the other great things about homeschooling that others have mentioned were things I discovered after we took the plunge.

Melatonin is one of the sleep aids that I've had issues with too. I wouldn't think it would affect you that way if you've used it for a long time, but maybe?

Do you by any chance take Ambien or other drugs to help you sleep? I've had some, er ... rather disturbing things ... happen shortly after taking sleep aids.

First babies here usually have a shower pre-birth and I usually buy something practical that will probably last for several babies and is gender neutral. Post-birth I bring a meal and a gender specific outfit. Subsequent babies don't get a shower but I still bring a meal and an outfit after they're born.

I was once at the mall and heard a random newborn cry and my milk let down. It had been at least 5 years since I'd nursed my kids. Biology is a funny tricky thing.

God's Design for Life Science is for lower elementary. It's definitely not enough for a 13 year old. If you're unsure about Apologia, Berean Builders has Discovering Design with Biology that my current 9th grader is using which is similar in format. She likes it.

My son is currently majoring in communication (with a minor in business and a certificate in entrepreneurship). In their school of communication, they are specialize in a certain track and marketing is one of the track options. For him, being "employable" is going to come more from what types of internships and and work experience he has during college than what type of degree he has. He decided on the school of communication rather than business - even though he does want to go into business - because he is a leader/collaborator and business schools have more of a reputation for competitiveness rather than collaboration. I took calc at a CC over the summer back in the day and transferred it it, so I would probably go that route if I was your son. It was easier and I had only that 1 class to worry about rather than a whole full semester's worth.

I've used Wordly Wise, Vocab from Classical Roots, and Vocabulit and liked them all to some extent. WW was easy and a good thing to use to get them started with an "on their own" subject. VCR was probably the most rigorous, but some of the words are a little archaic in the upper levels. Vocabulit is easier than VCR, but some of its analogies are not good analogies and it drives me a little bonkers. But I do love that it introduces the words in the context of a reading from quality literature.

We discuss each book they read, but don't always write about them. Our writing assignments are separate from our lit, for the most part. Windows to the World is great, and I use it too and love it, but there's no rule that says you have to write a lit analysis for every book you read after that. We move from basic essays to WttW to research papers and then after that I figure they are prepared to write just about anything that life throws their way. So at that point, when writing instruction is over, I just assign them various stuff to write. I honestly think reading and discussing good lit is sufficient on its own if they're writing other things.

I'm pretty sure my oldest used a Princeton Review one.

My oldest self studied for AP Eng Lang. We didn't use an approved syllabus and just had him take the exam at the end of the year. He got a 4, which was enough to get him out of freshman comp at Purdue, which he was very pleased about. He's a STEM kid and he wanted to avoid the humanities at college at all costs lol! He used this IEW book and a test prep book and read lots of good literature. I couldn't find the book at IEW's website, I wonder if they don't make it anymore? The hardest part for him was practicing writing with a time limit. He was not used to that and slow at that.

We don't outsource much. They each have taken one DE course senior year and the rest was done by books and/or videos at home. Maybe an occasional online class as an elective but it wasn't necessary, it was just for fun. For science we do Dr Wile's textbooks which are written directly to the student and all 3 of my oldest have done fine with college science courses. It was hands off for me but didn't require anything other than the textbooks and the lab supplies at home. For math we use the cd's from Video Text for Alg 1 and 2 and Geometry and from Chalkdust for Precalc. Since I've watched the video I am able to answer most questions. The ones I can't we save for DH when he gets home. He's an engineer so that helps. Each kid is different, so the discussions about history and lit are different since each one will pull out different things to remember. And each kid will read different books at different ages/stages. We didn't have access to good Internet until recently, so online stuff wasn't really an option til the past couple years or so. So my current high schooler is doing an online biology class with Berean Builders, but my 3 before her were all mostly done here at home. They are all either succeeding in university or graduated from university and succeeding in life, so it definitely didn't hurt them any 😉

DD will be doing: Finishing Video Text Algebra and going on to Video Text Geometry Windows to the World, Analytical Grammar review book and Vocabulit alternating every other week Reading list: A Tale of Two Cities, Don Quixote (probably just the first part), The Crucible, Pride & Prejudice, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Inferno, and Up From Slavery Apologia Marine Biology with dissections US History in World Context: Great Courses Foundations of Western Civilization and History of the US, K12's Our Human Story and The American Odyssey, a few Critical Thinking in US History lessons - with weekly written summaries Continue Visual Link Spanish Some sort of elective TBD daily personal fitness speech and debate club drama troupe not sure if she'll continue piano lessons or not - I'd like her to continue at least 1 more year but at this age I'm not going to force the issue

@jplain Thank you! 🙂

Yes, we use one of the old used textbooks for Destinos too 🙂 If you get a chance to find/post the audio exercises, that would be wonderful! I have a set of old cds for the textbook and the first workbook, but the cd's are old enough that they don't play on every device, and I never did find a set of cds for the second workbook that didn't cost less than $200 so we've always skipped those. If there was a website I could go to reliably, that would be wonderful!

Destinos is great, but we do use a textbook/workbook in conjunction with the videos. I also use Visual Link Spanish, which is computer based. I own the downloaded version of Levels 1-3, but I think now they only sell the online version and I don't know if those go beyond Level 1 or not, the last time I looked at their website it was unclear.

They are a fun extra! I wouldn't depend on them for a main curriculum, but as a change of pace and a new perspective they are great! In the last we have used them as "Fun Math" on Fridays.

@countrymum It's an old timeline from Knowledge Quest. I don't know if they still carry it? And I use the Homeschool in the Woods timeline figures. I puffy heart love it because I got it the first year we hs'ed and it just screams "hs'ing" to me but my kids are just, "Meh." 😂

I would first and foremost listen to your kid and let them decide what they want high school to look like. After that I would listen to Lori D 🙂 My STEM kid was able to knock out all his humanities through either AP (during high school) or CLEP (he figured out which ones he needed to graduate and self studied and took those tests at the univeristy). He enjoyed literature and history to an extent but did not want to waste his college dollars on those courses, he wanted to take more math. We did interesting history and lit during high school of his choosing, but it did not take over his day and it was probably not rigorous. We left lots of room for the stuff he *did* want to focus on.