Copied and pasted response from your other thread: I think it depends what your goals are for the DE courses. We just do 1 or 2 DE classes when my kids are seniors in high school. Our main purpose is to ease them in to a college environment and to give them experience with teachers other than me (or learning on their own), not because we wanted more rigor in a particular subject. In our experience, DE at a CC did not provide more rigor than I did at home, but it did provide a different kind of accountability. We try to pick a course or two in their personal area of strength to set them up for success. If it's something they will need to have a really solid foundation in for their future major, we actually prefer to do it at home rather than the CC. Oldest DS is now a CS major and we opted to do Calculus at home with AoPS because it was more in depth than a CC calc class. He took Statistics at the CC instead and it was easy for him content wise and a good expereience and a fun addition to his already very complete math transcript. Next DS is a senior next year and much more of a humanities guy. We are looking at enrolling him in Music Theory and some kind of Communications or Education class. His core subjects eill be done at home. I'm not saying that you shouldn't enroll your students in core courses at the CC - not at all! For many people that is the right choice and fits best into their future plans. For example, I know many students who use CC to do foreign language very successfully. Just that you need to think about *why* you're having them do DE as you choose your courses. And if your goal is to get lots of credits transferred before they start college, then like chuguirre said it will depend on the school.

I think it depends what your goals are for the DE courses. We just do 1 or 2 DE classes when my kids are seniors in high school. Our main purpose is to ease them in to a college environment and to give them experience with teachers other than me (or learning on their own), not because we wanted more rigor in a particular subject. In our experience, DE at a CC did not provide more rigor than I did at home, but it did provide a different kind of accountability. We try to pick a course or two in their personal area of strength to set them up for success. If it's something they will need to have a really solid foundation in for their future major, we actually prefer to do it at home rather than the CC. Oldest DS is now a CS major and we opted to do Calculus at home with AoPS because it was more in depth than a CC calc class. He took Statistics at the CC instead and it was easy for him content wise and a good expereience and a fun addition to his already very complete math transcript. Next DS is a senior next year and much more of a humanities guy. We are looking at enrolling him in Music Theory and some kind of Communications or Education class. His core subjects eill be done at home. I'm not saying that you shouldn't enroll your students in core courses at the CC - not at all! For many people that is the right choice and fits best into their future plans. For example, I know many students who use CC to do foreign language very successfully. Just that you need to think about *why* you're having them do DE as you choose your courses.

CTC Discovering Geometry was pretty good.

It's my understanding that the IEW system is designed to repeat concepts. From listening to the teacher dvds, that's pretty much the entire philosophy of the system - you teach the same types of units every year and gradually increase in difficulty and what you expect for output as the student matures and practices. Whether you have a theme book or an SWI, you are still going to go through the same units and practice the same dress ups as the system uses in every other book/program. Just the level of difficulty and the subject matter of the given writing samples will be different. And the pace, depending on grade level. SICCs do expand on the basic units a little but more, but they all progress through the same basic concepts.

My State Farm wouldn't accept my homeschool transcript or report card. I had to do PSAT scores.

Round ligament pain is what it sounds like to me too. I'm about 27 weeks right now and I have a bad cold/cough and sometimes when I cough it feels like I'm seriously POPPING OPEN something in there it hurts so bad. Mine doesn't last that long though. Hope you feel better and not so anxious about it!

We didn't go to the Dr because we weren't too bad and our insurance doesn't cover Tamiflu or other Rx's so I don't know for sure that ours is the "official influenza" or not. But we've got low grade fevers, sore throat, coughing, congestion, etc. And yes, I've had it a full week and am not over it yet.

No idea on the stats, but it was part of our lifeguard training from the Red Cross back in the day. Anybody can get a leg cramp or have a heart attack or whatever and with no one around to help you're toast. I totally understand that some adults/teens may assess the risk and decide it's not likely, and that's fine. No judgment here 🙂But for us it also helped tremendously to convey to the kids that our rules for the pool are about everybody's safety, not just about cramping their fun, and it underlined the seriousness that swimming *can* be risky. Which is not something that kids with a pool who are great swimmers always recognize or acknowledge because they get so used to it as an everyday activity.

Nobody swims alone, adults included. No kids swim without an adult at home in case of emergency. A pool is a lot of work but so so so worth it! We get hours and hours of enjoyment and exercise from ours every year!

I use round steak to make stroganoff. Cut into strips, add 1 can cream mushroom soup, 1 can fench onion soup and 1 cup sour cream. 300 oven for 3 hours. Serve over noodles. Yum! Most roasts I use Pioneer Woman's pot roast recipe (even if they aren't pot roasts it works). Steaks are grilled or broiled. Brisket is delicious but takes a while so plan ahead. Rub with generous amounts celery salt, garlic powder, and onion powder. Pour liquid smoke and Worcestershire sauce over. Bake 300 for 4 hours. Reserve liquid and mix with Bbq sauce. Slice beef and pour mixture over it and let sit in fridge overnight. Bake uncovered for 30 more minutes at 350.

This. My then 13 yo DD had the flu last year and we ended up in the ER because she woke me up in the middle of the night and said she couldn't catch her breath and felt dizzy. Turns out she was dehydrated, which caused a racing pulse, which caused the shortness of breath and dizziness. After fluids she was much better ... and as a bonus she learned she should listen to her mother when told to drink something even when she doesn't feel like it 🙂

Well, the official IEW pathway disagrees with me, but I've only ever done 1 SWI and SICC. I start out with theme books in 3rd-5th and do the SWI B and SICC B in 6th-8th and then go straight to Elegant Essay and Windows to the World and maybe Writing the Research Paper in high school. If I was you and had kids that age, I'd go with theme books until they were in middle school and do SICC B at that point.

Most of my kids have been pretty fluent readers by 3rd grade, but some have needed to finish up AAR level 4 - once they are done with that they read to me about once a week (for fluency practice) Reading to self (30 min daily from a list that goes along with history and science studies) AAS (10-15 min daily) Writing - All Things Fun & Fascinating from IEW on alternate days with finishing up Easy Grammar grade 2 that we started in the middle of 2nd HWoT cursive book (1 page daily)

Carbonite

My friend's son had a condition where his esophagus somehow didn't keep up with the rest of his growth and needed to be stretched. After that procedure he was fine.

Applesauce - In the fall I buy a couple bushel of Jonathans on sale and cut them up and throw them in a pot with some water and cook til soft, then run them through an old fashioned grinder that separates out the stems and peels and add some sugar and freeze it in Ziploc bags. My kids and DH refuse to eat store bought stuff now

Toy Story 3 for sure is the best but 1 and 2 are also good, Finding Nemo, Charlotte's Web (the one with Dakota what's her name as Fern and Julia Roberts as Charlotte's voice), Brave, the Narnia movies I could watch over and over again too but maybe those don't count as kid's movies?

We live in the rural Midwest, so lots and lots of ag related jobs for teens around here. Clearing rocks out of fields to prepare for plowing, walking rows to get rid of weeds, detassling corn, etc. Most area farmers hire teens every summer. Lots of hard physical labor, but they usually pay better than a fast food place would.

The *best* thing I could have done for my STEM kid was homeschool him because he had time/margin in his day to explore those interests in depth and was not overloaded with busywork in other courses. He did English and history and foreign language of course, and even challenged himself with an English Lang AP and Spanish CLEP (because he wanted to avoid the humanities completely in college LOL) but he had loads of time every day to ponder and grapple with difficult AoPS challenge questions and concepts and teach himself various programming languages from MIT Open courseware and create various electronics projects and inventions. IME, you don't have to find resources for a STEM kid, you need to give them time during the day to find their own resources and let them have at it, as they are usually highly internally motivated for that.

I've used both Wordsmith and IEW. I prefer IEW's approach, esp for a struggling writer, but Wordsmith Creative Writing followed by Wordsmith Craftsman was plenty for my natural writer to learn to write essays. He did Craftsman in 8th grade. Wordsmith Creative Writing is def a step up in difficulty from Apprentice.

We didn't discover AoPS til oldest D'S was through Algebra I and II and Geometry, so he only used it for Counting/Number Theory, Precalc, and Calc. But he had absolutely no trouble at all self teaching. He would have been ground into the dust with the pace of the online classes because although the content itself was just the right amount of challenge for him, he sometimes needed two days to do one problem and just is not a fast worker in general. He had already had Geometry though, so proofs were very familiar to him. Not sure how he would have done with those without instruction on how they are set up and supposed to work ...

I sure hope not, I've stalked way too many people to want that to be possible

Well, in a couple of years oldest will be driving and sister, let me tell you, the heavens will open and the birds will sing and your life will change!!! 😁 But until that glorious day, the way we handled it was just not to do as many activities. I know that's not the right choice for everybody, so YMMV. But for us, the moderate benefits of activity X on kid B simply did not outweigh the large to severe negative effects on kids A, C, D, and E, as well as on me and DH and the family at large. We were not hermits, don't get me wrong. We did weekly speech and debate (fall) and drama (winter/spring) which are activities all the kids could participate in at the same time with others at their level. And we have an active church social life so the kids still had ample time with their non-homeschool friends, as did DH and me. But we made a conscious choice not to join the rat race of activities.

Spring mix, dried cranberries, shredded carrots, sunflower kernels, feta, and a sweet onion dressing (either Marzetti's or homemade)

Echoing what others have said - high school is far easier to actually do than to read about on these boards sometimes 🙂 I've only graduated one so far, but I have 2 other current high schoolers right now, and both their academic and social lives are far, far, far preferable to what I see in their ps friends. My oldest is thriving in a difficult major at a well respected university and is easily navigating the transition, and my high schoolers have margin in their day to pursue passions and activities in a way their ps friends just don't have time for. And the ps drama they hear about from their ps friends is something both they and I are very very glad to skip out on! 😉 All that plus I get to spend lots of time with them every day watching them become these awesome and unique young adults and hearing what's on their minds and in their hearts. 💙 If your kids want to hs, then go for it!