On Facebook there was an ad for 30 dollars for 3 months and it implied it would stay at an average of 10 a month after that. I guess I will see! I was paying 20 a month but dropped it in a effort to cut back on subscriptions. That lasted a month, lol. My oldest dd and my husband love having access to these whenever they have free time!

Our personal experience -- We used Singapore without a solutions manual, and only used Intensive Practice (which has the answers in the back, just not the solutions). My son loved math and was very math intuitive (which sounds like your son) and we rarely needed to check the answers, honestly. I also skipped a LOT because there was no sense in doing it if somehow, magically, he already understood it. So we compressed grades 2-5 into one year and then started Pre-A with Art of Problem Solving. He liked Singapore IP, but what he loved were all the extra math resources I found for him. I used Quark's list of math resources along with any other things I could glean from other math oriented posts, and he just read a ton about math on the side and always came excitedly to show me some new concept he had learned. Some of these resources were things like Murderous Maths, Penrose the Mathematical Cat, The Number Devil, Martin Gardner Puzzles, I signed him up for Brilliant which sends out problems to work on, he watched Vi Hart Videos... etc. It really nurtured him in those arithmetic years. I don't really get into math myself, so I have always been the librarian, providing resources whenever they were needed. It's been working so far, and now we are just shelling out money for Aops online since we are beyond the point of me even being able to help with his homework. *When my son was in PS K and 1st he took the longest time to do his math homework, which was like circling the number 5 or adding 2+7. Because he was so bored to tears, he just hated it. I was afterschooling then and I would pull out the Singapore grade 3 or 4 and he would whiz through that in record time. Its awful to be so bored you literally can't concentrate! Last thing -- we would have used Beast Academy if it had come out in time. But it came out when he was finished with elem math. He still read it and asked me to print off a lot of the puzzles (I used it with his twin sister).

When we visited UCSB the advisor said many students double major in the College of Arts and Sciences, and all the gen eds and any other coursework is graded. So the only PF grades are in the CCS. My dd just decided she is not the type to stay on top of her game without grades. She performs better under stress. As I will remind her this weekend since she told me she has three midterms and a paper all on next Monday and Tuesday!

Have you looked into Santa Barbara's college of creative studies? They have a Computer Science major, as well as Math and Physics -- they have priority enrollment in classes and are supposed to have automatic research opportunities. I don't know about the quality of those majors, though I have heard I don't know where that that computer major is very good. We looked at it for Writing and Literature for my daughter and decided against it as it didn't seem to quite have it all together for that particular major -- which is good because my dd is now majoring in Poli Sci and History. We were very worried about impacted majors for my dd at UCLA but so far it hasn't been a problem. Yes, large lectures, but all classes taught by full profs and she says her TA's are outstanding -- she is very impressed by them. Other majors might have a different experience as far as difficulty with enrollment. She has friends at UCSD and UCSC. I don't know much about their experience other than the one at UCSD is extremely happy and is getting the classes she needs so far (engineering) and the one at UCSC is struggling socially -- but that is mainly the effect of one going in with friends she already knew vs. going there knowing no one.

It's funny, my husband and I were just talking about what high school classes are missing from the standard options. He voted for general Philosophy course, and a specific course on Ethics and Moral dilemmas. :-) My oldest daughter LOVED her human geography course in her PS. She learned so much.

This was definitely our experience -- being military means we are moving midway thru our dd's college so she has no attachment to VA, and her going on the GI bill meant she could apply anywhere. The choices were overwhelming, and she kept changing what was important to her because really, what 16/17 year old knows exactly what she wants out of life? ;-) We are still figuring out ourselves! We spent a lot of time and money visiting campuses, and I am very glad we did. At one point she was in love with a certain university, yet when we visited it the huge campus combined with a smallish student population made it feel extremely lonely. Another time she was dead set on a "city" school, only to find it was tiny, basically was just a bunch of tall buildings. I think the what-ifs are definitely always there and I've heard them from my dd a few times as she is struggling now at a very large school. But I always tell her she would have these type of struggles anywhere she went. It helps to have friends at different colleges going through the same things right now. They can all commiserate. My husband did tell me during the time that I should be more hands off, and I am very glad I didn't listen. I know two people here who are waiting for acceptances to come in that let their kids do everything. One applied to all Ivies and one safety and we already know he will not get into any of them except the safety (my daughter knows him very well through school) and the other one applied to only a few and most without visiting them. One of them was the above one that my daughter hated on sight (the no campus one). Another was NYU, which gives notoriously little aid (and they are not rich). A little bit of research would have saved them some trouble, for sure.

Having raised a very blunt child - these really don't sound that bad to me. And I've listened to the way kids talk to each other and they are MUCH more blunt to each other than adults usually are to adults. Maybe assertive bordering on bossy, but not really raising any flags on my part. Of course blunt in my opinion is so much better than passive aggressiveness. I have seen kids (and experienced it as well growing up) who use their words effectively to manipulate others into reacting (and getting in trouble) without ever getting blamed. I hope that isn't what is happening to your daughter. :-(

We got Secret Hitler for Christmas this year. It was a HUGE hit. I mean, to the point where the was no question what we would be playing between 7-9 every night. The only question was how many rounds would we play. This was our first deception based game, so that might explain our being so enamored with it. It was a little hard to parse the directions at first, even though game play is really quite simple we had just never played anything like it. At the beginning of the game you get secret roles -- liberals, fascists, and hitler. Depending on the number of the players (and the amount of players MUST be at least 5, which puts it out of realm of a lot of families) by secret gestures the fascists reveal themselves to their own teammates while liberals are in the dark. Then the gameplay consists of elections, enacting policies from a policy deck (not actual policies, however -- just liberal or fascist tiles) and then moving on to more elections. Five liberal policies passed or hitler assassinated wins for liberals, 6 fascist or Hitler elected by the third round wins for the fascists. With every fascist policy stronger power is unlocked for the government in charge. It was so much fun attempting to discover other peoples' roles as everyone attempted to appear trustworthy to each other and also turn people against others. The only downsides were when we started to figure out people's "tells", and when we trust someone implicitly and find out we've elected Hitler it can be a little devastating, lol. This game is best for 12 and up I think... at least my kids would have probably struggled a little with it last year. It's hard teaching them not to lie, except in deception games! So they aren't quite skilled at being believable when trying to get people to trust them.

My kids love Izze's.

OnlineG3 and Art of Problem Solving

I will only go to female obgyns now if I have to do anything pelvic related. I had a primary care military doctor do a pelvic exam and Pap smear in my twenties and while as as far as I know nothing inappropriate happened, he was so uncomfortable and nervous and sweating (kept wiping his forehead off with a handkerchief). It made me totally uncomfortable.

I stopped reading the rest after this quote- how awful. My husband was pushed into math and science by his teachers in high school and he liked it and was good at it. Majored in Engineering at USNA and hated it, but his advisors wouldn't let him change. He is now teaching Military Historyand warfighting as a military faculty and is knee deep in a public policy phd and is SO HAPPY. He absolutely loves what he is doing. My dd has college friends whose parents are forcing them into STEM. They are varying degrees of miserable.

We use WWS - I love it, the structure, the feeling that yes, we are getting everything we need covered. And yet... if we were to actually do all of it on the standard time frame, I would have a mutiny. My kids need variety. So we do it for a few weeks, and then go away and write a blog. Come back for more, then go away and work on a brochure or a presentation. And while we are doing it, I modify. I don't force my ds to come up with a metaphor in one essay (he writes beautifully but metaphors stress him to no end). I let my dd use an informal tone and first person sometimes. When doing one of the biographical sketches I had them pretend they were spies trying to make a file on someone and it had to include certain information. For the Shakespeare assignment I'm pretty sure I modified that a little because I remember my son saying it was just turning out to be a laundry list of plays. And I don't do every assignment - near the end of the book the photocopied resources were so tiny my daughter was in tears trying to read them. So we got our own resources or skipped that one. So if you like it overall just throw in some creative writing or other types of writing when relief is needed. We used a book called Unjournaling and sometimes Kilgallon when we needed a break.

Lots of good advice so I'm just parroting here... but I find that my kids thrive on variety. So workbooks are great for one subject on some days, videos with or without narration after, textbook for math, eclectic for science (lots of videos, some projects but also articles every other week that they outline or take notes on). WWS for writing, so definitely classical but I have them take a break and work on a blog or on some creative writing and don't worry about finishing it on any time frame, as long as they are working on skills. Basically we keep it interesting and are not slaves to one philosophy.

My piano teacher used to encourage kids to read while doing their Hanon exercises and scales. But she only had a couple of kids that could memorize the harder songs so she never thought about kids doing that with their assigned songs.

My ds did only Intensive Practice, but he was very math-intuitive. My dd did textbook, workbook and IP. But she did every other problem in the IP.

Well my oldest was never homeschooled and one of her high schools she attended let you retake a course for higher credit and the other let you take one class completely off the transcript. Each school had a different policy but both gave more leeway than I expected. So my daughter took full advantage and dropped a C off her transcript from her sophomore year. That was the only help she needed transcript-wise. Extra credit-wise, by the end of her junior year she was facing four b's for final grades. She had to do a lot of extra credit and pulled two up at the last minute to A's. Extra credit like environmental volunteering, jr. special olympics, write an extra essay, etc. I don't necessarily approve of volunteering to pull up a grade, but just to let you know public school teachers do offer it for students who are behind in assignments or test grades.

We use the apple ear buds with mic and the only time they die is when we wash them repeatedly by accident. I have the kids use those for online classes.

I was that kid at 20 - and while there had been issues in childhood with definite favoritism, we were at a point of starting to overcome that by the time I was 20. For me it stemmed from being home when I really wanted to move on with my life and achieve independence from my parents and I couldn't yet. So I felt stuck and in limbo. So it came out in overfocusing on little issues. I could see it with my oldest daughter this summer too - she really just wanted to get off to college and felt stuck for months before school started. She was bored and cranky and it came out in focusing on minute issues at home. But she's not usually that personality - she doesn't usually dwell on negative thoughts so it didn't last long.

We haven't seen it yet. Tickets in our area open up in March and I am sooo hoping to be able to afford them. We shall see. My daughter started listening to it when she was 15. It took her a whole year to convince us to try it. We finally did - we downloaded it on itunes and omg it was so incredible. We had all memorized it within a month. The younger kids acted out scenes with their friends. It was an obsession. It was the best writing we have heard in so long - he is absolutely an incredible artist. If they were to perform his songs at the average speed of broadway shows it would take 5-6 hours, that's how packed they are. I played it on a long car ride for my mom, who's not really into much mainstream music and doesn't keep up with shows. After the last bars ended there was a long moment of silence, and then my mom said "THAT was incredible". My mom, who rarely praises anything, was impressed. Yeah, we are huge fans. My dh and dd have both read the book and loved it. I haven't picked it up yet.

Thanks! I will look for some!

I am in the middle of trying to alleviate high blood pressure through dietary and lifestyle changes. But with my family history (mother, grandmother, both uncles and my sister) all on medication I doubt I will have much luck. However now that I have already made these changes I feel so much better, and I doubt I will go back to my normal eating habits. I am prioritizing exercise more, cut out caffeine for the most part, and we have cut out going out to restaurants due to high sodium content in everything. I knew all these changes were good for me, but having a bigger reason than just "I should do better" seems more motivating. Now if only the blood pressure monitor would agree. :)

Different every year. This year we did, while playing a board game. It was a lot of fun and the kids were happy to stay up!

My daughter loves the book Wesley the Owl and the Soul of the Octopus. She's read all the Scientist in the field series.

Maggie