Regarding slavery, the book Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study by Patterson is an excellent source of information: http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Social-Death-Comparative-Study/dp/067481083X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366124858&sr=8-1&keywords=slavery+and+social+death. The book description on Amazon says: This doesn't address Sonlight's point-of-view, obviously, but I thought this might be a helpful resource for anyone using Core 100.

Regarding slavery, the book Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study by Patterson is an excellent source of information: http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Social-Death-Comparative-Study/dp/067481083X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366124858&sr=8-1&keywords=slavery+and+social+death. The book description on Amazon says: This doesn't address Sonlight's point-of-view, obviously, but I thought this might be a helpful resource for those using Core 100.

Thank you!

Thanks for posting. Your wording made me think about this differently -- maybe by calling it "nature journaling," it seems pointless to dd, but if I give her more of a purpose, she might be more willing to take it seriously. She's a very task-oriented sort of kid! Thanks for the wise advice!

Bumping my own topic! And now, after having my 11yo and 7yo balk mightily at the thought of sketching anything for 2 minutes when we went to the lake earlier this week, I'm trying to decide whether that means I should push nature journaling, or totally back off! Thanks!!

Any input on this class? Is it worthwhile, and, if so, what ages benefit most from it? Trying to decide if it's worth the time and the money, mainly for my 11yo and 7yo. Thank you!

Good advice. She does not NEED this on her transcript; the school she is attending requires 2 years of a foreign language, and she has that. They also have incoming students take a language placement test, and they start their foreign language work based on that, not on transcript credits, so while it would be in her best interest to keep up with the Spanish, if she doesn't, she'll simply start at a lower level in the fall. Thanks for the suggestion to just not include it at all (if she doesn't start working). I never considered that as an option, until this weekend when we were with friends whose public school son, a college bound senior, is taking just 3 classes right now because he has dropped everything else. I was stunned; I had no idea you had the option of taking classes in high school! I guess things have changed since I was there... That said, I still want her finishing the year with a full course load; seems like the best use of her time! Thanks for the input.

Thanks; I'm going to have to chat with them. The only "quizzes" I have found are the progress tests, and they aren't printable. Someone earlier mentioned a grid showing progress, and while there is a grid on the screen when you are working, it just shows filled in boxes when an activity or section is completed, but it doesn't show any sort of score or assessment. Maybe I have an older version??? I'll try to clear this up with a rep; I hope I have access to tests and just haven't been able to find them!

Thanks for the input. I guess I should have explained the Tell Me More progress tests in more detail. The TMM program doesn't give quizzes or exams over a set amount of material, or over a chapter or unit, per se. When you take a progress test, it gives you a score that shows your level of proficiency. So, for instance, my son's scores over this year have been: 2.9, 3.0, 3.3, 3.6, 3.8. He is clearly progressing through the material, and at the end of the year I expect that he will be about one grade level above where he started in the fall, so I will give him credit for one year of Spanish. My daughter's scores over that same time period, though, are 5.4, 5.5, 5.3, 5.3, 5.4. That's what I meant when I said her scores had flatlined. To me, those scores indicate that she has not progressed at all through the material. So that's the core issue, really, is that not only is she not putting in the time she should be, but that is reflected in her mastery of the material. It is more like a placement test, where at the beginning of the year she would have placed at a mid-5 level, but at the end of the year, she's still at a mid-5 level, as if she hadn't actually studied or learned anything new. That's also why I looked for a non-traditional way to award a grade, because I don't have chapter tests or other measuring points. Hope that explains the situation better!

First, I should say that making the R level more affordable is important! We did TOG Y1 last year, with 2 R level kids at the time, and it was VERY pricey. I found myself having to cut quite a bit. Hamilton's Mythology book, though, was one of the favorites for the year! I agree with the suggestion to have your children read it, perhaps as summer reading before the year starts. Of all the schoolwork I have to battle with my teens over, that book was not an issue! :001_smile: I would highly recommend that for outside reading.

My high school aged teens have been learning Spanish with Tell Me More for the past 2-3 years. I have pretty much just let them work for a set amount of time daily, then I occasionally have them take a progress test to make sure that they are trending upward in level. That worked well, until this year for dd18 (a senior). Her progress test scores were pretty flat through the fall, and she told me that she was doing her Spanish, but that the difficulty of the tests varied, so she wasn't concerned with the scores. After a while, though, I stopped buying her excuses :o, especially as ds16 has scores that are continuing to advance through the TMM levels. A month or so ago, I asked dd to show me her planner, and it turns out that she has only been doing Spanish ~2x/week, while telling me she was doing it nearly daily. In her planner, she tracks time spent on Spanish, and I had previously told the kids that we would roughly follow Carnegie units with the Spanish, so that ~135 hours over the course of the year would be considered a full year of work. So, here we are, 3/4 of the way through the year. She should have ~100 hours, and she has only logged 60. :cursing: So - how do I reflect this on her transcript? Do I give her a D for the fall semester? Do I let her double up and then adjust the grade depending on where she ends up? And, if I do that, is there a standard formula for converting hours to grades? I'm thinking along the lines of 135 hours is an A, 120 hours (~10% less than 135) is a B, 108 hours (~20% less than 135) is a C, 94 hours (~30% less than 135) is a D. Yes, I know, totally my fault for not putting my thumb on her more through the fall. I take responsibility for that. It came about in large part b/c dh wanted me to back off and let her "own" her work more, as she is 18, and I could see his point. Although I'm not completely surprised that she did this. She has picked one subject each year of high school so far that she "forgets" to do consistently, and then she ends up dreadfully behind in that one. Not sure what that psychology is, or if I did the right thing by listening to dh telling me to back off on my first-born (he thinks it increases her perfectionist tendencies). As a first-born myself, I tend to raise my eyebrows and think, well, that's just the way it goes, deal with it. Then I feel guilty for not being a kinder, gentler mom. :crying: Also, she is theoretically going to college in the fall. If she and I survive that long. Haha. Thank you for your input!

Thanks for the school district suggestion! I hadn't considered that. As for the quality of the gowns, it sounds like I will be surprised - I remember mine being a fairly heavy-weight fabric, but we rented them instead of buying them, so that probably made a difference in quality. If they're paper thin, they wouldn't stand up through multiple years of wear! Thanks again.

Dd will be participating in HEAV's graduation ceremony in June, and we have the option of either buying her cap and gown on site, or providing our own. Has anyone done this? I'm wondering how their prices are on site, but I'm actually leaning toward buying them in advance. In which case, I need to where to buy that! I just remember ironing mine in advance, so I'm afraid it will be wrinkled and creased if I buy it the day of the ceremony. Thank you!!

THANK YOU!!! Looking for something that my 18yo dd will look at/listen to before heading to college in the fall. She is a bright kid, but I've never known anyone so resistant to organizational skills! I get that she's a teen, and I get that she's an Aspie, but this is so frustrating and worrisome to me. I just discovered today that throughout 2 CC composition classes, when she was reporting to us that the professor was giving her back compositions with grades but no feedback, it turns out he was imbedding feedback in the electronic documents, but she didn't open them b/c she thought she didn't need to, since she had copies of her papers on her desktop. Also, she doesn't keep ANY of her graded work in either a paper folder or a desktop folder, for any class, b/c she says it isn't her job to record grades. (I'll be she'll feel differently the first time a paper or test gets lost or recorded incorrectly by a professor, but why can't she take this simple organizational step now?!!) I knew she wasn't organizing her work at home, but I hoped that the CC experience would force her to be more organized; apparently not. Co-op situations haven't helped, the Teaching Company Superstar Student class didn't help (although it was great for my 16yo!), CC classes haven't helped. This is a kid who has to learn by the school of hard knocks, I guess, but it's still frustrating. Anyway, thank you all for the links and resources! They'll be helpful with all my kids, and hopefully something will click for my oldest. :thumbup1:

:iagree: I have tried SO MANY methods of keeping up with things on a daily basis!! The best thing for me so far has been utilizing this file crate system (http://dawnathome.ty...e_crate_system/), which is similar to the 43 file folder system someone posted about recently. If I have the papers and things I will need to use separate from things I need to check, then the kids can put things on my desk/chair for my review without them getting mixed up with other papers. It helps that I can grab one stack of things when I have a few minutes to work on checking it, although most evenings it gets pretty late by the time we've finished dinner, activities, and the bedtime routine for the younger ones. But at least the stack of things I need to look at appear small and manageable. Usually. :laugh: Good luck!!

Thanks, everyone! I'll check on the Fun Card option. It looks like that might have replaced the VA resident discount. That's actually a great deal, and nice b/c it gives the option to spend part of the day in the park and part of the day in Williamsburg/Jamestown/Yorktown, instead of feeling like we have to do everything in the park on a given day. No, none of us are military, although I have some friends who are and I don't know if they are aware that there is a military discount, so I will pass that along to them! Thanks again!

My ds is in the Number Theory class right now, and he felt that while the first two classes were slow the pace is picking up a bit now. He has been told that many of the classes start off slowly but become much more challenging and faster paced as they go on (this from both an AoPS instructor and a friend who has taken other AoPS classes). I don't have any other experience with their classes to offer; sorry! Hope your ds begins to enjoy the class more!

We are going to go for 2 days or so in early April. Does anyone know of a coupon code or link for discounted tickets? We are VA residents (although my board name was created when we lived in MD), and I thought there was some sort of VA resident pass, but I can't find any information on that. Also, we are meeting some friends from NC there, so any general discount link would be appreciated as well. Thank you!!

I do get really behind when it comes to giving them feedback on writing assignments, but for the most part, by middle/high school, I expect them to correct things themselves as they go. The kids can bring problems to me if they can't figure something out after checking it, and I verbally ask if there is anything they are hung up on throughout the day, but for things like math, grammar, etc. they check their work independently. My big problem comes with writing assignments, b/c they obviously can't give themselves feedback on that! I have good intentions, but sometimes several weeks will go by before I sit down and mark up a pile of written work. Not ideal, but I don't know that a teacher workday would help me, b/c my youngest (7yo with Asperger's) tries to demand my attention 24/7. Really, I just need to get more disciplined about getting things "checked" over the weekend in the evenings, so that we can start Monday morning with everyone caught up. If my situation would let me take a day to check/grade, that could work. Maybe you could take a day to check/grade and let the kids play board games, or work on an art project, or something like that, if you are feeling like they should be productive while you grade things. One of our most productive feeling days last week was a "snow day" when the younger ones played outside in the morning, and then we spent the afternoon playing 10 Days in Europe, making window stars (even the 7yo was able to make them independently after I showed him the folds), and reading about the Iditarod. I could have been grading papers while the kids did all of that, though. Maybe I should have... I have four 2-page essays and two economics assignments sitting on my desk chair waiting for my attention. :o HTH!

Thanks for that suggestion! We will try to do that this time.

One more Iditarod resource I found tonight: http://www.mountaineercountrywv.com/2012/02/iditarod-unit-study-resources.html.

There are a lot of educational materials on the Iditarod site: http://iditarod.com/teachers/. The movie Balto http://www.amazon.com/Balto-Kevin-Bacon/dp/B00005TSMN/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362359302&sr=8-1&keywords=balto has been one of my kids' favorites for years. Here is an old page that still has a lot of active links related to the Iditarod: http://surfaquarium.com/NEWSLETTER/PDF/iditarod2004.pdf. Here is a webquest on sled dogs: http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00450/sleddogs.htm.

The Magic Tree House series The Dragonling series My Father's Dragon Thanks for the thread. It has been very hard for me to find things my 7yo ds enjoys listening to (and this is my 4th child and 2nd son!!). There have been some good suggestions posted. I appreciate it!

I have a question regarding homeschool documentation for a 12th grader in VA. I can't get anyone from the school district to return my calls or emails... grrr... In VA, we annually file a Notice of Intent in the fall, and prior to August 1, we submit the results of a nationally normed standardized test showing achievement above the 24th percentile. The law requires compulsory attendance for children aged 6 to under 18. So what do I do with my senior? I filed her NOI in the fall, but she turned 18 in January. Do I just inform the district that she is now 18, and she will graduate in June, and therefore does not need to show academic progress? Or do I need to submit scores to cover her from Sept-Jan when she was 17? Submitting test scores seems silly, b/c for one, I'd have to administer an "entering Grade 12" test as that is the highest level the CAT offers. Also seems pointless for someone who's gotten accepted at every 4-year university she has applied to, but the law doesn't consider that; haha. Anyway, I don't want to have trouble with our paperwork, since I did file the NOI for her, but I would love input from anyone who has btdt. I hope I can just tell the district she is 18, and save time and $25, but if I have to have her take a test, I will. Thanks!!

Good links! I've also used this site: http://www.printablepaper.net/