Is Thinkwell a good choice? What other suggestions? She already took AP Math A through EPGY and got a 97. I do not have any interest in going that route again.

I never had issues with my oldest son. But, my 12 yr old son (has Aspergers, but is very smart, high IQ, you probably cannot tell he has Aspergers if you met him) defies me quietly all the time now. Yesterday, I told him to work on his science project and asked him what he was doing it on. He had already told me before. I said all this in a very nice tone, so no issues there. But he just walked off on me, right past me and refused to answer. His dad had to go to him and force him to come back and answer. Then this morning, I was cleaning and he was just standing around. I asked him to please go up to my closet and bring me down the laundry basket. He walked up the stairs, but then started playing (we have a game room at the top of the stairs, but it is an open room, meaning I can hear everything downstairs). I reminded him to go get it, and he suddenly got quiet. I called out his name, and he held perfectly still. I finally said "I know you are there" and he refused to answer. Then I told him he was grounded for refusing to do what I asked. My husband seems to have great luck with him these days. I am wondering if I just need to hand over the responsibility for this to my husband. Thanks for your help in advance!

There is actually nothing going on around the house. He just simply realizes he can get out of his school work by wandering off. It really is just a discipline issue. I may need to get more scheduled. Maybe even post a schedule of what we are doing at what time and make him get up by a set time. That is something that i do not do that I probably should be doing.

It will go like this. He has his lessons and I have 2 toddlers. So, I will work to get him out here. We have the dining room and then a room we use for a classroom, and whatever. It is set up for the classroom, but, the kids will hang out there for other things sometimes, like making art projects. Anyway, I will work on his math lesson with him, and then tell him to finish his independent portion. He can stay in the dining room, which is just a doorway from the living room. But I turn to come back in and see how he is doing or teach the next lesson. But he has run off. So, I go get him back and tell him he has to sit down until his lesson is done. he protests and says he is doing it in his room. Or, he simply does not do it. I get him to finish. But instead of telling me so that we can move on to the next thing, he runs out again. Then again, I have to go drag him back and tell him we still are not done, show him, again, what he has to do for the day. And let him know we have plenty of other things we can do if he just stays and gets it done, like go to the park, or lots of things. Finally, the end of the public school day comes and kids are out or calling. Siblings have their work done. They want to play. And I have to tell him he cannot because he refused to do his work. He grunts at me.

DS12 always just wants to hang out in his room. He has Aspergers, but we went this with his older sister, who does not have ASD. Has anyone dealt with this? It got bad enough with his sister that I eventually gave up on home schooling. She would refuse to come out of her room. Once I got her out, she would dash back at the first chance. So I was constantly retrieving her. And we live in a 2 story house, with her room up the stairs and around the corner. So when she would do this, I would have to climb the stairs and go to her room and pull her out every time. Now that DS12 has his own room, I am going through the same thing. I will try to give him a lesson, turn to help another child, and look back 1 minute later and he has dashed off. I see a few solutions. 1) make him go back to sharing a room with his younger brothers. This was a problem because they kept fighting. But by forcing it, it would likely keep him from laying around his room all day (he lays in bed or sits at his desk). 2) just keep fighting it (which is possible too). I could move his desk to the room that has another desk, and move his bed back to his brothers' room. (that would be 3 boys sleeping in a room) and turn his bedroom in to a guest room/playroom. I have needed a downstairs playroom (we have 2 playrooms upstairs, which only happened that way because the one room is open and the other room has a hot/cold issue and his too big to be a bedroom). Does anyone else have this problem? And how would you solve it?

So sorry about the tumor!! So happy about the scholarship though!!!

The secular group did specifically say no Christians. It was a big deal, happened a few years ago. I don't know if that group is still there. We are in a small town basically, out from a large city. We don't have much.

I would never use a reading curriculum, if that is what you are asking about. I would let my child pick whatever books he or she wants. I like to back things up, sometimes, to get things going, with bookadventure.

Nothing wrong with an hour on math. Schools usually devote more than an hour on math, and then send the kids home with homework after that. And a good basis in math is extremely important.

Figure out why you are burned out. If it is just that you do not like what you are teaching, change it. If it is marital issues, work on that. If it is a lack of outside stuff, look for something outside of classroom work, etc. A coop is not the only fix, and it will only help with some things.

My daughter, who is 17 yrs old, did this!!! Seriously! I wish I had good advice for you. Best I can say is use Bookadventure and make her earn points to do things. It took until after 11 yrs old. I had to take away everything from TV to computer to get my daughter to read a book. She got to pick the books. But she claimed every single book was bad. I even took her to the library and she said the same thing. I sat there and watch her tell the librarian "I only want book about kids on a deserted island where....." and gave her an entire story line. It was awful. She did get over it eventually. I know I had to come down on her and take every single thing away leaving her so incredibly bored that she gave in and read.

Right now, my children are taking classes through a place that offers classes to home schoolers. It is small. But we have loved the teachers my children have had and the topics they taught were ones we were interested in. They just go twice a week for two hours. Problem is, nothing is being offered next year that we are interested in. We do have plenty of activities outside of home school stuff, but at places like Karate and dance, kids seem to go to those classes and then leave, never stopping to make friends. We do not have kids around us much (not ones that our kids could be friends with anyway). And we do not go to church. Next year, the Latin teacher is not coming back (she already quit in fact). And the other teacher plans to teach state history, which we are not interested in at all. We have taken a 2 year sequence of US history with her already and thought that she would perhaps be moving in to world something, but turns out, not. So I guess we will not do any classes through this place. And I really do not want to join a home school group. This is why....the home school groups here seem to focus on the parents. They do set up lots of field trips and such, but no down time, just socialize time, for the kids. So, they might go see a play or take a tour of a place, but they never just sit and let the kids play at a park. Nor do they seem to get together at each others houses. In the religious groups, they are nice to me, but, even though people attend those for the field trips and such, they seem to have their social lives revolve around their own churches. In the secular groups, well, we just do not fit in. The only secular group where we live excluded all Christians. I know there are much nicer and open secular groups further from us, but it is hard to belong to a group like that when you live far away from them. One was great in that they switched meetings between houses each time, which means the kids could get together and play during those times. But we live far enough away that it would not work out. They even had a robotics team and everything. This is a big issue that led to home school failure with my older children. I just could not find any social outlets. Suggestions? (other than moving. But I am beginning to suspect we need to move to an area with a more diverse home school population and such).

Ok...I did realize, everytime my children got more independent, I simply made another...as in..another child. Thus the reason my oldest is about to turn 19 and my youngest just turned 2.

By the way, since one cannot read mood on internet, what I said above was meant to be silly and not mean.

It seems rather drastic to <gulp> clean.....I don't know.......

I think I want to do Life Science next year, and maybe even for the next two years. Next year, my children will be 5/7th grade and then the next year, 6/8th grades. Background...we have done physics, chemistry, earth science, oceanography, all this time. We have done some life science, but only in the form of science camps at nature museums and environmental centers. I think now, for the next year, if not the next two years, I should do life science. Nothing gruesome though. NO interest in dissecting anything beyond plants. So far, I have loved APologia and Real Science 4 kids. I suppose I could just do the Botany and the RS4Kids Biology, but was hoping for other ideas too as I see some programs listed here I have never seen before. I am open to both religious and secular programs. No limits at all here. I am a creationist and my husband is an evolutionist and our children get both.

We have strong family connections to the school. So we keep being told how great it is and how it is tops in every area, and so on.

With my olders, we were plugging away at Singapore Math 6B, having done it from the beginning, and it was driving us nuts! Something about it was so tedious and just, the picture diagrams kept going on when I felt we needed to transition in to variables and so on. I remember we finally ditched the book mid-book and went on to Jacob's Algebra. I know I did use some of the Keys to Algebra, but I do not know if we needed to. My daughter is a senior now and has already taken AP Maths through EPGY and her overall average grade is a 97%. (I don't recommend EPGY, it may be fine in quality, but it was not worth the money and they have stopped issuing transcripts so I have nothing to show the colleges other than a certificate of completion). But the point is, there were no gaps by skipping a portion of 6B.

I would not even consider this college as a result. You are already giving SAT or ACT scores, a GED would be insulting and way below the level of college readiness. This is just a huge blaring sign of what they think of home schoolers.

I have heard great about Thinkwell. I am considering trying that one next. But for algebra, I already have Jacob's, which I used with my older children. And I am considering Horizon's algebra. I have not yet decided. I really wanted to use NEM, but it is out of print. I didn't use it the first time around, because I was set on following a very traditional American math type program. But I do wish I had just done NEM. I doubt I will try DM because I do not like anything that fusses that it follows common core.

Someone here suggested a super senior year. What everyone highly recommends though, is apply to the colleges. Then, after she gets in where she wants to go (assuming she does), put down the deposit and defer a year. That way, it will all be secured and out of the way before the gap year, and she won't have to explain the gap year to colleges. It turns out that lots of people take a gap year. But most will apply to colleges and then defer.

I need brutally honest opinions of Carleton College. The issue is that Carleton has been in our family for many years. It has everything to offer that my daughter could want/need. However, every student or alumni interaction we have had has been negative. I know we would do well to return in the middle of the school year to meet a bigger group. After all, we only have had a very small sampling (but on multiple separate occasions). But based on what we have seen, we would not have our children apply there. But we keep coming back to it because in every other way, it seems to offer most of what we want in a school. We loved St Olaf. But the rivalry in that town seems insane, which was another thing that bothered us. As we went around town, we spent a few days there, the townies seemed to love the St Olaf people, but not so much the Carleton people. You can PM me if you do not feel comfy posting opinions publicly.

You can be my roommate at the loony bin. I already have one foot in that door! My daughter has a real passion for music too.

They arrive right away pretty much. It is done via computer.

If our schools approached academics the way they approached sports, and stopped spending educational dollars on the sports (which are generally only for the elite jocks at the schools anyway), then we would be doing great!!! Our coaches here bring in more than twice what any regular teacher earns. They are aggressively recruited based on their success. Students are trained based on where they are and how they need to be trained. No one is coddled. In schools that have varying levels of sports teams, those that cannot compete as well go in to lower level teams. Even our marching band is very rigorous here. But academics....they poo poo at that. Our math classes are taught via power point videos that kids are supposed to watch on their iphones at school. Some children do not have iphones, so they have to wait until home to see the videos. And the teachers know nothing about the subject matter (this is usually used for math) so as a result, they have no one to ask for explanation from. Can you imagine if the football team were lead by underpaid people who know little about football, and taught in such an apathetic manner? Give a power point video to the kids and tell them to figure it out for themselves? And the coaches were only paid what any other teacher is paid. And the ratio of coach to student went to 32-1 or whatever it is in classrooms where anyone else is. I counted the football coaches where we are. It was 2-1 when you count the assistant coaches too. Just imagine a 2-1 student to teacher ratio? And teachers who actually knew something about what they were teaching..and who would be watched and get fired when they lose their passion?