I haven't been to these forums for a while but I just wanted to pop in and let you all know how you can help homeschoolers who have lost everything in the Northern California fires this past week. (If this type of post is allowed!) I am sure you know from the news that roughly 8000 families have lost their homes so far from a single fire in Nor Cal. There are many homeschooling families in that mix. If you know someone personally affected, there are resource libraries for members of certain homeschool organizations which you can direct them to for help. But in addition, there is a homeschool bookstore which is teaming up with local organizations to rebuild family homeschool libraries. They will provide new curriculum for free to any family who has lost their home. However, they need donations to do this and are asking for people to purchase gift certificates to donate. The name of the store is A Brighter Child and it is in Fair Oaks, CA. You can find them online at www.abrighterchild.com. I am not affiliated with that store in any way. Thank you

That's some good confirmation right there, thanks so much. I am not worried about taking extra time on the other side of geometry, as she is only in 7th grade right now so we have time to review all this in the next couple of years.

Thanks, that's a good idea and very doable with our schedule. She read half of Advanced Math for Young Students last year, and she can finish that alongside TT this fall before finishing up review with Foerster as you suggested.

I am thinking of having my daughter skip the last chapter. She has done fine in the whole rest of the book but we are getting sick of school and want to call it quits for the summer. She will do Teaching Textbooks Geometry for the next school year and probably Math Without Borders Foerster Alg. 2/Trig after that. Anyway, ch. 14 in her current book is called "Functions and Advanced Topics" and covers: Functions Direct and inverse variation functions Function terminology Trigonometric functions Quadratic functions Solving quadratic inequalities by completing the square Solving quadratic inequalities by the quadratic formula I am trying to decide if we can skip it now and come back to it before the next Foerster book in a year or so, or skip it completely, or push through June and just finish it up.

My mom made and used those triangle flashcards when homeschooling me in the 80s. You just cover one corner for the first round and another corner the next round. She made a set for multiplication and division, too.

I am unfamiliar with online programs, but I do know our metro public library system (California) offers free tutoring to prep for the GED and they also have a free high school diploma program. The GED tutoring at the library is great because children can come with the parent and hang out in the kids' section during the session. I don't know how widespread these types of programs are, but thought I would throw that out there as an option.

What about summer BBQ? In my area it is common to start and end the summer with a BBQ party, as well as have one in the middle. Memorial Day BBQ begins the summer, Labor Day BBQ ends the summer, and the Fourth of July is in the middle. We also have the county fairs in the summer, too. I don't know how that correlates to customs worldwide though.

It thinks I speak Japanese and want to ride rollercoasters in Texas. Not related to anything in my life or posting that I can think of...it seems so random!

It may be that the simple CA requirement of needing to file an affidavit affirming the existence of a private school is what prevents public schools from being able lie like that. Interesting point to bring up.

I meant that I think it is more common in California to transfer to charter rather than private home school. I don't doubt it happens as you described other places, I just haven't personally heard of it happening in California.

I think it is more common for high schoolers to be put into online charter or public independent study programs where they can do credit recovery programs. Of course many then drop out of those public programs, which leads to anti-school choice groups pointing to charter schools as failures in and of themselves, when often they are just the last stop on the public school failure train.

Federal courts in other states dealt with the issue of home visits in the 80s and found them unconstitutional. In order to pass constitutional muster, the state has to prove that home visits would make a real difference in educational outcomes AND prove that home visits are the least restrictive means of ensuring children are being taught to read. Due process means government officials cannot come into your house to look for evidence of a crime without proving that it is absolutely necessary for state interests. Social workers must have a warrant, building inspectors must have evidence that you are renting or have made significant building modifications, they can see your trash, etc. Courts have held that the only state interest in education is basic literacy. So they have to choose the least restrictive means of ensuring that. In the case of California, according to the state constitution, school officials cannot support or monitor religious education, which is why they have left private schools, including homeschools, alone.

That is how California is set up, too. The state dept of ed has no authority over private schools. The only thing we do is put our name and address in a state directory of private schools every year to say that we are, in fact, a private school. The law currently exempts private schools with no commercial private school building from all the codes meant for brick and mortar campuses (gun laws, fire codes, etc). That's because if the place where kids learn is their own private residence, the law acknowledges that the primary use of the building is a home (privacy laws apply) and not actually a campus. The records we are required to keep (but not required to submit to anyone unless maybe investigated for a crime?) are shot records and attendance, but the law also says if you are not in a classroom based school you are exempt from mandatory vaccine laws, too. In 30+ years of being in the homeschool community in California, I have never heard of anyone having to show records of any sort to anyone but colleges. We are to teach the same branches of study as public schools, but there are no reporting requirements. It is just assumed that if a private school is bad, the parents will pull their kids out of it and put them in another one. The state is supposed to answer to parents for the education of kids, not the other way around. We will see if that changes. I hope not.

Meanwhile, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/us/california-literacy-lawsuit.html

I take three caps a day, all month.

Cod liver oil! Works like a charm for me and a lot of women I know. You can get it in pill form and fairly inexpensively. It has a winning combo of vit D, vit A, and fish oil that makes my PMS nearly non-existant. I have gone off it a few times and the difference was not coincidental.

This is really confusing because the CHSPE info bulletin states that CA law says minors can re-enroll in public school after they pass the CHSPE. I wonder if schools are confusing it with another test. I get the whole thing about the UCs and community colleges. I wonder if it is supposed to be that you get one diploma (CHSPE) but minors have to continue going to high school if their parents want them to, even if they won't get a diploma that way.

I was interested in these too, but I thought I read somewhere that the $19 deal doesn't save or grade quizzes, or any online work. I would like more info.

I am in the thick of this and I agree with everything everyone else above has written. I will add that the simple act of recording the time taken for each assignment REALLY helped. When there is a timer on the desk to track an activity, they don't zone out as much. I only have to pull the timer out once a week or so. Seriously helps us so much.

It is pretty easy to set up a literature discussion group with homeschool kids, without CC. Many of the homeschoolers I know have their kids in book clubs at some point. I grant that it might seem hard to find other homeschoolers to do this with, but I am from the old homeschooling days when everyone just met at a park each week and found each other that way. If we want our kids to discuss lit together, we arrange it. That is what I have been doing for the past few years and how I found my own community. No big $$ needed. I am willing to go places and invite people over, though. Even people with whom we disagree. I think it is a lot more interesting this way than CC. I have known some families that wanted the accountability and structure from CC to get school done, but I can't think of anything that is missing from my life that CC would provide.

Most of the group work is just analyzing sentences together aloud, which we have no trouble doing with just the two of us. It is not a program a kid could do independently, but I don't think you need more than one student. There are a couple of suggested group games to do, but we skipped them because we didn't need the practice. The most I have had to adapt has been picking and choosing which lesson sections to do, since there is way more than enough review for my kid.

I have been using Writing and Rhetoric and Well Ordered Language for my 3rd grader this year and we love it. Both were reviewed in a couple threads here in the past week or two. Sorry I don't have the links for you. Maybe search for my posts and they will come up?

I tend to think this is a middle class concern. I live in both middle class circles and in poor, low-income, or working class circles. In the middle class circles, there is a LOT of anxiety about possible neglect and criticism of parents, conventional and homeschooling alike. In my other world, as long as parents trust the experts, the parents are deemed released from responsibility for the outcome. The end result is that I know a few adults who were homeschooled and who are fully literate and successfully run their own businesses, yet complain their education was neglected. And I know many more adults from low-income backgrounds who can't read above a third grade level and were either severely bullied, sucked into violent street gangs, or ended up in prison, and they don't consider their education to have been neglected. It was handled by experts, after all. I think expectations are based on social class, and homeschooling opens parents up to scrutiny that wouldn't ordinarily be applied if they just passed responsibility to the "experts." I am not saying that a lot of homeschool parents can't or shouldn't do better, but I think we should really think about how we define "neglect." As a side note, I currently know dozens of homeschooling families in my local area well enough to know that not a single one is neglecting their children socially or academically in any way. Not saying neglectful homeschool families don't exist, but I don't believe they are common, at all.

We have been using it for a few years now and we love it. All my kids enjoy writing and I believe it is because we use W&R. It is my dream writing program. I do supplement with CtGE for additional mechanics, outlining practice, letter writing forms, etc. We definitely plan to finish the series.

The thing with six or more students has nothing to do with fire code currently. It can be confusing... but the numbers about five/six just have to do with a public directory of schools. All schools in private homes which are just parents and their own kids have been exempt from school fire codes, regardless of student numbers. The new law would require the fire department to inspect all the homes and because the state doesn't publish a directory for < 6 kids, the new law would make the ed dept create a new list of the < 6 for the fire department, too.