I don't have a favorite sequence for high school. I think it depends a lot on where you've been. We did a 2 year world history sequence in Jr. High so then we started high school with a 2 year American History, followed by Psychology, then Government. I don't necessarily think that was ideal, but my kids are history haters and it met all the criteria we saw from colleges.

I have a slightly different suggestion. This year, I would go on to MUS Geometry, there is very little algebra used and Geometry is so different from Algebra, she may find it a wonderful change. The course is light coverage, very practical, and she will probably finish it in a year. Even most struggling math students do. From there, I'd use Lial's Intermediate Algebra for Algebra 2, but plan to spread it across her last two years with the tutor for support. Lial's does a great job of reviewing Algebra 1 coverage of each topic before moving on to Algebra 2 level coverage. It isn't all at the beginning, here is your Algebra review, now let's move on, but each chapter starts with covering the topic from the beginning. For students who have had a lighter Algebra 1 or haven't understood Algebra 1, it is the perfect way to fill the gaps and get through a full round of Algebra 2. It will be slow going, because instead of flying through the first part of each chapter like review, she will be learning every section. As long as you spread it out and know in advance you are going to use it over two years that will be fine. I would transcript it as Algebra 2A and Algebra 2B, because that is standard practice in public schools today - to offer a slower paced 2-year version of algebra classes that get a full credit for each year. Then if she ever decides she does want to go to college, she will have the prerequisite math skills and the transcript to get there.

I'm going to agree with others that a CLEP score does not equate to a high school credit, although I have known parents who treated it as such. There are families who use the "cram for a CLEP - take the CLEP - put the course on the transcript" system. I agree with those above that the creates the opposite of a "Well Trained Mind". Our goal in high school was to have our kids learn as much and as well as they could, not to prove they could take tests and forget all they had learned as soon as they put their pencil down. We could have sent them to public school for that :lol: . That said, we like others here, have used CLEPs. Ds took few CLEPs in subjects that his University would accept after taking a high school course over the subject and even one this summer just to meet a requirement he thought would be a waste of time (he passed that one with no studying after just trying a couple practice tests so clearly he was right). CLEPs are far from universally accepted, so make sure you look at the schools your children are interested in attending before spending a lot of money on exams. In fact, CLEPs can even be a disadvantage. For example, the nursing program dd is in accepts CLEPS, but students don't get quality points (credits * grade points for required prerequisites) for the them and quality points make up 60% of their admission score, so a student who has more than a couple of CLEPs can't get enough quality points to be competitive for admissions. So, while I am a fan of leveraging a student's learning to get quick inexpensive college credits, credit by exam is often not treated the same was as credit for taking a class and should be handled carefully and just because a student can pass a CLEP doesn't mean they should get a high school credit if they haven't actually taken a corresponding class.

Both of my kids spent their freshman year in the dorm. One was close enough he could have commuted, but living in the dorm was worth the cost for our family for many reasons. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer on this. You'll have to examine what would work best for your daughter and for the rest of your family. They are tough choices, but really, people make all the possible options work. Whatever you decide will be fine.

No, I never bought lab kits. We bought lab supplies every year and always found we had many of the supplies already on hand. I spent about $100/year on science lab supplies every year, but I pieced things together and with DIVE I picked a few labs that were too expensive and did them as video.

Just to clarify, DIVE does not have video labs. The labs are a series of still images with voice over designed to guide you through doing the lab, not to be a lab replacement. We did use the lab CD to replace a few of the most expensive labs, but used DIVE and did most of the labs at home.

Yes, ds had accommodations from the CB. Do you have specific questions?

We didn't stipulate "what" we would pay for. There are limits on how much we can pay, so they do need a plan that ends in a degree within that budget. What the degree is and where it is from are decisions that the person getting the degree makes, not us.

I'm not a fan of VBS and never was, but I have helped with it many years in several churches. I think most churches have two main goals, one of salvation and one of serving the community. VBS as a community service is all the things you mentioned, free child care, breaking up summer boredom, free food, a positive introduction to church, etc. The churches I've been in have always had a salvation message for all school aged kids. That said, I am very happy to be in a church that doesn't do VBS now.

I get comments like this all the time because I still look a lot younger than I am (although far from beautiful). Dh used to get this a lot too though. It isn't sexist in my mind at all. People used to be shocked by what he was doing because they always though he was a good 10 years younger than he was while he was in his 20's and 30s. He looks more his age now, so these comments have stopped, but it isn't something people say only to women.

I use dinner as being synonymous with supper, but if asked to define it I will always say it is the biggest meal of the day. Here that is almost always the evening meal, but if we have a big holiday meal at lunch time, I will call it dinner. "I'm planning to serve Thanksgiving dinner at 12:30." My kids would just say it means supper, and they would call that "Thanksgiving lunch", but they they also know it has another meaning for me. I know that in my grandparent's day, they used dinner to mean the biggest meal of the day, and that was often the noon meal when they took a break from work. Supper was a light meal at the end of the work day before bed, because who needs to eat a big meal right before going to bed. They ate a big breakfast and a big noon meal so they would have energy for the physical work of the day. Far fewer of us do physical work today and we have electricity that allows us to stay up past dark, and that lifestyle shift has impacted meals and since almost everyone has been eating their biggest meal in the evening for years now, the meaning of the word shifted from "biggest meal" to "evening meal".

Our mattress is 19 years old. We've had it ever since we upgraded to a king sized bed. Our old queen mattress is still on the bed in the guest bedroom. We got it used roughly 26 years ago. It does have a nice piece of foam on it now lol. We've replaced the mattresses our kids slept on as needed through the years. There is a huge difference in life expectancies between mattresses.

This has been fascinating for me. Nearly all of my kids friends have have worked. Fast food jobs are still the easiest job entry point with McDonalds & Taco Bell leading the way. There are a lot of 18+ jobs, but there are still plenty of jobs for younger teens too. My own kids are vastly different and have vastly different experience with work too. Ds has never held a job, although he is volunteering as a page at the library this summer. Pages are never paid in our library system and there are few openings for volunteers relative to the number of kids trying to get them, so he was just excited to get the volunteer position. He has multiple LD's which require him to take a lighter load of classes each semester. He uses summer school to keep pace, and schooled year-round when he was younger to stay on track. This summer he took a CLEP, is currently taking a summer school class and will try for one more CLEP at the end of the summer for 9 college credits instead of working for minimum wage which is just $7.70. These extra credits will allow him to complete his degree with a double major and a minor in 4 years while his scholarship holds out. An extra semester with no scholarships would eat all the earnings from summer jobs he could have had. He is planning to try to get an internship next summer for some career related work experience for a resume. Dd has worked since she was 15. At 15 she was a part time nanny for a family with 7 kids. At 16 she did some online applications and was offered a job waitressing at Pizza Hut, but instead accepted a job in a local pharmacy. This was definitely a case of "who you know" as they don't usually hire teens, but she does indeed know the pharmacy director for this local pharmacy chain. This summer, she chose to work as a lifeguard in a water park instead (the pharmacy loved her and offered to take her back), because it paid more per hour and she is working 50+ hours/week, so she can actually gross that $5,000 for the summer in spite of our low minimum wage here. She was also a competitive gymnast and her old coach has offered her a coaching position, but that just didn't give enough hours to make as much money as she wanted to over the summer so she turned that one down too. So, I have one who has never seriously looked for a job and one who has never been without a job since she was 15 and has more offers than she knows what to do with. I think the market is tougher and networking is becoming more important, but in this area, teen jobs are still easy enough to come by for those who really want them.

:hurray: Congrats to your son for getting so much packing done on his own! Many people will never understand, and sadly some will never even try.

I've stayed out of this thread for fear of being attacked. I've done things like this for ds. He has ASD. He talked to disability services before he went to college and he qualifies for a host of accommodations, but he has chosen not to use any. His executive function issues are huge, and while he has never argued with me about a deadline, he has been unaware of deadlines or had them wrong. I've tried to scaffold as others have so beautifully stated. There has been a huge drop in the amount of support he needed from his first semester (a LOT) vs the amount of support he needed his 4th semester (I had to pressure him to write one paper in a class he lost interest in). I've never contacted the college since he became a student. I have helped him write emails or discussed what he might say to a teacher, but I haven't done it. I certainly do know what his grades are, not on assignments, but mid-term and semester grades. I'm shocked to learn that there are people who don't know! Dh and I do pay for college for our kids and I guess that is why it still feels like it is my business. Essentially, my young adult kids are still my dependents. The IRS recognizes that, the insurance company recognizes that, most of our society readily accepts that. I have one that needs that and one that doesn't but both appreciate it. They know kids who have to do it all on their own and are glad they get this buffer to adulthood. I've always seen college as a half-way house to adulthood. There is more independence, more responsibility, but still more guidance and support too. Are some parents over-involved? Undoubtedly. Do some kids still need parental involvement to succeed at this age? Yep. Just as with every other stage of life, it is our job as parents to be there in the ways our kids need us to be while encouraging them to step out of their comfort zones, expand their independence and transition to adulthood. Some kids do it faster than others. Some parents do it better than others. We're all doing our best. I encourage everyone to be patient with both the young adults who are too dependent and the parents who are over-involved. We're all on different paths, traveling to different places at different speeds. Try not to run over those who move at a slower pace. We have the right to our paths too.

Mine are both home for the summer. They are each taking one online class. Dd has a job and is working 50+ hours/week at a nearby waterpark. Ds looked briefly for a job and after not finding one, is instead catching up with his gaming group, his youtube channel and all his other interests.

I love seeing the variety. My kids were each different. Bedtime at that age was around 10:00, although I didn't police bedtimes by then. I just asked that they were in their rooms and quiet so everyone else could sleep. My ds slept about 8 hours/night and was up at 6:00 every morning - I didn't wake him. His natural sleep habits didn't change until his senior year of high school. He hasn't been up at 6:00 in years now :lol: . Dd really needed 10-12 hours of sleep and still does. She slept until about 8:00 during high school and slept in when opportunities presented. While she functions best with a lot more sleep, she has also been the one who is best at getting up to an alarm at whatever time she needs to for whatever she wants to do.

I used DIVE with Miller Levine Biology, although I had to create my own syllabus for that. Dd liked DIVE for the video instruction and structure and I liked his tests. I always warn people to watch the sample videos from DIVE because one of my kids hated him and one thought he was fine. The samples are very representative and if they seem boring... well, it probably isn't a good choice for you. :lol:

We used Breaking the Barrier for a year and I was very impressed. It was just before the iPad app came out, so I have no experience with that. Dd switched her foreign language to the community college, but I thought BTB was solid and user friendly.

I would consider Pigs 1 & 2 :). I would compare NCLEX pass rates from both schools and I would look hard at nursing program admissions. Is it a direct admit or a separate application? Most are separate and those dd looked at had between a 16-40% admit rate. Nursing programs are super competitive. Being in the bottom quarter going in would make that admit more of a long shot than I'd want to go for. Being able to schedule some summer clinicals and having a more flexible program is extremely rare and could be a life-saver for a competitive athlete! I would make sure you talk to the head of the nursing program at each school about the reality of being a competitive athlete and a nursing student. I don't think it would be possible at dd's school and I think they would tell you that up front. How flexible they are willing to be for an athlete could be a deciding factor.

My coworker and I had our first babies 5 days apart. Hers was a girl, mine a boy. She babysat for me for awhile and used to take the kids around in a twins stroller. People used to ask her if they were twins all the time. She was always annoyed by it and started answering, "No, they're 5 days apart." and walking away. She said people would just stare open mouthed trying to figure that out. :lol:

I created my transcript and course descriptions during the first year of high school. I updated them each year. It is much easier to do course descriptions while the materials are on my shelf and everything is fresh in my mind. Going back and doing it all the senior year would have been a nightmare! All those with freshmen, for the sake of your own sanity, start now!

My kids wouldn't eat cereal ever. I always fixed breakfast, particularly when they were young. Pancakes, waffles, muffins, breakfast casserole, etc. I had a gluten free kiddo with multiple food allergies when he was little. Cooking from scratch was my only option back then. How I got the willpower - I never saw another option - but I am a morning person so it honestly wasn't hard for me. Also, I made extras and didn't cook every day. If I made muffins one day, we ate them that day and the next. I'd fix a big batch of waffles on the weekend and freeze the left-overs and heat them up (I found microwaving slightly then toasting worked best) any time I didn't want to actually cook. Breakfast casserole - 2 days. I guess on average I cooked about 3 days/week and the other 4 were reheated from the day or days previous.

:lol: Not only is this hilarious, it is really good advice. The auto-updates will eventually bring the model back to functionality. I have found the 20 year-old update to have provided the most improvement to my male model. My female model updated earlier.

The Dave Ramsey's Foundation course is secular so that public schools can buy it. There is an optional module on giving that is biblically centered.