I think everything we did has already been mentioned, but here goes: Live below our means which included buying far less house than we qualified for and buying used cars and driving them a long-ish time. Automatic savings, college savings, retirements savings We really never bought a ton of stuff and particularly not expensive stuff. If we didn't have the money, we didn't buy it. What we really needed or wanted we looked for great deals. I think all of these were fairly easy and automatic for us. Dh and I are both savers not spenders and we always wanted to live debt free. However, I recognize that life doesn't treat everyone so well. There are all kinds of crisis that could have totally derailed all our best intentions. We planned and followed our financial plans. However, life doesn't always allow that and I get that.

Pharmacy Tech isn't bad here. OTA and PTA both take a 2 year degree and pay very well.

My BS was pre-vet. It is not marketable. My job experience was all in computer support. My last job was as a network analyst. I'm too out of date in the world of technology to be marketable there. Although when my kids were younger and this would have been an issue, I could have gone back. If I really wanted to, they would probably hire me in support even now, but I'd have to be really desperate to go there. If something happened to dh, we have a lot of life insurance for just this reason. I'd have to start over, although only if something happened soon. We are debt free and have solid retirement savings. It wouldn't take much for me to live on once the kids are out of college.

I consider science to be a very low priority at your kids ages. However, I never combined. The younger tagged along for some experiments and hands on stuff, but they always did separate science curriculum. The only subject we regularly combined was history. My kids learn SO differently. It just wasn't good to combine them.

Fortunately for him, he is an English/Writing major and will never need college physics :). He does have accommodations that allow anything that needs to be written to be typed, he has dysgraphia. His accommodations also require teacher to provide lecture notes if they have them, so taking notes on their outlines/notes is a very real possibility, although odds are he will still mostly use his iPad using Notability and both a keyboard and stylus. No matter his note taking method, he still need something with pockets or to 3 hole punch everything - something to deal with paper.

I used DIVE for dd for ICP - 8th grade, Biology - 9th grade and Chemistry - 10th. Textbooks: ICP - PH Physical Science Concepts in Action; Biology - Miller/Levine Biology; Chemistry - BJU. I don't recommend the free internet option. The readings are very difficult and the families I've known that tried have struggled and/or given up. I liked doing the PH books and would never consider doing a Christian Biology only as there is too much material left out, but if you want Christian, BJU books are the best match up with DIVE and are very solid (with the exception of Biology). DIVE is a solid on-level high school science program. It does work well independently, although I worked with my dd. It does not prepare kids for AP exams, but does prepare them for AP level work. Our experience with DIVE is that ds hates it with a passion and would not use it. I first bought ICP when I had health issues and needed a teacher to fill in for me. He despised it and dropped it as soon as my health returned enough to work with him again. DIVE is boring. His is no-nonsense presentation of information (with just enough repetition and Christianity thrown in to be annoying here :). It worked for her though. I would not plan on 4 years of science without labs though. His labs on the DVDs are Dr. Shoreman talking through a series of still images of what would be happening. They are great when there is something to expensive to buy and they do a great job of walking the kids through the labs, but they are not a replacement for doing labs. If you kids are potentially STEM kids, I would REALLY not skip labs. Also, if your kids are STEM focused, I would consider bringing English home and spending your money on math or science, whichever one you feel least prepared to do. Math is the most critical preparation for any STEM kid.

Can you share with me how your college students organize paper such as notes and handouts? Our homeschool was virtually paperless. Notes were taken on laptops/iPads. There were no handouts. Anything I communicated, I communicated electronically. He will continue to take notes on his iPad and has accommodations that guarantee that will be allowed. He took Japanese classes at the local State U and did paper notes then and will probably use paper for math as well, but has very little experience handling paper. We need to figure out what kind of binders, files, or whatever to buy. I'd like to hear lots of options so that I can then take him to an office store and discuss and let him pick. I'd love hearing favorite iPhone or iPad aps that people use to organize and schedule too. He uses iCal, but we are open to other tools. He is not open to paper organization systems. We've been paperless too long for paper to be anything but a nuisance no matter how much you love it :).

This. I read all the time and listen to audio books too. I could never own enough books to feed my habit, nor could I get to the library often enough. Ebooks from the library have been revolutionary for me. I do read physical books if the book I want isn't available digitally, but it is never my first choice anymore. My kids do some of each. I don't think they have a strong preference. They don't read as much as I do though.

Watch the sample videos for DIVE on the website. If your kids hate them, don't use it. If they like them, go with it. DIVE is not hard or overly complex. It is a solid on-level science program. It is easier than BJU and works well with BJU texts. It will only suck the joy out of science if your kids find the videos torture. One of my kids hated it and abandon it after 1 semester (or less). My next one liked it, found it useful and used it for 3 years.

If you want a Christian text book to go with DIVE, I'd use BJU. They match much better. I've used DIVE with Pearson textbooks and with BJU. Both worked because both were on level, but BJU aligned perfectly making life easy.

I haven't removed much wall paper, but we did have a wall paper mural in ds's room that covered one wall. I was really worried it would be hard to get down because I hadn't sealed the wall (although it was painted). It wasn't a big deal at all. We also removed wall paper from the bathroom of our first home and again, no big deal. I guess I've gotten lucky, but from my very limited experience, I wouldn't let wall paper stop me from buying a house I really liked.

We've made a lot of progress on the to do list. Freshman First Day was packed with information and things to accomplish. He got his schedule changed and got into the class he most wanted! He met his suite mates and that went well. He got his bank account setup and we just got the online login info this week, so we can finish that up. He did a little looking at dorm fashions and picked a few things and I've ordered most of what he needs. I'm hoping receiving packages every few days will ramp the excitement for him. As of yesterday his AP score was in and I had it sent. We didn't send automatically in case it was bad. Things still on the to do list: The Health Services person at Freshman First Day was a bit clueless and couldn't evaluate his vaccine record for us. She did point us to a form we could fill out and submit to get the information we need though. CLEP scores still need to be sent. More shopping - school supplies and clothes, ugh. Books! The child will need books. I've asked him if the lists are up and he said he'd check. No word yet. This is my ASD poor EF skills kiddo. I'm trying to encourage and give space alternately.

No, you don't need lesson plans. A transcript is just going to be a list of what classes were taken and the grades received if any. You can think of it as what subjects she studied. So, it might say something like: English 7 American History Pre-Algebra Life Science Home Ec ... Think of the main subject areas and what your main focus in those areas was. You could have "General Science" or "History" if you bounced around a lot in those subjects and can't narrow it to a more focused title. ETA: You are just looking for a sample transcript. Transcript is your keyword.

The number of classes you have listed don't make since. I count 11! 6-8 would be a normal load. Even assuming some of these are only 1/2 credit, I think 11 courses would look very strange on a transcript. That said, we did most of our classes in semester blocks in high school. The exception was math and foreign language until they switch to doing those at the CC, then everything was in semester blocks.

I didn't vote because your poll didn't have an option that fit. I agree with Regentrude. There are subjects that have expected content coverage. Math is probably the most notable of these. Either you have covered Algebra or you haven't. The time spent has no bearing on this. There are also subjects with no standard coverage. American History can cover all of AH in one year, it can be spread over 2 years with more depth, or you could have a course that covers just the Civil War (although that shouldn't be titled American History). There is no standard for what is covered or with what depth. English is very much the same way. How many books to read or papers to write is completely subjective. Classes like this are reasonably based on hours.

I only read some of the replies so this may be completely inappropriate at this point in the conversation. My response is that the 3rd grade make it or break it has nothing to do with homeschoolers. The reason it applies in a classroom setting is that children switch from learning to read to reading to learn in the classroom. If the child can't read, he will fall behind in every area very quickly. Homeschool parents continue to read to their children as long as necessary. No one is going to leave their child with a book they can't read and say tough luck if you don't know it after 20 min. The Matthew effect does have implications for homeschoolers. They do not have to be tragic, but they do exist. If your child isn't reading well and therefor doesn't like to read, they read less and get less learning. However, parents can spend lots of time reading aloud and encouraging reading, and keep the child reading at their level. They don't have to be left behind. Parents should be very aware of the risk though and work to minimize it if they have a late reader.

I was hoping it would work for others too! Dh suggested they would have a separate mobile site and the traffic loads would be unrelated. Maybe first thing in the morning computers are the heaviest traffic (more parent traffic)and later in the day cell phones are (students). Just a guess.

I really don't remember much about going off to college. It was 4 hours from home and my mom took me I think. She helped me move in my stuff and left. There was no orientation. There was nothing for parents to do. My most vivid memory is that my room mate and I couldn't find the entrance to the dining hall and felt like idiots. Our room was actually very close to the back door, but not the entrance and you had to leave the building and come back in to get there, but we didn't know that. We ate soup in our room and I was homesick. By the next day our suite mates were there and one was an upper classman. She showed us around and all was well. Classes started and I loved every minute of the next 4 years. That was my parent's only trip to the town where I went to college until I graduated and got married on the same day 4 years later. I do expect move in to be different with ds. I know they have a program for parents and 2 days of orientation for the kids. Ds will be less than an hour away and will have his car and cell phone with him. We'll go help him unload and get out of there as quick as the school will allow in order to not embarrass him. I will probably text later to check-in. I agree cell phones make it a very different experience. Communicating with home was challenging when I was in college.

We would divide and conquer. We just had to do that when dd was competing at Acro Nationals in NC and while she was there ds had college orientation. We asked the college if it was ok if he went alone, he was fine with that, but they said a parent needed to be there. I went to NC w/dd, dh went to orientation with ds. It turned out ds was glad to have dh there, there was a LOT going on and dh got info we needed that ds missed. From listening to other people talk about orientation, I thought it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it really was.

There will be some information that has changed. Biology is a rapidly changing field. So some things will now be inaccurate, but I don't know how much. There will also be new content and possibly some content that was dropped. The changes probably aren't huge, but I haven't compared those side by side. I'll use Miller/Levine Biology for an example though. The classification system changed between the last two editions. If you have the older book you only have the older system. The newer book discusses that system but more briefly explaining that there is now a new system and has a long section on the new system. It is an entire chapter that is dramatically different. I don't think there were any other big changes. If you can get hold of a current version - perhaps from the library, just long enough to do a comparison, you can find out if there are any big changes and if so, add something to cover it.

Dh suggesting loggin in from my phone and it worked he got a 4! His goal was a 3 :)

Today is the day, but all we get at the College Board is: Please try again later Because many students are logging in to get their AP scores right now, our system is experiencing delays and we're unable to display your scores at the moment. Please try again later today. Thank you for your patience! :cursing: :svengo:

Your textbook is the gold standard, but Biology has done some changing in the last 11 years since it was published. Also, the AP Biology exam changed last year-ish and I'm sure a current book would have some content adjustments based on that. I would say you can use it as long as you plan to supplement a bit to make sure there are no concepts that are left out and correct anything that has changed.

I used LL 7 & 8, but my ds is ASD not dyslexic. It has a lot of worksheets and I consider much of it busy work, however, if you pick and choose, it is easy to implement and the book choices are excellent. LL8 covers almost twice as much as LL7 and would be fare more appropriate for high school. I really can't speak at all to how it would work for a dyslexic kiddo though.

We learned this using BJU. They teach it repeatedly. I learned something similar when I was in elementary school. I never could use it though and my kids didn't either. :)