You may want to check more closely at the cc and ask more questions. I see a huge number of students trying to get a nursing degree who end up stuck in the general education classes and never get accepted to the nursing program. Be sure to check the wait-list, the prerequisites, and if they have guaranteed admission. Be aware too that nursing courses sometimes are only offered at certain times and locations. That's the extent of my knowledge... just be sure you don't end up taking courses and then don't get into the program. Good luck!

Dh worked to make up his parents expected contribution as well as his own. Each year he was supposed to contribute more since he had earned more. :glare: He graduated in a bit of debt although we did manage to get it paid off in the 10 years, so that was good. He also was at a state university so tuition wasn't as bad - and this was before textbooks were so expensive. The most I paid for a text was $80 and that included software. The calculus text was only $50.

We did Hobbit as a family read-aloud last year. This year ds wanted to read LOTR - and he did. He just enjoyed the story for the story. We may use Literary Lessons when he's a lot older and he may enjoy seeing more depth to the stories returning to them years later. We tried watching the movies, but ds wasn't happy with The Fellowship.... He said he prefers keeping the characters as he imagines them. :D

We've had no problems with ours. They work fine in our ceiling fans and last a lot longer than the traditional bulbs. I think the first set of CFLs we had lasted about 5 years (these were when each bulb was about $20) and the current ones seem to last about 3 years. Much nicer! We drop off used CFLs at our Home Depot for recycling.

If it's only one or two words, I move to the next step and continue to review. I don't check off the prior step until I feel that all words are mastered. I will occasionally just write a word or a dictation phrase in the next step to continue to review. Right now we're working on Step 22 (compound words) and 23 (plurals). I figure with a couple more days I'll be comfortable checking off 22 and moving on to 24 while we keep reviewing 23. Without having a student book, my son doesn't see where he is, so working on a couple of steps at a time doesn't seem to be an issue for him - and whenever I say, "You can check that step off on the progress chart," it seems to be a treat.

We're finishing up Level 1 now (only found AAS in March). My son's had difficulty when he doesn't segment a word, so having your daughter say each sound as she writes it, then repeat the word looking at the overall spelling may help. It may be that more work at the board with tiles would be good. If the issue seems to be more with your accent, you could be online and have the words read by dictionary.com ... I know the author does mention "pronounce for spelling" when she talks about some words (forget exactly where this was... but I think it's mentioned a couple of times). Good luck!

:grouphug: Hope you can find some ways to handle things in the best way possible. Sorry for the stress, anger, and frustration.

Yup. They're kind of like felt tip pens for the line size. You may be able to find them at Staples or Target. We've got a pack with just red, blue, green & black.

We're in 3A right now. I use the text, WB, CWP, IP, some of iExcel (more bar model practice & solving problems approaches), and some Miquon. We started using the Extra Practice book last year because I wasn't feeling there was enough drill for my son. I wouldn't worry about the length of time math takes, but I would continue to check that there is mastery. We use the placement tests from the Singapore site at the end of each text. If scores were low I'd review before moving on. I also have the Spectrum Math workbooks and use some pages from them anytime I feel my son's struggling with a concept and needs extra practice. I think the Standards Edition does a better job of including more review and more practice than the US edition (we used US for 1 and moved to Standards with 2). My son took the CAT last year and made some arithmetic errors on the computation portion that he shouldn't have, so sometimes testing just goes wrong. I've read about people using the Tests book as extra practice as well.

Wild... I was there from 90-94 (Dh was 89-93). I lived on DP for 2 years & every weekend I saw a lot of partying (or heard a ton of it). I never lived on campus though - Trop the first two years, then an apartment on DP. It seemed that every year at least one student fell off the cliffs from being drunk. It seemed that I biked to campus past a burned out couch at least once a month. I never understood the point of burning furniture. :confused:

UCSB was #1 when I was there. They've dropped! Still got a good education. Had the most amazing Shakespeare professor and some really wonderful English professors. When I read some poetry to my son, I hear some of my professors. :001_smile: I was not a partier, but boy was Isla Vista a slum. I miss the ocean, the bike paths, the Arlington theater, the weather, the excellent bus system. I don't miss burning couches in the street.

:iagree: My marriage isn't threatened in any way by what goes on in other people's relationships. Although if you want to really defend marriage, you shouldn't allow remarriage. I get so very frustrated by the hypocrisy I see. :glare: Who do you find with "wide stances"? It's not the people arguing for gay rights. I think the 2nd amendment is to have a militia - not for individual gun rights & certainly not for some of the weapons we have now.

I'm just working the problems in the Lab Sheet Annotations. I am good at writing very small :)

I've emailed Singapore, AAS, and Artistic Pursuits publishers when I find errors. They make notes and say they'll make corrections in future printings or post on their errata lists. I've also gotten quick responses back from them, so they're staying on top of things. I'll keep buying from them :) I don't think I'd try more than once to get someone to take my corrections. And depending on how egregious the errors are, that might stop me from using their books in the future. You can tell a lot about a company by how they handle mistakes.

You may want the HiG for some ideas. Toss the TG - you don't need it and certainly don't need both. Instead, add in the Intensive Practice books :D (They're good for challenge problems - they don't match up exactly with the Standards Edition, but they work well.)

Nifty! I didn't know that. Their margarine works really well for baking (and cooking). I still miss real butter on my popcorn though (sigh).

Some Fleishman's are dairy free, others aren't. I don't know if they contain soy. Earth Balance is dairy free (and tasty!) but it does contain soy (checked ours). Safe chocolate chips: Enjoy Life. I think you can get mixes that are free of the allergens. Check Cherrybrook farms. May let you have brownies :)

Same is true for Sentence Island.

We're doing WWE 2 along with the MCT Island level. What I'm liking with WWE is the narration. My son's having some difficulty with it, so WWE is giving good reinforcement. I'm very impressed with the grammar in MCT.

TI-30XIIS It's cheap but uses the same keystrokes as the graphing calculators (83/84/NSpire). You can get it online or at any office store, Target, Walmart. For what you're doing now, this is going to be plenty. Personally, I'm anti graphing calculator as a general rule until you're in precalc. They're a useful tool in many ways but all too often they're misused. You can always get a graphing calculator later - and you'll be familiar with the basic keys/keystrokes from the 30xiis.

I'm not as familiar with the ACT, but the college I used to work at did place students based on the SAT and it was a terrible decision. You need a placement test that actually tests specific math knowledge. I don't know if the ACT does that or not. Taking calculus for the first time at a cc is not necessarily a problem. What a student needs for calculus is a solid foundation in algebra (and trig if it's a trig-based calculus). For algebra, minimums include (and I may be forgetting some things): exponential rules (need these cold - they're about as important as times tables), arithmetic with rationals, solving quadratics (factoring & quadratic formula). For trig, unit circle / basic trig identities (sin pi/4 etc). Pythagorean identities. It's been a while since I last taught calculus, so I really may be forgetting some things. If your son is pretty confident with these concepts (can do problems with them without looking anything up), give the calc class at the cc a try. If it looks too tough in the first week he probably can still drop back to a college algebra course.

I disagree with some of his approaches & we're on opposite sides of the spectrum politically, but I do find some pieces of his advice useful. I do like that he pushes parent-led approaches. It is a nice counter to too much of the child-led parenting. Thought the link to WTM was interesting though. :001_smile:

I teach math at the community college in the evenings. When ds was younger, I taught 4 classes, so I'd be gone 4 nights - leave the house at 5, get back about 10. It wasn't so bad, although dh and I rarely spent much time together. I'd intended to move to days when ds started school. :glare: Now that we're homeschooling, I only teach 2 classes in the evening. I took off summer semester last year since the classes didn't get enough students and were canceled. I really liked the break and so took this summer off as well. Fall semester starts in 2 weeks. EEEEEEK! I don't wanna go back. The start of a semester is always a bit rough and I don't want to deal with the transitions, with eating dinner at 10pm when I come back, with the emailed questions, and with the attitude from students who think that since they took algebra in high school they learned algebra. Sigh. Burned out? A bit. However, every semester I do have students who have felt beaten down by math in the past but who are hard-workers and succeed when they didn't think they could. They're wonderful to help along their journey. So I know there'll be good too, but I'm just so tired.

Column on 8/3 mentions classical schooling and WTM (not homeschooling - just the classical approach). It was in our paper today.

I would strongly recommend NOT just trying to find words and memorize. That causes loads of problems in multi-step problems or in problems where the wording is different. Instead, teach problem-solving approaches. For the problem you provide, I'd have your daughter draw a picture. When you do that, you see what operation is needed much quicker. In teaching word problems, I recommend my students use words for the set-up as an in-between stage. That's not going to work nearly as well at this level as the pictures, but it would go like this (generally with the picture): (bird cage) + (bird) = <<then think... would this make sense? what would it represent? No, can't work, then the bird is on top of the cage.>> (bird) - (bird cage) = <<Hopefully she'd notice that the subtraction is going the wrong way here.>> (bird cage) - (bird) = <<Yup, this is going to tell us how much space the bird has in the cage.>> I find many many students have learned word problems by just attempting an operation (wild guessing) and then see if the answer matches. If it doesn't they generally give up. Using words to set up the problem as an inbetween stage really does help - but it is SLOW going at first. Speed is only going to come with a LOT of practice. You might go through a number of problems yourself first and just work with her on getting the problem set up - not on finding the answer. (I really am liking the Singapore bar models with my son, even though the approach is different than how I'm used to teaching. You might check them out.)