Gwen in VA
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Posts posted by Gwen in VA
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We do best in actually meeting goals when we have ONE! So my goal for my dd2 next year (will be in 7th grade) is WRITING, and that's it. Everything else will go on autopilot, and I will plug away at it as usual, but I will consider the year a success if her writing has improved considerably.
Somehow having more than one goal per child seems to muddy the waters!
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I second pmegan's post in toto.
The option homeschoolers have to present course descriptions, book lists, etc. is a BONUS to homeschoolers.
The college in question might NOT accept a student from Podunk High School because it is either known as a weak high school or because the admissions people know nothing about it. If your child went to Podunk High School, he will just have a harder time getting into college....But because we homeschool, we can present all kinds of extra information. We can SHOW the admissions people what an awesome education our kids received.
Yes, preparing all this stuff is extra work, but it will benefit your kids.
BTW, most of the colleges my kids applied to required course descriptions, etc. From our experience, any college with an admissions rate < 33% will pretty much require course descriptions. (Generalization based on our experience....)
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kayak.com has amazing prices!
Thank you for all the reassurances about expedia and for the suggestion for kayak.com!
tonight we make the reservations! (Gulp!)
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Gulp -- if no food is allowed, that means diabetics will need special permissions....this parent of a diabetic thing should be an interesting road. The issues I had never thought of before! :tongue_smilie:
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I am about to make my airplane reservations so I can go visit my oldest dd this July in Amsterdam -- I am very excited!
But now I need to make a decision -- how to buy the tickets. Expedia.com sells the airline tickets for about $300 less than the airline does, so I would love to buy them through Expedia.
I have heard, however, that hotels don't always honor reservations made through Expedia. Might that also be true of airplane reservations?
Since we travel so little, I have never used a travel agent. I am trying to do this on my own. :confused:
Has anyone had any experiences going through Expedia, good or bad? Does anyone have any recommendations about how else to buy airline tickets?
Thanks -- sometimes I feel SO clueless!
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No, I can't give you the names of the five books dd studied for AP Lit -- because I can't remember them! :001_huh: Isn't that sad?
One was Jane Eyre, and one was Hamlet, but otherwise I am drawing a complete blank!
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Thank you for giving the page number for the AP codes, Jan!
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Jane is right on with her answer.
I just want to give our experience -- my kids "needed" to take SAT-II's because the colleges they were applying to require them. The schools would not accept AP exams in lieu of SAT-II exams.
Since the AP and SAT-II exams are like apples and oranges, they can be dealt with separately or together, depending on the subject.
For example, the math SAT-II's are not at all related to calculus -- so you would take them after algebra or after pre-calculus, depending on the exam. You would not wait until after taking AP calculus to take them.
But if you are taking AP biology in 11th grade, you might as well wait to take the SAT-II until then -- the SAT-II will be an absolute joke compared with the AP exam, and you can get double mileage out of your studying (though I would still recommend a SAT-II study guide -- some of the SAT-II question formats are weird...)
Dd took the physics SAT-II three weeks after taking the AP physics B exam -- and thought the SAT-II by comparison was an absolute joke. She did work through an SAT-II prep book just for the record, but she definitely got double mileage out of her AP studying.
It's confusing -- but I have received GREAT advice from the lovely ladies on this board and elsewhere that helped me avoid all kinds of mistakes! Keep asking questions!
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I'm very interested in this thread. What a great question!
My kids have taken "outsourced" English lit classes starting their sophomore year, and they have read relatively few books for their classes. My kids have always read a LOT on their own, so they bring a wealth of background to their schoolwork, but in their classes they have only studied a few books per year, mostly working through anthologies of poems, essays, etc.
Dd only read FIVE for her AP English Lit class!!!!! She did get a 5 on the exam, and I felt she was well-prepared.....I was absolutely schocked by the low number of books read in the course, but she really learned how to dissect a book in that class, and her literary analysis improved a LOT, and her essay-writing improved by leaps and bounds.
My 8th grader will only really "study" about 6 books this year, though he will have been assigned probably closer to 25 and will have read another who-knows-how-many on his own.
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Thank you, all of you with older ones, for sharing........It is so neat to get a bit of a peak into where we will be in a few years.
My oldest will only be home in August this summer. She has a great internship in the Netherlands, but we will miss her like crazy. I am currently playing around with flight schedules trying to see if I can pop over to visit her -- and see a bit of Holland while I can stay in her apartment for free. ;)
If ds1 is anything like his sister, this will be his last summer at home. He is hioping to have an internship next summer......I am just going to treasure his being here this summer.
They grow up so fast! :mellow:
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BJU has a great earth science course. It is officially an 8th grade course, but it is rigorous enough that I see no reason why it wouldn't be able to be counted as a 9th grade course, especially if you added some extra readings or reports/papers on current issues in earth science.
We really like the course -- we tend not to use textbooks, so this is high praise!
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What we did for courses that spanned longer than a semester or a year --
We put an asterisk next to a few of the electives that were done over a time period exceeding a normal semester. Then at the bottom of the grade section of the transcript we put "coursework extended outside normal semester schedule".
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"I hate to study to an exam- exactly like "no child left behind"......
Like you, I was worried that going the AP route would cramp our style and end up dictating exactly what we studied during high school. Then I actually spent some time poking through the college board website, really looking at the material covered for several exams. I was delighted!
The exams covered the type of material and demanded the type of skills that we wanted to develop in our children. For us, the AP route was fantastic because the AP exams dovetailed amazingly closely with what we wanted to do with our kids in high school!
Look very seriously at what the AP exams cover -- both the content and the skills needed to do well on the exams. (For example, writing essays based on primary source documents would be a skill that would be developed while taking an AP history class.)
If the description of the AP courses and exams don't match at least somewhat with your goals for your children, maybe you should find another route for high school......but I would be surprised if you didn't get pretty excited by what is expected of kids on those exams!
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We have done a bunch --
APUSH -- Mr. Daniel Burns
AP Eng Lang. -- Ms. Bethany Gilmour
AP Eng Lit -- Mrs. Debra Bell
AP Comp Govt
AP US Govt
AP Economics
They all did an amazing job preparing my kids for their respective AP exams. I highly recommend ALL of the ones we have taken, and I have heard nothing but praise for many others -- biology, the other section of APUSH, coputer science, etc.
I don't think you can go wrong with PAH.
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The name of the music theory program we use is Practica Musica (Ars Nova)
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Neither of my older kids were interested in "fine arts" per se, even though dd is going into art conservation! (Both kids did extensive fifing and drumming, but we didn't give that academic credit.)
So we did music theory. We bought the software that the PAH AP music theory courses uses, and both kids worked their way through that. Short, sweet, and simple. (1/2 credit)
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My father didn't have any opinions on ear piercing that I know of.
My MOTHER, however, did! She was a real feminist, and she thought it was awful of women to put holes in their ears just to make themselves attractive to men!
I got married at 22 and promptly got my ears pierced. I haven't worn earrings much lately -- too busy to deal with that -- but I have enjoyed being able to wear earrings for dress occasions.
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Oh dear -- what a traumatic way to start the day (or rather, interrupt the night)! I am SO sorry!
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I agree with EVERYTHING Jane has said --
but wanted to add one more thought. You might want to put some thought into what KIND of school your child might go to. Is he interested in Harvard/Swarthmore/other super-competitive colleges? Is he interested in State U? Is he interested in lesser-ranked State U? Is he interested in small Bible College? Is he interested in engineering?
Where he thinks he might be headed really is the determining factor in whether to do CLEP's or SAT-II's.
My kids did SAT-II's since we were pretty certain that they would be applying to "competitive" colleges (acceptance rates <35%). All of the colleges they applied to either recommended or required SAT-II's. None of the colleges our kids looked at would give any CLEP credit. (My kids took lots of AP's so they did enter with a good # of college credits.)
A dear friend of mine can't believe we went that route, since SAT-II's are not even acknowledged at our local cc. Her kids all did lots of CLEP's and managed to scoot through the cc with degrees in record time as a result of all those CLEP's.
CLEP's and SAT-II's are both good ways to validate homeschool achievement. Which one is better depends on where your son is trying to go!
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We left it blank.
The IMPORTANT thing is:
If you leave it blank this year, leave it blank for EVERY AP test from now on.
If you fill it in, fill it in next year as well.
A friend's son filled in the SS # one year and didn't the next and the inconsistancy totally messed up the AP filing system. She spent months trying to get her son's test scores from the AP folks!
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I've never heard of such a thing before. That's amazing -- and so wonderful!
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The college my older two attend/will attend in the fall will not give credit for any cc classes. Period.
If you are interested in doing cc classes for the college credit, call likely colleges and make sure that they will give credit for the classes.
There is nother reason to take cc classes though -- the education they provide (both academic and real-life skills). Ds1 took a cc class and we found it beneficial -- he learned a lot about being in a "real" classroom and dealing with transportation issues. He has taken a lot of online classes, but the cc class was certainly helpful for him.
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Thank you so much!
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When to take the exam --
Take it by the end of junior year if your dd is reasonably confident she will do well. That way her score will be part of her transcript/admissions packet so colleges can be impressed by her score! :)
She should probably put it off until later as long as she is still studying Spanish. Even if she could take it at the end of sophomore year, if she is going to study Spanish her junior year, her score will probably go up if she waits a year to take it. KWIM?
Why take the Spanish AP exam? Two reasons --
1) Having a good AP score is always impressive. If she is applying to competitive schools, having a 4 or 5 on her record will make her appear a stronger candidate.
2) At least at my kids' college, a 5 in an AP language exam not only gets you out of the 100-level classes (and some 200-level) but also gets you CREDIT for them. If you get into a higher-level language class by the placement test, you do not get credit for the lower-level classes.
For example, dd1 got a 5 on the AP Latin Vergil exam. She is exempt from the foeign language requirement and has 6 units of Latin course credit on her college transcript.
Ds1 has taken 3 years of Greek but has no AP exam. He will need to take the college Greek placement exam. The most he can hope for is to place in a 200-level class; he will receive no credit for his three years of Greek.
And since dd1 is trying to do BOTH a BA in art history and a BS in chemistry, she needs ALL the credit she can get! :001_smile:
Does anyone remember what the homeschool code is for the SAT?
in High School and Self-Education Board
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I keep iton a stocky on my refrigerator. Is that sad or what? :D