My daughter had a couple of years of Latin using Latin Road to English Grammar - several years ago. She did three quarters of Italian at the CC last year and just loved it. She appreciated having the Latin background because it made the endings and parts of speech easier to understand. Our CC classes assume no previous knowledge of the language although the class moves quite a bit quicker than a typical high school class. As for credits, in Washington state, our colleges accept 1 - 5 credit quarter as equivalent to a year of high school.

I think I have the link working now - thanks.

My daughter Katherine and her dog Dazzle have made it to the semi-finals in the Best Trick category of the Worldwide Fido contest. You can see her video and the new tv commercial advertising the show at the links below. She is starting some dual-enrollment classes in the fall and is a little worried about having to work within a school schedule and not having enough time to devote to her dogs. She has been homeschooled since she was 7. Regards, Susan M Message from Katherine: Hey everyone! Dazzle and I need your votes on our trick video. Dazzle is one of four semi-finals in the Worldwide Fido best trick video contest! If she wins her category (best trick) she gets to go to LA and be on the TV special for the final round. Voting for this round is open through the end of September. You can vote for her video once every day until then. http://www.worldwidefido.com/watch/3599/dazzles-tricks-of-the-trade She is also in their TV advertisement that aired for the first time yesterday evening on Nick at Nite, you can watch that here: Please feel free to pass her video link on, Dazzle is counting on your support! Thanks! Katherine and Dazzle

I had my 9th grader take the PSAT in October and then again in 10th grade. She will take it for real in 11th grade as well as start taking the SAT in 11th and 12. Her older sister took a combo of ITBS, PSAT, and SAT tests during her high school years. PSAT and SAT are both appropriate tests for homeschoolers in WA. If you have a 4 year degree, you can become a proctor for the ITBS which is what we used prior to the college board tests.

But I was wondering the same thing. I am interested in Italian. We have used the Rosetta Stone through the library, but that will be ending soon and my dd likes the Rosetta Stone format. If there are significant advantages to the newer version, I would hate to miss them in favor of a scheduling program, but I can't tell from the website if there are lots of significant changes.

I bought the whole 3rd edition set from ebay and it included these resources. The "Enhanced Teacher's Guide for Geometry" is the teacher manual. It is a softcover book almost 2" thick. In the first half, it contains the answers to all of the problems including drawings since many of the problems are constructions. In the second half of the book there is a lesson plan for each lesson in the chapter. Apparently, there are transparencies to go along with the lessons, but when I checked the web, these were very expensive. The teacher's guide contains copies of the transparencies in reduced form - slightly smaller than a business card but readable. The lesson plans even include hands on activities for the class. We are early in the program since we just started it this month, but so far my dd loves it and geometry is becoming her favorite class.

My dd (15) has a really busy schedule. We have substituted audio versions of some materials to help us use travel time wisely. We use Teaching Company courses in the audio version. For some classic literature, we use the audio version and she listens either while traveling, while settling down to sleep at night or while editing photos on the computer. Lots of free classics are available in mp3 format at http://www.librivox.org

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-11-04-nsse-helicopter-parents_N.htm This article was from Nov 2007. From the CNN article: "The same report concluded students with higher levels of parental involvement had significantly lower grades." From the USA Today article: "But the study also found students with highly involved parents tended to have lower grades — a surprise, because higher engagement "tends to be linked to higher grades," Kuh says. An additional note from USA Today article: "Students who reported frequent parental intervention reported lower grades. While the difference (3.21 vs. 3.31 for other students on a 4.0 scale) was statistically significant, it was still quite small. It may be that parental intervention helps keep underperformers in school. Or, grades may not be as important a gauge of how much a student is getting from college as other measures, Kuh says. "

I would be skeptical too. I thought there was an article several months ago referencing this same or a similar study that said those students with Helicopter parents actually had higher grades. I wish I had the link and may do a quick search, but I don't have the source handy.

I went to Storm's page. What a beauty! I'll bet she loves the cold weather. Tricks are definitely easier with a food motivated dog. Dazzle is trained to respond to regular kibble for treats but we have lots of agility buddies who create very special treats for agility trial days.

I'm glad you liked Dazzle. She and my dd are both pretty motivated. Dazzle's Dogster page Dazzle won the World's Coolest Dog photo contest this year on Dogster. Photography is another of my dd's hobbies. My dd has a website where she keeps a blog and Dog info... http://www.agilitypup.com/ Thanks for the compliments - I will pass them on to Dazzle in the form of treats. Enjoy, Susan

I sent my girls to the store (15 and 17) with some money but no list. They needed some dinner food and some snacks. They were shocked at how expensive some of the prepared foods were - pizzas and frozen dinners - and suddenly they had to choose carefully how to spend $25. I agree it was a great learning experience.

Thank you - we are proud of dog and trainer around here. My favorite trick is called "Clean Up" and she has to pick up all of her toys! When we showed that trick at a festival - the parents wanted to know if my daughter could train toddlers ;)

My dd does dog agility and makes movies. Here is one of my favorites of Dazzle the border collie in her "Trick" video. There are lots more of Dazzle and agility on her main page: Kats Dogs YouTube page

These are excellent: Economics 3rd Edition History of US Understanding the Human Body: Intro to Anatomy and Physiology Haven't used yet - but excited about using this semester: Art across the Ages paired with Museum Masterpices: The Louvre I'm drooling over these...Which would you get if you could only have one? Understanding Genetics... Classics of American Literature History of World Literature Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

I can't recommend this highly enough. The Teaching Company has an Economics course - taught by Timothy Taylor Teaching Company Econimics course This course has 36 half hour lectures and is currently on sale. For $50 you can get the audio download. We put this on mp3 players and listened while in the car and while exercising. This course was enjoyed by kids ranging from 13-18 as well as the adults who listened. Another resourse I liked was "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt - available new at amazon.com for about $11 or used for about $6. The co-op kids really liked this book. We used the Penny Candy book and the Stock Market game and some internet lesson plans to round out our course.

The course description indicates that Marine Biology should come after a basic biology course. When I wanted my kids to take Adv. Bio before Chemistry, I emailed Dr. Wile and asked if it would work. He indicated that there were a couple of areas where we might have to teach some chemistry in order to understand the concepts but they could be taught as needed. In the Marine Biology syllabus, there is a lot of ecology which may not need all of the biology. If you ask Dr. Wile, he might be able to tell you the basic concepts you would need to cover to make the course work without a full year of biology.

I had heard of it for some time, but just got Settlers for my family this Christmas. We love it!

We became members of this place even when we did not live nearby. The annual membership is $60 for a family and it gives reciprocal entrance fees to both zoos and science museums (as well as some aquariums - but not the major ones) http://www.wildwnc.org/

A stewardess on Delta introduced my husband to Amarula and coffee because they were out of Kahlua. I drink the Amarula with a little cream and an ice cube and it is so decadent. It has a hint of orangy citrus in a chocolaty, creamy beverage. Yummy

I have been in several waiting rooms the last couple of weeks - doctors and hospitals - and my Kindle has been a lifesaver. Also - the price of books is excellent compared to new ones. I have downloaded a bunch from Amazon, but I have also started using a bunch of the sources for free classic literature. I say go for it! Then I can have a buddy who also has one :)

There is a discussion going on at the Amazon page for the kindle - How long to wait for Kindle... Folks who ordered in early Dec are getting the Kindles now. Those that ordered around Christmas are getting emails about shipping soon. Those that ordered in early Jan haven't heard a delivery date yet. Everyone is hoping that the wait time will speed up now that the Christmas orders are finished. I placed another order for one on Jan 11th and I hope to have it by late Feb. They don't charge your account until they get ir ready to ship, so you could get in line and then save the pennies.

I did this program with a co-op group of late middle school/early high school students. The students had a great deal of trouble in the beginning with basic identificationn of sentence parts. We started with a wide variety of basic grammar knowledge. I used some exercises from Rod & Staff 5 or 6 to get them comfortable with direct and indirect objects (in English). I thought the students did great. I was their "teacher" but I was learning Latin for the first time. I do have a fairly good grasp of English grammar. The entire group of seven girls got through the first year and most did pretty well. Three students continued with the second year. Only one student finished the third year. The one student who finished all three parts was given three years of Latin credit when she entered a charter high school - because they took a look at the syllabus for each year. When she went on to take Spanish in high school, she found it wonderful to have the Latin background. One student who went through 2 years went on to take Italian at a community college. Even though her Latin is several years behind her now, it is helping her tremendously in the Italian courses. The work load for the girls was heavy on writing. Some balked at the work load, but once they found a routine and did a little each day things went smoother. I made up some online flashcard games for them (these are no longer free). We played Bingo with the vocabulary and this really helped all of the girls. I searched for and found some supplementary easy translation exercises and these were popular but somewhat difficult in the first year. If the student enjoys (or tolerates) the teaching method used in this program, I think it can be very successful. It was defintely a bonus to compare translations as a group. One other thing I did for the kids was to make a colored "cheat sheet". This really helped to make the exercises go quickly and ultimately seemed to have a positive effect for the tests.

My daughter does a lot of photography and photo editing. As a matter of fact, she just set up a web based place to start selling some of her photos. You can see her work at http://www.agilitypup.com - on the homepage should be a link to some of her dog agility photos. She competes in dog agility and photographs the dogs while she is not running. She grew up with Photoshop Elements starting with version 2. We have versions 3 and 5, but she really liked the version 2. A friend gave us an old version of Photoshop 6 and she began using that when she learned a bit about the "curves" feature - Most of the time though, she is very happy with her Elements software.

It would be vey difficult to "replace" books - this is definitely a tool to enhance book reading. It is fabulous for books that are just text. I thought it would be fabulous for students and textbooks, but when I tried reading the book "You: Staying Young...", I found some of the pitfalls. This particular book has lots of inset notes and pictures and they disrupt the flow of reading. I have also found that for a couple of books - I bought the paperback and Kindle versions. This can't happen very often because it is a high price to pay for convenience - but it really was convenient. Just this week, we had a visit to an emergency room and I was really glad to have it with me. Endless waiting is so much nicer with a library at your fingertips.