The keeper on our D22 team is the heart and soul of the team. She names each of the game balls before each game, shows up to tournament games in huge bunny slippers instead of the regular slides, and pats the ball gently for the opponent if it’s down to PKs (is that a foul??). During play she is fearless, vocal, and aggressive - not sure how she can flip the switch so fast.
Semester is pretty much done! Last day of class is tomorrow. S22 is exempt from all exams except Latin, bc Latin does not exempt. So exam week will be quick and painless. Going to Chicago at end of exam week over the holiday weekend to celebrate!
@Rivet2000 Is that Anatomy & Physiology 3-weeker a CTY camp?
@sfSTEM No, it was not on her list for this year. She’s been using summers to deep dive into classes locally, but beginning last summer, she has gone out of state to experience campus environments at the same time. Hope is she learns some and experiences different college environments and cultures. Last summer was west coast, this summer is east coast. We’re just kind of feeling our way around these summer classes - we have zero background with bio/med type programs (she is interested in eventually going to med school). I half way wish she changes to engineering or CS as we’re much more familiar with that.
@vistajay 6AM!! That is some serious passion that your kiddo has for the sport! I had one child like that, but D22 is not that one 
Three more days of school here. Final projects and tests are mostly going okay, though D22 is fretting about biology. The teacher has been out of town for a family issue (I believe) and there is a significant backlog of ungraded work.
We have a vacation in mid-June, a week after school finishes. And another to visit family in July. S22 will be a camp counselor for a week in July, too. Then after that last vacation, marching band camp starts up and leads into school starting. It definitely causes an early end to summer. He’s in driver’s ed now and just over halfway done. He should have his permit by the end of May, I think.
So my daughter just started the ACT and SAT prep portion of her life. She completed some diagnostic tests and then attended an intro session with the test prep company where they start figuring out what each student needs before they dive in with one on one.
The students attending were a mix from excellent area prep schools but there was only one other freshman. The rest were sophomores and even juniors.
I am completely confused. Why would there be juniors in a “taking the first step on the path” kind of a class? Doesn’t everyone start this sometime part way through 9th grade or summer before 10th grade?
I understand that not everyone has the math yet for the ACT which includes Pre-Calc but certainly the SAT which only goes up to Algebra II.
I was wondering what parents here have experienced.
Wow — your kids get out much earlier than mine. We are in school through June 9th.
My kids are skipping that last day because that is when we have Nationals for National History Day and both my middle schooler and high schooler are going to that.
June 9th right after school was going to be their annual physical so after a bit of panicking I realized I could get their annual physical at Patient First! Who knew that was even possible? Definitely not the guy at Patient First checking me in—even he didn’t know they did those.
After I explained our issue with NHD and the primary pediatrician could not reschedule and I had their forms from last year too they happily did physicals for both girls. The doctor was a mother of a Goalkeeper playing soccer at college — and she told me how stressful it had been to go to games in high school. Kind of funny.
@HappyintheGoal My S19 took the ACT in June after his junior year, and took an intensive ACT prep class April thru June to prepare. For us that was perfect timing. To me the ACT isn’t really testing knowledge, but your ability to ace the test, it’s all about the tricks around timing, etc. I’ll do the same prep class with my S22 but may have to adjust the timing up because of spring sports. My D17 started too early and took the ACT 3 times - without the intensive test prep class, and without any meaningful improvement in test scores - thank goodness for superscoring!
And your kids get out much earlier than mine, @HappyintheGoal. D19 has her last IB exam on Friday, but graduation isn’t until June 21. S22 has a mandatory work experience the following week (given his interest in basketball, he’s doing it at FIBA) and then a final half-day at school June 28. We fly out for our move back to the States the next day.
S22 hasn’t yet considered any kind of serious SAT prep. He did take the SSAT twice when we were considering sending him to a private school again (ultimately decided to go public), so he’s had a bit of testing and test prep this school year. I’ll be interested to see how much pressure he feels in that regard back in the U.S.
We looked into everything, and we are not starting any test prep until next summer. Everything I’ve read said that summer before 11th is the perfect time to get started. This will be his last summer to chill out (he is taking a summer personal finance class that he won’t have time to complete with his schedule and his summer work for his honors/AP classes).
Next summer, he’s planning to get a job and do a prep class.
Between class work and his summer sports schedules, he’ll stay busy enough.
We won’t do a test prep class until late summer early fall of junior year, right before the PSAT. He’ll take the SAT around the same time period to maximize the value of the prep class. Before that he will take the PSAT again sophomore year. By the time he gets to junior year he’ll have taken the PSAT twice, the full SAT in 7th, and the a pre-ACT test in 8th. So he should have plenty of testing experience.
My daughter is taking a couple of online courses that she can’t fit into the school year due to band - one to fulfill graduation requirements, the other for college admissions. She is also doing some waterpolo conditioning and practice, volunteering a couple of weeks as camp counselor at a science center downtown, keeping up with her instruments, doing her summer AP work, and hanging out with friends, preferably at the beach. One week family vacation and then before we know it she will have band camp and will have to go back to school the third week of August.
D22’s final grades are in: 4.0 for freshman year! One down, three to go.
S22 started summer Geometry yesterday. 4 1/2 hours each day, for 6 weeks. They cover 3 days worth of classes each day. Then there’s homework afterwards. It’s quite a commitment to do this. Some understandable grousing, but this course puts him on track for advanced math options by senior year.
One thing I’m wondering: Does doing some rigorous academic work over the summer reduce the summer slide that can happen? Like, have you ever found that when you’re busiest is when you’ve had the most success?
Last day of school today!
S22 has a much better 4th quarter, it wasn’t enough to pull him up to As for the year (they do full year grades only), but it did move him to B+ in several classes. We talked about him needing to put that kind of effort in all year next year and he was receptive. So, hopefully, we’ll see an upward trend. He did the same thing in middle school and ended up getting good grades. Crossing my fingers that this year was more a transition issue than anything else.
And the end of the year got better socially too (we moved to NJ last summer).
@sfSTEM I’m not a parent but rather I’m an upcoming sophomore in HS. I’m doing too much rigorous academic work this summer, and it’s definitely reduced any sort of summer slide. Rip.
@HappyintheGoal I’ve started SAT and ACT prep as well this summer…surprised by my results, honestly I don’t think I will do much prep.
y am i here
@RussianbioHacker Just seeing your post. Can you contact me please? Not able to PM you either.
D22 completed her single semester summer school class (health) and is now en route to the east coast for a 3 week class in Anatomy & Physiology. Hope she learns a lot and meets interesting people.
Anyone’s kid waiting for AP scores? S22 gets his Monday and is excited to know how he did! Thankfully we are out of town for the weekend without internet access, which makes the waiting a little easier. He took APUSH.