My child found 6A/B to be fairly easy, and struggled with parts of AoPS pre-algebra - we got through OK, but I definitely wouldn't skip straight to algebra. We're doing algebra this year, and there are a lot of things that they move through very quickly that are review from pre-algebra but weren't in 6.

We love Growing with Grammar - it does some diagramming each year, and they sell a 'digging into diagramming' book if you really love it. :-) They have a spelling curriculum, which I use with one of my children. We also use vocabulary words as spelling words sometime (we use wordly wise) or I combine spelling and vocab and use the 'vocabulary with classical roots' books, which my son loves. If you choose the classical roots books, pay attention to the order - it's weird, with part of the series using numbers and the other part using letters. I have no idea why it's not just numbers 1-7 or A-G or whatever, but I finally figured it out from a picture of 'available books' on the back of one of them. :-) My kids can use all of these mostly independently.

We did 6A and 6B because I wanted to make sure that a few concepts were more cemented in place and also because I wasn't sure that he was ready, maturity-wise, to move to something where he had to write long problems out on paper (he was in 3rd grade and had some writing issues). The Singapore 6 books weren't too hard and were a good review, and we added some of the challenging word problems. AoPS is really different - Singapore is good preparation in terms of content, but they style was different enough that I was concerned. As far as content, I don't know that you need Singapore 6, so I would make my decision based on mental/emotional readiness as much as academics. We got to AoPS at the end of the Singapore 6 year and it was fairly frustrating, but when we started up again in 4th grade with their pre-algebra he did fine, so I think that for us we needed a bit more maturity. If your kid is older/less prone to getting upsettedly frustrated, you could go straight to AoPS.

My son had a hard time with just memorizing the algorithm without understanding it, but when I explained that, when you have 4869/25, you put 1 above the 8 because you're showing that it goes 100something times, so you subtract the 2500 that you've accounted for and see how many times 25 goes into whatever is left, and then repeat the process. As the numbers got bigger, it was a pain to always write out the zeros but it really seemed to help his conceptual understanding. And, I used excel to print gridlined paper with big blocks so that he could write and keep his numbers orderly.

I kind of had the same philosophy with my K kid - whatever we could do in 30 min - and I had to adapt that because 30 min was indeed enough time for my child to get frustrated and insist that he didn't like math. In the same way that kid interests are unpredictable at that age, math interests were also quirky. My kid was fascinated by negative numbers at 4 and perfect squares at 5, but incredibly frustrated by the details of 3x2 multiplication...although he could mentally deconstruct the multiplication and do it in his head. We did Singapore because it gave several different ways to do each type of problem and explained why the standard algorithm worked, which also meant that there was no need to follow any particular method if he could do it mentally. At 5, he didn't do well with repetition, so we skipped over a lot of practice once he understood something. He's now 10, and we're still working on not getting frustrated when things get hard, and he'll now tell you that he's good in math but doesn't particularly like it. I don't know if it's because of early frustration - there are days when he thinks that figuring out the puzzles of math is fun and I often find him reading ahead in his math book - and I don't know if the frustration could have been avoided because at some point he would have to learn to be a little more meticulous, but I kind of feel like I got lucky with something that didn't completely turn him against a subject that he was good at. On a different note, I have another vote for Singapore's word problems books. He loves ratios, so he enjoyed the challenging ratio problems even when frustrated with other parts of math.

One thing to keep in mind with young kids is that sometimes they can understand complicated math concepts but there are other things that may slow them down. For my son, his handwriting in K wasn't good enough to keep his numbers in a row when doing multiplication or long division. I ended up making grid paper with big boxes to help him. He also doesn't have as much attentioin to detail as an older child should be able to manage. In complex problems where he has to combine like terms or deal with exponents, he's more likely to make careless mistakes than I'd expect from an older child. Sometimes this can make it hard to tell when he doesn't understand vs when he's not paying attention. Because he's actually more interested in history than in math, we do an advanced program (AoPS) but don't push to move at a faster pace (he's in 5th grade now). It's always hard to separate the idea that the child is good at something from the question of whether they actually like it. It's a fine line keeping them challenged without pushing them - too much struggle in an area that they're not interested in can cause them to hate the subject.

You could choose to divide biology into 2 classes - molecular biology and then 'big things', whatever is appropriate for your plan (ecology, organ systems, classification, etc). You could do them back-to-back or put chemistry in the middle - they are so different that they really are like separate classes. And, if by 'dragonfly biology' you mean the prentice-hall book by Miller and Levine, you probably don't have to get through the whole book. I teach everything in the state standards for my state, which aligns pretty well with the material in the biology sequence at the community college (they do a few extra things). We don't use anywhere near the whole book. Biology books are often designed to accommodate several possible classes, so you could do a molecular biology unit, an ecology/evolution/classification unit, or sections on any particular type of organism that you're interested in (plants, animals, etc) - mix and match a couple that will address your needs. It's why some of the subject tests in biology give 2 options - you can choose to focus on different topics in the area of biology.

I've wondered if it's pressure. I've also heard that some stores have gadgets that transmit at high frequencies near the entrances because adults can't hear it and it keeps loitering teens out. I've wondered if it was something like that, or if the hum of so many lights and other gadgets was creating a similar 'buzz'. If your ears are already dealing with excess fluid from the allergies, maybe the buzz causes vibrations that are just too much?

When I started doing allergy shots and managing my allergies under the guidance of a doctor, I found that the terrifying bouts of random dizziness that I'd dealth with for most of my life went away. I remember going in for a follow-up appointment and telling the doctor that he had 'cured' everything that was wrong with me, not just my stuffy nose and sore throat. Vertigo is awful.

We had to remove light sources in my son's room for a while. He'll get so distracted reading at lunch that he forgets to eat. We've also found that making sure that he's really tired at bedtime helps (we rarely have this problem when when his sports are practicing!). I've also noticed that if the thing that he's reading at bedtime is nonfiction, a short story collection, or something that he is re-reading, it's a lot easier for him to put it down.

People homeschool for a variety of reasons. Some kids are ahead, some are average, and some struggle. In our state, some folks homeschool because there is no official support for kids with dyslexia. Some homeschool for religious reasons, to escape a bullying situation, or for medical or developmental reasons. I love that our co-op offers classes with varying degrees of rigor (and, as somebody who covers a lot of ground at home, I sometimes sign my kids up for more fun classes because I don't want to do messy crafty things). In my high school class, I have students wanting to earn their C and graduate and students wanting to earn the honors credit and keep a 100%, and everything in between. It takes some work, but I structure my class so that I can say 'All you are required to know is X, but for those of you who want a more detailed explanation...'. They are also willing to bump kids up and down so that students can take classes that are appropriate to their ability level, not just their grade, which is a win for everybody.

Will your daughter work independently? Does she prefer taking a lot of breaks? My children really struggle with switching gears between school and breaks - they can go and jump on the trampoline for 20 jumps or something to 'get the wiggles out' but if they truly get away from 'doing school' for more than 10 minutes it's hard to get them to get back to it. But, they also like to work independently, so I've chosen handwriting, grammar, spelling/vocab, and writing that they can do mostly on their own. I help with math and our history or science units most days. Bible varies by age - sometimes I read stories, sometimes they read, and sometimes it's a workbook. Instead of keeping up with hours, I set goals for the number of lessons I want to complete each week - we're flexible, but we have a plan for 3 grammar lessons and 1 spelling unit per week and 1 math unit per day, for instance. When I had a 4th grader, it was around 3 hours of reading, writing, or workbook time most days, and of course there were other things that could count as part of 'school time' - free reading time, watching something on the history channel, sports or music practice, field trips, etc. They like to be done around lunchtime, so our main work is from 9ish-12ish. Sometimes we eat and then finish up and other times they say that they'd rather get done and then have nothing else to do after a late lunch. Some days they're motivated to be super diligent and they just get done in 3 hours. :-) Sometimes they run grab a snack, but its not a long snack break, it's a quick handful of cheese cubes or an apple. I'd actually expected to have more breaks, but it just didn't work for them. My general rule is that if we start by 9ish, they should be done around 2ish.

The Great Brain series by JD Fitzgerald was really popular at my house. I remembered it from when I was a kid and my son loves it. He also liked The Mysterious Benedict Society series. A friend as recommended The Boys on the Boat for my son - we haven't read it yet, but they raved about it. The Rush Revere books were also fun for my history-loving son (and friends of different political stripes have liked them, so don't let the author deter you if you're not inclined to read them based on that). James Herriot books are also good - they're really long, but each chapter is like it's own story - they might be good for an animal lover.

One thing that you might want to do is make or buy a timeline so that they can fit in all of the things they do know and see how they relate to each other. I know that lots of people make them, or use timeline books. We bought a poster that shows what's happening on each continent over time, so when we learn something new we can go to the poster and see where it fits in with what we alread know. It might also help you to find your gaps so that you can decide whether you need to fill in or pick certain eras and work through them systematically.

My older child really struggles with books that involve cruelty. We had picked up several sonlight books at used book sales and I had planned to incorporate them into different history units, but I found that many of them were really upsetting to him. I know that their goal is to have kids be emotionally involved in the subjects, but my child just quit wanting to read at all because he couldn't understand how people could act like they did in the books. We switched to non-fiction books, and while he still learns that people throughout history have behaved horribly, it's much easier to learn about it now that he's not constantly reading first-person stories. I still buy some of their reading recommendations, but now I skim through them before bringing them home.

We use the core knowledge sequence to guide our science and history. If you go to their website you can see the 'sequence at a glance' that lists everything that they recommend each eyar for K-8, and you can see what topics you haven't covered yet. We've liked it because it is a guide to subjects, but we choose how much detail to include and what methods to use based on the interests and abilities of the student. Since we've used it all the way through (my older child has used it K-5 so far) we just see what it recommends each year, but you could also use it to see what gaps you might want to fill in the next few years. For us, it's structure without being too confining, and it leaves time for us to pursue areas that we're interested in.

Triple beam balance use is a required skill in my state, so I teach it as part of biology at the co-op. It was also required at the community college where I taught. I'd have my student watch a youtube video about it so that the know how it works, and then buy a cheaper digital scale. They work the same was as a doctor's scale, except for the maximum that they can measure, so your doctor might let you do it the next time somebody has an appointment. The important idea is to start with the heaviest increment it can measure (usually 100lbs in a dr office, 100g on a lab scale) and seat it into a groove on the balance bar. Then do the next lowest, etc, untiil you get an accurate measurement.

I can't speak to why a paritcular private school is not accepting a particular credit. It could be about the money. It could be that they learned from experience that transfers from certain places don't learn what they're supposed to learn (this was a major concern at my former CC - they checked in regularly with StateU to make sure that our former students weren't underprepared), it could be that they include extra information in a particular class compared to other schools and students in the next class are expected to know it. I always encourage students place out of electives but take most of their major classes where they intend to graduate if they can because every program has its quirks and its best to have learned what subsequent profs will expect you to know. Biology is a huge area, and while all courses might cover the same things such that students could all pass a basic knowledge test, different teachers will include different 'extra' information...maybe that school considers the particular 'extra' stuff to be essential?

Part of the issue with colleges accepting classes taken at other places is that there are often several different levels of a subject. I have taught/taken at least 3 different levels of college biology. There was one for pre-med and science research students, one for pre-health science (nursing, audiology, etc) and one for non-majors (a science elective). In the first, a student learning about glycolysis would learn about specifically which chemical bonds were broken, which enzymes were used, and where each electron went. In the second, students might learn the names of the intermediates and know that a different enzyme does each. In the third, students learn that breaking down food is a multistep process, where it occurs, and maybe the beginning and end products. There are different goals for each class that fit what the students need to know for future classes. When I was a student 20 years ago, the AP exam was thought to match the first class, but over time most schools decided that AP really didn't cover everything that a year of a very intense college class with a weekly lab could address, so it was changed to let students place out of either of the less-detailed courses - this might have changed with the revamped AP test. When I taught at a community college, they told us about how now each course had a class number on campus (Bio 101) and also a multi-digit code that was unseen by students - a background course number. This is what colleges use to decide if credits transfer. Our CC worked hard to keep our course aligned with the local college that most students transferred to. And, when I taught the lab for pre-nursing students, we often lost 1/3 of the students in the first 3 weeks because they struggled with the algebra involved in doing metric conversions and dosage calculations. On another note, I think that the reason students don't take physics is that it seems hard and math-y. Even though the high school class that I teach is mostly molecular biology and not particularly easy, students are comfortable with the idea of taking biology because they did bits of it when they were younger. And, depending on where you are, many students take a physical science class in 8th or 9th grade that includes an introduction to basic physics. In my area, many students choose Physical Science in 9th, and the Bio and Chem in 10th and 11th, with maybe an elective science (Bio II, anatomy, astronomy, etc) if they choose to take a 4th credit.

Growing with Grammar, Soaring with Spelling, and Winning with Writing are all meant to be done independently (except for spelling tests). Wordly Wise is good for vocabulary and also has a read-and-answer-the-questions exercise each week, We've used Evan-More and Scholastic workbooks to fill in gaps, and Evan More has workboosk that address some history/science topics. For history, if your child likes to read they could use SOTW and add to a timeline (writing on hole-punched index cards would let you make your own 'world history').

You've got several different history/geography things going on - could you combine them? You'd still learn them both, but doing the geography of the same area that you're learning the history of might mean that you don't have to switch gears as often. I'm also wondering if it might feel calmer if you did alternating units - a week or month of science and then a history unit. My kids seem to do better when we can spend longer blocks of time on fewer subjects each day, and it helps on days that we do 'car school' because they can look at a book on a topic for a while in the car.

We use Hirsch's What Your First/Second, etc, Grader Needs to Know' to guide our history, science, and literature/arts. If she picks a math curriculum, these books might help her to feel like she's got some structure while she figures out what approach to use for the rest of it. We do alternating history and science units supplemented with library books, map work, experiments, crafts, etc but have occasionally gotten workbooks that fit the topics. It will take some time to see if her family works best with projects, workbooks, read-alouds, or a mix, but since the Core Knowledge books are more of a topic guide she can try different approaches and then explore curriculum that fit her preferred methods.

Once I could read, I didn't like being read to because it was so much slower than reading myself, and my older child seems to be the same way. I read all the time when they were younger, but once they were in first grade and were solid readers, I rarely read fiction to them. If I want them to do the same Bible story, I read that out loud, and when either of them does poetry I read that because I don't think that they'll get as much out of it if they don't hear the rhythm - they seem to enjoy that, but mostly because it's short. My younger child still likes for me to read some of her history or science to her, which I do, but when we get to literature or stories she likes to read it herself.

One of my children uses Soaring with Spelling - even in 2nd grade it can be used independently other than the pre/post tests and grading. My other child spells pretty well, but we pull out Jim Halverson's Spelling Works! as a refresher every year or 2. It has some standard exercises, some editing-type work where they learn to recognize the correct spelling, and some mazes where they try to find the correct words. It teaches a lot of common rules and also the 'rules' about exceptions to the rules (some of which I hadn't realized existed - much better than thinking that rules just applied 'most of the time'!).

My children aren't yet this age, but I teach high schoolers at our co-op and used to teach at a community college. One thing that I emphasize to my students (or their parents) after the occasional freak-out is that their grades don't represent their worth as a person, their intelligence, or their ability to learn the imformation. They reflect how much they knew about the material being tested at the particular time that they took the test. Some students learn every bit of the material because they are interested, or because it's easy for them, or because they're perfectionists, but it doesn't make them 'better'. I once had to tell a parent that their child's B on a test didn't represent their value as a human, just their knowledge of metabolic processes... Another thing for her to keep in mind when taking classes by somebody else is that many teachers don't have the expectation that students will earn 100% (I know that there are many philosophies about how to grade and what grades represent). Depending on the subject, sometimes a teacher looks at a paper and know that it is clearly A work but there are things that the student could improve upon - potentially details that wouldn't be important for a C student, but things that an A student could get right - so they take off a point here and there. In other words, for some teachers, once the student has earned an A, there isn't really a difference to the teacher between a 95% and a 98% or 100% - they are all excellent work, and comments (and the associated missing points) are there to help the student. I don't know if this helps, but it might give her a different perspective (said as somebody who took a few college science classes where the tests were designed so that you couldn't finish them - I got an A in a class where I had the top score, never above an 85 on any test - it was weird and stressful, but looking back it was a valid way to run that particular class).