Tentatively, as always 🙂 Math: continue with Beast Academy online History/Reading/lit: Build Your Library--we're "ahead" right now because we started with a co-op, so he did level one when he was 5, but we likely won't finish level 2 by the end of this year--so finish level 2 and start level 3. We're also totally on fire with audiobooks in the car this year; we've been through all the Ramona books, all the Henry Huggins books, half of Little House, and started Narnia. He's loving it and I'm loving that he's loving it, so my goal is to keep it up until we've listened to ALL THE BOOKS Latin: Song School Latin Book 2 Grammar/writing: WWE2 and First language lessons 2 Science: probably a class at a local homeschool co-op. And maybe we'll actually do the science from BYL next year; he loves science so probably we should do more of it Music: he'll probably start piano lessons next year Other: I was thinking today a formal drawing program would be good for him. Probably he'll play baseball again fall and spring.

My third 9th grader! I'll be glad to have a long break before the last one starts high school after this. English: finishing WWS, American literature (that I need to start putting together) History: AP US history (with his 11th grader brother; I want to keep them together for lit and history as much as I can) Science: biology somehow or other. Sigh. I might do Pandia Press's Biology--it's more of a middle school class, but it says for up to 9th grade. I just...don't know. I'm so tired of trying to figure science out. I need him to take the subject test to make our state flagship happy if he decides to apply there, so there will be a test prep book involved somehow. Math: Jacobs geometry Spanish: he's done Spanish 1 and 2 (well, doing 2 now) through Georgia virtual school, but he hates it, so I told him he can stop after this year. My goal with Spanish is to make sure he doesn't forget everything he's learned, ideally make some forward progress, and be ready to do dual enrollment Spanish come 11th grade. I'm not worried about more than that since he'll already have 2 years of high school Spanish in (which we only did so early because we lost our private tutor and I didn't want him to forget everything from THAT). So I'll probably find something online and maybe work on some translation projects or something with him, so I can brush up on MY Spanish and make him less miserable at the same time. Extras: he'll keep playing French horn in youth orchestra and probably take an art class at our local homeschool coop. And maybe he'll do some plays--he loves acting but hasn't done any in awhile.

They use both. Everyone's going to want a FAFSA because that determines eligibility for federal aid and they want to make sure you get all of that before they use institutional funds. But they'll use the CSS for their own calculations because it gives a more complete financial picture. My son's school only requires CSS the first year and FAFSA only for returning students. This made me incredibly happy, but I do wonder how they handle things for students with divorced parents.

AOPS pre-algebra is one of the one we tried after Singapore...the main one we tried, really. It didn't work well for my very strong in math, but super perfectionist oldest. He was not a fan of not getting every answer right every time. It's possible it would have been worth it to battle through, but it wasn't something I had the energy for at the time. My 6 year old, who reminds me of my oldest in a lot of ways, is going through Beast Academy now with no problems; had Beast Academy been around when my oldest was the right age, the whole program might have worked well for him. So my experience is that AOPS can be rough for perfectionist kids who are very hard on themselves even if they're excellent at math. Although he now regularly threatens to drop out college every time he gets a B on an assignment, so it might have been better to work on that particular character trait back in middle school, come to think of it 😂 But he loved Jacobs. Jacobs geometry is when he really started to see himself studying math long term.

Agreeing that skipping pre-algebra is fine. All of mine have started Jacobs in 6th grade after finishing Singapore (Singapore 6 always went very fast for whatever reason) and then gone very slowly through Jacob's Algebra. With my oldest, we flailed around looking for a pre-algebra we liked for a little while first then gave up and went straight to Jacobs....he's in his first year of college, doing great in Calc 3 and planning on majoring in math now, so it worked well!

I've thought about something like this, too...he'll already be through Spanish 2 when he starts 9th grade, so there's no rush....he could spend a year or two reinforcing what he's already learned, diving into some more interesting stuff, and making sure he's very ready for the faster pace of college classes when he gets to 11th grade.

Thanks so much for the suggestions, everyone! Happy to see there are a few good options out there!

My 8th and 10th graders are currently taking Spanish 2 online through Georgia Virtual School. I wouldn't have started the 8th grader so early, but they'd both been taking Spanish with a private tutor until she went to work teaching full-time, and I didn't want him to forget everything he'd learned with her. My 10th grader has one more semester to get through and then he'll switch to in person dual enrollment classes next year. The classes have been....okay, but there are a lot of things I don't love about them (for one thing, I don't think an online class with no live component at all is a great way to learn a modern language), and DS HATES it. I'd love to find something else that can bridge the gap until he can do dual enrollment as well (or even just get him through Spanish 4 so he can call it done if he wants to). So what options are out there for upper level Spanish? If anyone's in the metro Atlanta area and knows of something, that would be great, but an online class that has a live component would work as well.

That was me last year. This year I realized DS's school doesn't require the CSS for returning students, only first years, and I was so happy I could have cried.

DS took linear algebra (and a proofs class that I guess you could call discrete math?) DE before calc 3. Did very well in linear algebra and is doing well in calc 3 now (freshman year at college). It's not an unusual sequence.

Yes, I wonder the same things....I can't imagine they'd really turn down an otherwise highly qualified student because their homeschool curriculum didn't fit into the boxes neatly enough. DS is only in 10th grade and not sure yet if he'll even apply to Columbus State--we'll ask for more specific information if/when the time comes to apply.

We just looked at Columbus State in Georgia the other day, because DS16 is interested in their music school, and they require homeschoolers to fill out a college preparatory credit evaluation form that includes world and US history as well as government and Econ (as well as stuff like British literature and "American English." I was surprised/annoyed to see it, particularly since it's not a particularly selective college academically....DS isn't likely to have any trouble meeting their academic requirements unless they somehow determine that we neglected to teach him American English.

DS was home for a long weekend for fall break. It was wonderful to see him, but I think it kind of reignited his homesickness. But he'll be home again for Thanksgiving in a month and then again a few weeks after that for winter break, and he'll be here for more than a month then. Should be plenty of time for him to get bored with us! Getting him here was SO EASY; his roommate gave him a ride to the airport less than 15 minutes away when he flew out. On the way back he had an early morning flight and was back in Minneapolis before 9 (there's a time change, so that helped, but still). Knowing he has such easy transportation options (at least until my sign-up bonus sky miles run out) makes having him so far away a little easier. Overall he still seems to be doing pretty well, but with that underlying layer of homesickness and loneliness. It's tough being an introvert who hates to be alone (ask me how I know! sorry about the problematic genes, kid). But grades are all great, and he's doing gaming club, D&D, and quiz bowl--and managing all that plus his work study really well, it sounds like. And I just found out I don't have to fill out the CSS Profile for next year, only the FAFSA (which we finished last night)--yay!!!

This is what we did. I gave him a half credit for working through Khan Academy stuff and listening to a Great Courses lecture series (and we listened to a lot of Planet Money, too)

You can use SAT or ACT scores for the math and English parts of that. And if you have classes from somewhere with accreditation (hybrid school, Georgia virtual, etc) you can mix and match quite a bit. We didn't have too much trouble with it for my oldest, even though I hadn't planned ahead very well. I'm more on top of things with my next kid. But it's definitely a pain (and I wonder how often they overlook the requirement if the grades and scores are high enough....but I wouldn't want to test it and find out 🙂 )

The perfectionism/anxiety combo is so tough! I'm almost hoping my DS gets a less than awesome grade out of the way first semester so that at least he'll learn it's really not the end of the world.

DS told me last night that he joined the quiz bowl team and he's going to a tournament on Saturday! And he went to the weekly math dept problem solving group! I'm so proud of him; I know being away from home + new people 24/7 has been really tough for him, but he's putting himself out there. It's still early, but I'm feeling hopeful that all those years of constantly trying to find the right balance of pushing my extremely introverted kid out of his comfort zone vs. not might be paying off now. He's pushing HIMSELF out of his comfort zone!

my husband is a high school calculus teacher, and he charges $60/hour for tutoring.

Just a note that most colleges will give credit for calc 1 for AB and for both calc 1 and 2 for BC....so if he's going to need both those credits in college, taking the BC exam might be a good idea, depending on future plans.

We used Jacobs for algebra 1 and geometry, then foerster for algebra 2-pre-calc.

We mostly read books (and poems. And plays) and talk about them. They do weekly informal journal entries which we use in discussion and longer papers here and there. And we listen to lectures (Great Courses, open courseware stuff) and outside reading from critics. It sounds casual, but I try to spend a lot of time preparing and choosing in advance what passages we're going to talk about and pushing them to do some fairly intense close reading.

Thank you! We don't have any family in the area, but we have a surprising number of internet friends who have offered to be available if he needs anything 🙂

It's been up and down with mine. He just started classes Tuesday, but had orientation starting last Thursday. He was miserable the night before move-in day, but when we left on Friday he was feeling a lot better. Then when I talked to him the night before classes started he was feeling really homesick and lonely and told me (kidding. mostly) that he'd looked it up and could fly home on Thursday for $107. But he seems much better since classes have started. He likes all of them so far and also his library work study job. I think the relative lack of structure and constant pressure to be out meeting people during orientation wore him down. He still thinks he's doing it all wrong because he doesn't have like six new best friends already, but it sounds like he IS meeting people, and I'm fairly confident some of them will end up being real friends.

is there a current code for $10/life? I couldn't find one when I looked awhile back. We have it right now, because I realized I was planning on using at least 3 of the courses that are included. We had some frustrating experiences with ones that were on Hoopla from our library being discontinued before we'd finished listening to them last year.

Station Eleven is my favorite surprisingly uplifting dystopian novel. Two of my teens have read and enjoyed it.