We just do interest-led science. I haven't yet used a full science curriculum. I'm a former scientist, and science is a part of our daily lives and discussions. My goal is to instill a high interest in science and strong critical thinking skills before high school. We also do tons of field trips. These are some samplings, but not our complete lists for each year. 6th grade -- a big picture overview year with emphasis on climate change, at DD's request Aristotle Leads the Way Some Ellen McHenry (until DD said she really didn't like them) Really Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Nye Unstoppable We are Weather Maker's Omnivore's Dilemma Magic of Reality Dr. Art's Guide to Science Coursera course: Our Earth's Future EdX course: Science of Climate Change 7th -- mostly an anatomy and physiology year, at DD's request but also some other high-interest areas (food history/science and science of color) Newton at the Center Some Science Matters Tried McHenry again (still not a hit) Some Miller & Levine Dragonfly biology Hole's Anatomy and Physiology (about half) Circus/dance performer anatomy and physiology studies Great Courses Bozeman science A&P Crash Course A&P, chemistry, bio Bunch of food science/history books like: Banana--the Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, Chocolate, Sugar Changed the World Secret Language of Color (plus Great Course) 8th grade (current) Culinary science with a ton of resources, roughly using Guest Hollow as starting point Einstein Adds a New Dimension

We loved Twisting Arms too! We used that in 7th, and I agree--it should be more widely recommended! We have used so many different resources over the years, and DD just turned in her very first "response to literature" essay as part of Oak Meadow English 8. I just did my first quick run-through, but OH MY GOODNESS! All those pieces have finally come together. Her essay is good. Finally. I'm so relieved. (For what it's worth, I wouldn't recommend OM as a writing resource. It definitely doesn't offer "how to" writing tips, but we are enjoying it otherwise.) I don't have the heart to recommend all the resources we've used because I honestly have no idea what it finally was that got us here. It's basically just how she learns. I keep throwing things at her and then eventually she suddenly has mastered it.

I honestly don't have any misses yet this year. I've made a few tweaks but nothing major: - Contemporary US history--using Prufrock Exploring America, American Odyssey, Hakim, Zinn, Takaki, Crash Course, tons of documentaries. - AoPS algebra -- I'm honestly totally surprised by how successful this is. She's not going through it quickly but she is totally owning it and, dare I say, enjoying it. - Spanish -- still loving Español Santillana. Perfect fit for us. - Culinary science -- using Guest Hollow as spine but added a ton of other things including Gourmet Lab. DH and DD are actually doing all the cooking experiments together, and he is doing the readings too so I don't have to. - English -- Oak Meadow 8. It's going pretty well but we dropped the vocabulary that always makes DD nuts. Her first essay is due this week..we'll see how that goes! Our biggest challenge is time. She has something going on nearly every day plus performance gigs most weekends right now. Feeling a little overdrawn because of that! She's still working through converting my weekly schedule to her daily schedule. We're using the planner from Order out of Chaos, and she seems to like it pretty well.

I'm spending all of 8th on the 1950s-present. I'm using a mix of: - American Odyssey - Hakim - Zinn - Tons of documentaries and movies - Crash Course -- videos and their full US history curriculum - Some Great Courses and stuff from Coursera and EdX - Stanford read history like a historian - Prufrock "Exploring America in the ... " decades (they have one for each decade from 1950s-2000s - Fictional history readings I spent all summer building this out. We are spending 6 weeks on each decade. Honestly, I've likely created a high-school level course even though we're doing this in 8th. I didn't find anything I liked on its own.

The Human Odyssey student pages weren't aren't particularly challenging nor do they require much deep thought. Maybe some of the longer response questions might be a starting point, but a lot of it is just fill in the blank. I didn't find them that great for middle school. If you want some guidance around world history, Oak Meadow's high school world history is designed to be textbook independent so you could use it with any world history text. I haven't used it, but I have other OM high school materials, and they definitely dig deeper than the K12 Human Odyssey materials. http://oakmeadow.com/news/courses/world-history/

Honestly, it sounds like it might be time to consolidate some of the work you're doing separately. Do you really need separate grammar, literature, vocab, and spelling programs anymore? Plus a reading and literature program? Separate composition too? I think I lost count somewhere about how many separate "English" courses that is. I spend about 1-3 hours with DD daily. Otherwise, she's working on her own, and I didn't really think that she would like that, but so far she's really loving it this year. For 8th this year, we are doing: 1. Literature -- Oak Meadow 8 which is largely student directed. Lots of reading, includes grammar, vocabulary, and writing. I do the readings too and discuss and check DD's work. 2. Contemporary US History 1950s-present -- I spent a HUGE amount of time prepping for this over the summer. DD has a ton of work to do on her own, including writing and projects. We discuss and watch documentaries, videos together. 3. Spanish 1 -- we go through daily lessons and then she has daily practice work. 4. Algebra 1 -- nearly all student directed as she is using AoPS algebra and just checks in with me. (This is our 2nd pass through Algebra as we did Forester's last year so this is mostly review but I wanted the AoPS benefits.) 5. Science -- culinary science, which was also a ton of prep work for me over the summer. She has a ton of reading to do, some independent writing, and labs with dad on Sundays. 6. Extra -- this is whatever I feel like giving her. It could be typing practice, study skills, extra grammar, vocabulary, whatever. But, it varies and might not happen at all some days. ETA: Although I only have 1 8th grader, I also work full time from home for a major company so I have other obligations that take a lot of my time.

I graduated from hs in NJ 30 years ago and still have my old course schedules in my scrapbook. I just looked and even back then they counted 5 credits for a 5-day per week class. We had a standard set of 6 academic classes plus phys ed/health every year. So, that was 35 credits in their system. We didn't have any partial credit courses or semester classes classes then either. This explains why I've been struggling to understand how to count hs classes for DD! 1 credit per day apparently made more sense to my brain based on my history.

In hindsight, as the owner of nearly every pre-algebra program, we didn't really like any of them. Yes, we had Dolciani, AoPS, MM, JA, etc. I mashed it all together and made it work because we just weren't happy with any of them. But we did spend a lot of time playing games, reading, working with manipulatives so it wasn't a total loss. That was in 6th. Then, we got to algebra in 7th, and I realized it's because I don't think we actually needed pre-algebra. It was this weird year of making sure you had everything covered in arithmetic before moving to algebra. In hindsight, I probably should have just gone to algebra. As it was, we did Forester's algebra in 7th, and although we completed it, I missed AoPS. Since DD is a strong math student, but not a math lover nor interested in pursing it as a career, we've decided to do a second year of algebra 1 this year (8th) with her doing AoPS algebra independently. It's been our smoothest math year ever so far. She now loves Alcumus and working through everything on her own, which she didn't like with their pre-algebra book.

For OUP, there are 2 series: Word in Ancient Times -- This link lists all of them included in the entire series. You can purchase as a set or individually, but this is also just a good way to see what books are included. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-world-in-ancient-times-set-9780195222425?q=world%20in%20ancient%20times&lang=en&cc=us Medieval and Early Modern -- Same comment as above. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-medieval-and-early-modern-world-9780195221572?q=Medieval%20&lang=en&cc=us# They do make student and teaching guides for nearly all of the individual volumes, but we ended up just reading all the books and discussing instead. Here's one so you can see what I mean: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Guide-Early-Human-Ancient/dp/0195178971/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1503666445&sr=8-7&keywords=world+in+ancient+times

DD came home from Guatemala at age 6 months. Before she came home, her foster mother insisted she was saying water and bubbles (in Spanish) every time she had a bath. I was skeptical. We promptly started teaching her sign language as a way to transition her from Spanish to English. By 8 months she was saying the words in English along with the sign, and DH and I looked at each other and thought.. huh.. maybe not bother with the sign language. She was speaking in 2-3 word sentences by 1 year, and I kept thinking I was hallucinating. DH and I both come from bright/gifted families so it all seemed normal. It didn't really strike me until some issues popped up later that I wanted to figure out, and then all the pieces came together around age 4. We finally had her tested around age 9.

Is Rosetta Stone considered sufficient for high school language credit?

We have an only, and when she was that age we joined a local group of other kids her age who planned to homeschool. But, at that age it was just all field trips and fun projects and park gatherings. I think most of the families who were most active in that group still homeschool even though our kids are mostly in 8th-9th grade now. The group slowly disbanded over time as everyone just folded into the regular homeschool groups. But, it was one of my daughter's favorite groups, and she still remembers it after all these years. I actually feel like the hardest years with an only were more likely ages 6-9, but that had a lot to do with our schedule changes. I had to work really hard to make sure she was seeing friends and doing activities she liked. She's in 8th grade now and has her own interests and activities. We have a couple of homeschool activities that we do that she loves, but most of her friendships nowadays are with others, regardless of school, who share the same passion/obsession with aerial/circus stuff. DD tells me to stop worrying about whether she sees friends enough so I try to follow her lead in that now that she's older.

I agree about trying another algebra and going back to it. That's actually what we're doing. We completed Forester's last year (7th), but it fell short for me in a few places. DD did fine, but I figure we have the time so we are going through AoPS algebra this year (8th). I strongly suspect this will be our last AoPS book, but I think having the solid year of other algebra under her makes it a great fit right now. She's quite strong in math but genuinely doesn't enjoy it so she just will never be the kid who gets enjoyment from tackling single problems for an hour.

NM

Right?! So many! Plus, trying to match it up with the actual history reading, documentaries, etc. I hope it ends up being as interesting as it seems. Oy! I think I'm biting off a lot trying to get through all of the books in one year, but we'll see. Which decades are you guys going to do?

We're doing a focused US history of 1950s-present this year, and I'm using the "Exploring America in..." series from Prufrock. It's not a standalone history series and each book is costly so I hesitate to suggest it. However, it does a great job of getting kids to evaluate music, literature, and art from the historical happenings of the decade. I've partnered it with American Odyssey, Hakim, Zinn, many documentaries, Crash Course, and a lot of other materials. It's taken me a ton of time to gather all the resources. But, the end of decade projects are pretty interesting and fun. For example, the 1950s asks them to put together a guest list for an Ed Sullivan episode, complete with interview questions. The idea being that they've had enough exposure to historical and cultural happenings to make thoughtful choices. The 2000s has something like putting together Instagram posts of important/iconic things from the 2000s with appropriate hashtags and stuff. The 90s is a web page. 60s is pop art. I can't remember the 70s and 80s. But, it looks like a creative and thoughtful approach beyond more writing (which there is a fair bit of during the critical analysis work in each decade.) ETA: You could easily just do one decade and just partner it with whatever history reading you've already planned.

Personally, I'd spend time figuring out what he loves and spend 8th grade getting him to love history through that topic. Is he into airplanes? Study the history of flight. Is he into ballet? Study the history of dance. Into science and technology? Lots of opportunities there. I feel like 8th grade is still your chance to do whatever you want, and you have a ripe opportunity to get him to really love history. We love history at our house, and I'm not sure my daughter could blurt out the names of any Important Men or Dates. We look at social history, history of the people, lessons we can learn as it applies to today's culture. There are so many ways to look at history, and if people think it's just about Important Things People Tell Me I Should Learn it can feel super dry and boring.

We started using them around age 10 just because they had some great ones that aligned with what we were doing. We absolutely loved the Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World that day but they do mention many adult activities. DD stopped and asked me what some were, and I answered honestly. She's 13 now, and I can't even begin to count how many we've used on just about every subject--study skills, history, science, math, literature, Spanish, etc.

I confirmed with Mosdos last year that the workbook didn't have any Poetry pages. We used Jade daily and got through it much sooner than I thought from looking at the contents originally. But, we also ditched the workbook and focused on reading, thinking about questions in the student text and used the TG a lot for guiding deeper discussions.

I spoke too soon. I made it to the end of planning this weekend, and several references to young earth resources popped up. I'm ignoring them, but still feeling frustrated, though not surprised.

What about something like the Martian Chronicles from Bradbury?

We are doing Guest Hollow kitchen chemistry. I think she is not typically secular but the book choices are quite solid, and I've reviewed most through lesson 18 in detail and haven't found anything that set off any alarms. I am adding some additional materials to it, including Gourmet Lab https://www.amazon.com/Gourmet-Lab-Scientific-Principles-Favorite/dp/1936137089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501033155&sr=8-1&keywords=Gourmet+lab

I've used a lot of stuff for algebra -- interactive notebooks, games, etc. I'm not very brand loyalist so I don't have any specific recommendations. It's just nice to have some fun stuff for higher level math.

What age? Younger than 6-7 will be tough. Some kids just never get into juggling. My DD has been attending circus classes for nearly 6 years and still really can't juggle! She's tried diablo, scarves, poi, spinning plates, flower sticks, hoop, unicycling.. we have it all but she's definitely never caught the flow toy bug! She is an advanced aerialist and stilter, though! Here's a way to earn some juggling badges and a great resource for tips, etc.: http://www.juggle.org/programs/youth-juggling-academy/

We have definitely gone through it so much faster than the others even with a lot of extras. I agree you could do it as a half credit.