Whether or not combining works just depends on the family. I tried many, many times over the years and was never able to successfully combine my kids. My older two are 23 months apart in age, but 3+ grade levels apart. One child is driven, focused and achievement oriented, and the other is dreamy, creative and prefers to do her own thing. I didn't have any success combining my middle two either. Trying to combine invariably ended up being more work than it was worth. One of the best things about homeschooling, for us, is the ability to customize each child's education to their own personality and needs.

My ds used Uzinggo last year and enjoyed it. Some things were buggy, especially the avatar rewards, which was frustrating for my son. They were very responsive when we contacted them via email, but didn't fix the issues at the time. I have no idea if they've been fixed since. It was a good supplement and I'd use it again. My son followed the suggested path, but I'm pretty sure you could jump around.

New and exciting? There's not much new stuff out there in the last couple of years, as far as I can tell, especially as secular options go. We've just stuck with interest-led science for my youngest. My older kids take charge of it sometimes. We've been through the EEME kits and a couple of Elenco electronics experiment kits. He has an Aerogarden and a bunch of plants around the house. We signed up for the Tinker Crate, and get our first one soon, so we'll see how that goes. After seeing my brother's Tesla, he got really into electric cars, and then green energy and solar power, so I picked up some experiment kits (Thames and Kosmos, etc.) to fit that. I'll probably just stick with planning out experiment kits for next year.

In my experience, many of the lab kit companies will give you the option of not purchasing dissection materials. My oldest daughter used the Biology BK-1 Labpaq kit with her Miller-Levine text, and it was fantastic! She LOVED it. The materials were high quality, and the lab manual was extremely thorough, covering everything from how to write a formal lab report to comprehensive directions for each lab. I'd say this kit was our best science purchase in all our years of homeschooling. The company went through some transitions and it became increasingly difficult to purchase from them, so my younger daughter ended up using a different lab kit when she went through biology. It appears that Labpaq now has a new website, and there is a link on the ordering page for homeschoolers to contact them to order, so hopefully they're more amenable to homeschool orders again. If that's the case, this will definitely be my first choice for my ds next year! Based on what you've posted, it's probably overkill for you, but thought I'd throw it out there. My younger daughter used the same Miller-Levine text, but I bought the lab kit from Quality Science Labs. It was okay. After using the 200+ page manual from Labpaq, I wasn't impressed with the thin, little booklet that came with our QSL lab. The labs were a lot lighter than the Labpaq labs. Most of the materials were decent, but the dissection specimens were small and squished, which was disappointing. With that said, the dissection labs were probably the meatiest (hah! sorry!) part of the whole kit. I won't use QSL again. If you get a list of the labs in any kit, it's fairly easy to line up labs with the topics in your biology text. QSL had a document that lined up the labs in their kit with a variety of texts, but I did it myself for the Labpaq kit and it wasn't hard.

See if there is an Italian cultural center or heritage club near where you live. They often offer youth and adult classes. Ours also offers loads of events and a lending library of materials and resources. My kids go to Italian school on weekends, and I work with them at home. I don't think Italian is hard to learn, but I don't really have much frame of reference for learning other languages. I grew up around Italian speakers, but my spoken language is not as good as my receptive language, so reviewing with my kids has helped a lot. My 16 year old is fairly fluent in Italian after many years of Italian school, and also took two years of Spanish in high school. She's currently taking Arabic via dual enrollment, so I think early language exposure helped her in a huge way. Being part of the local community is fantastic.In addition to having native speakers teaching my kids, they get to be around other bilingual kids. Having friends who speak the language has been awesome! My youngest son is using Raccontami 2, which is for 7-10 year olds. He loves it. It's designed to be taught by an Italian speaker though, and I think it would be tough to use unless you have some experience with the language yourself. You could also take a look at Applause Learning, which is where our school recommends that we get our materials. They have lots of resources.

My current 8th grader was a late reader with no learning disabilities. He was also very slow up until this year. Through testing, we learned that his silent reading skills far surpassed his oral reading skills, so oral reading was not a good measure of his fluency. I used the One Minute Reader from Read Naturally to work on fluency with him, but what really made him take off was finding his "spark." He first discovered the Rick Riordan books because his friends were reading them. He slowly read through those, but then found my old Dragonlance novels. There are something like 200+ Dragonlance books, many of which I could get used or as ebooks from the library. He found a "recommended reading order" for the books and just worked his way through that, finding as many as we could. The more interested he became, the more he read and eventually his speed started to improve pretty dramatically. From the Dragonlance books, I threw other book series at him (Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, etc.). I think that in his case, he just need a whole lot of practice to become more fluent, and the best way to keep him practicing was to find books that motivated him. We bought him a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas, and he carries it everywhere. It is absolutely one of my best purchases ever. My delayed and struggling reader is now my most avid reader.

Personally, I'd just install the game on your machine at home and let them have at it. They'll figure it out. I don't think their first Minecraft experiences need to be structured, nor do they need to be multiplayer or on someone else's server. In fact, I think it's best that they just learn to play the game and have fun building on their own, in a local world on their own computer. My kids just enjoyed playing and building for years (we were alpha testers) before we set up our own server or tried using it in a structured educational experience. Once they enjoy the game, then start looking into the various educational options out there.

This was the list we started with based on the Teaching Company course, but it morphed into a more specific dystopian focus about a third of the way through. For what it's worth, my daughter was an mature, avid reader who'd already had considerable exposure to literature. I'm also on the less restrictive end of the spectrum when it comes to censoring material. Tales of E.T.A. Hoffman Short Stories and Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll The Invisible Man & The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H. G. Wells The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka The Erasers, by Alain Robbe-Grillet Lord of the Rings & The Tolkien Reader, by J.R. R. Tolkien Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology, by Eric S. Rabkin Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne “Rappacini's Daughter†“Young Goodman Brown†“Ethan Brand†20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller 1984 by George Orwell Brave New World - Huxley I Am Legend by Richard Matheson That Hideous Strength - C. S. Lewis Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Leguin The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Leguin The Dispossessed Neuromancer, by William Gibson The Giver - Lowry The City of Ember - Jeanne DuPrau "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forester "'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman" - Ellison "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream" - Ellison "Harrison Bergeron" - Vonnegut Variety of other short stories, films and poetry Movies: I Am Legend Blade Runner I, Robot Soylent Green The Trial Akira Total Recall Road Warrior THX 1138 Starship Troopers For more general speculative fiction, here's the Steampunk booklist that my current 8th grader is working through: Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel @ Gordon Dalhquist, The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters William Gibson, The Difference Engine Richard Harlan, Worldshaker Stephen Hunt, Court of Air, Kingdom Beyond the Waves, Rise of the Iron Moon, Secrets of the Fire Sea Jay Lake, Mainspring George Mann, The Affinity Bridge China Miéville, Perdido Street Station, The Scar Michael Moorcock, The Land Leviathan Kim Newman, Anno-Dracula Kenneth Oppel, Airborn, Skybreaker, Starclimber Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion Cherie Priest, Boneshaker, Dreadnought Philip Reeve, Infernal Devices: A Novel, Mortal Engines: A Novel, Fever Crumb, Larklight Ann & Jeff VanderMer, Steampunk, Steampunk II Scott Westerfeld, Behemoth, Goliath, Leviathan Brian Selznik, The Invention of Hugo Cabret Eoin Colfer, Airman Justin Richards, The Death Collector Arthur Slade, The Hunchback Assignments H.G. Wells, The Time Machine Caitlin Kittredge, The Iron Thorn Glenn Dakin, Candle-Man Chris Wooding, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray D.M. Cornish, Foundling Jaclyn Dolamore, Magic Under Glass

My oldest daughter did a year of interested themed literature in 8th grade. It started when she found an old copy of Fahrenheit 451 in a discard bin, read it and then woke me up in the middle of the night, because she'd just finished it and REALLY wanted to talk about it. So we ended up scrapping our original 8th grade plans, and built the year around dystopian literature. We had a broad selection of novels and short stories, and she watched several film adaptations. For example, reading and exploring the themes in Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend," then watching various film adaptions and discussing those was really, really cool. We also found some wonderful audio readings. Robin Williams reading Harlan Ellison's short story "'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman" was a particular favorite! She did a whole mess of projects, mostly art, inspired by the things we read. She filled sketchbooks, produced a lot of digital art, a few paintings, some altered books, sculpture and a diorama. She did some lapbooks too, using a generic novel study lapbook template that I'd gotten from somewhere. I also had her write several literary analysis essays. I very quickly found that I didn't have to assign much. I created a syllabi roughly based on the Teaching Company course, "Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind." (Note: There are adult themes and content in that course, so if that's a concern, I don't recommend it. My daughter was mature, and I prefer to have those discussions with my kids while they're under my roof, so this worked for me.) Some of the essay questions that I gave her were from that course, and some I created or we developed together. It was a fantastic year, very productive and one of the best things I could have done prior to starting high school. Though she's a computer science major, she still enjoys taking the occasional literature class in college. I think that 8th grade year really inspired a lifelong appreciation for literature.

My dd #2 struggled with the physical act of handwriting for a long time. She had no LDs, apart from fine motor delays. When she was 12, I took her to OT, and they taught her cursive in about 6 weeks. They started by having her write large letters on a classroom whiteboard, then gradually move down to writing smaller letters. She had daily homework using Write-On Handwriting's Conquering Cursive (published by EPS), and lots of fine motor development activities. It was quite intensive, and not something that I would have had the time or knowledge to duplicate at home. However, at the end of 6 weeks, her handwriting was legible for the first time in her life, and it was definitely significantly easier for her physically than it ever had been before. She still needed lots of practice, but OT got us over the biggest hurdle. I definitely think it was easier for her to learn cursive than it would have been for her to learn manuscript at that time. While she doesn't write in cursive at all, and really didn't retain it, she does do sort of a manuscript/cursive hybrid that's pretty legible. She can write quickly enough to take notes in her college classes, which was really the whole goal. All this to say, if it's possible to get some OT remediation, it might be really helpful! It was definitely the solution for us.

Thank you so much for posting this! My younger dd is very interested in ROTC, but it was never on my older daughter's radar so it's all new to us. I appreciate the information!

My son never used a calculator. It didn't even occur to us that other kids might be using one. Knowing that would have made my son feel better about being a slow typer! He would get the answers quickly, but just couldn't type them in fast enough. When my ds took the class a few years ago, it seemed like most of the kids were 10 or so. That was our impression from reading the intros. There were a few older and a few younger, but that age range seemed to be the majority of the class demographic.

My ds had just turned 10 when he started the AoPS pre-algebra class. Despite being an accelerated math student, he was a struggling reader and didn't have any typing experience, so the chat based AoPs class format was a challenge. The scrolling classroom chat text was often VERY fast moving, and in the beginning, I'd sit with him to read it to him. He'd also get frustrated because he couldn't type his answers quickly enough on his own. He'd shout them out right away, then get upset because he couldn't find it quickly enough on the keyboard. He was very competitive and that bothered him a lot. He didn't need me for any other aspect of the class apart from the actual class sessions. Everything else he could manage independently on his own. We eventually stopped taking AoPS classes and just continued on our own with the books because the class format was so frustrating for him. He'd be fine with it now, but he prefers using the books on his own so we have no need for the class anymore. If they'd offered a video class option, then he likely would have been almost completely independent. If your child is a proficient reader and a good typer, or doesn't mind if other people get their answers in first, then you shouldn't really need to sit in on the classes.

It sounds like your daughter has done what she needs to do. Both of my older girls did full time PSEO, and we live in the very cold and frequently snowy upper Midwest. Schools here rarely close due to snow, because it's a common occurrence. They will occasionally close due to excessively frigid weather and send out a text message through their alert system if this is the case. This winter has been particularly mild so far, but we have some ground rules for winter driving. I do not allow my 16 year old to drive on a day when it's actively snowing heavily. She can drive the next day if the roads are mostly clear. If I can, I will drive her to and from classes if I believe current road conditions are beyond her abilities. This is also what we did with my oldest during her first winter driving on her own. Now she handles all her own winter driving. In our experience, college professors usually understand that some people will have more difficult commutes than others when the weather is questionable. We live in an urban area so our roads are cleared pretty quickly, but other students who live further out will have a lot more trouble. If the college isn't closed, your daughter will be expected to make up the work or get notes, just as if she missed any other day but it's really not a big deal. If she's concerned, maybe she could plan to drop into office hours later in the week and touch base with her instructors.

I don't remember any actual instruction in school. Oddly enough, I remember *exactly* what the clock looked like my high school classes though. I spent a lot of time staring at those clocks.

My oldest is an introvert. Most of her social interaction in high school came from her dual enrollment classes. On the other hand, my current highschooler is a total extrovert. I think it would be much more challenging for us to homeschool her if we didn't live in a metropolitan area. She's a lifeguard and swim instructor for our city, is very active in the youth group at church and is a peer minister who works with the middle school kids. She sings at Mass on weekends, takes voice, guitar and music theory, and is in the rock band program at her music school. She attends a homeschool co-op once a week. She's dual enrolled full time at the community college and participates in the college choir and a couple of on campus clubs. So she's got church friends, dual enrollment friends, work friends, homeschool co-op friends and music friends. Her boyfriend goes to a brick and mortar high school. A lot of her friends go to the local public high school. She runs into people she knows pretty much everywhere she goes.

My older kids used K12 science in the elementary grades. I purchased it independently, not through a charter school. They enjoyed it, and have a lot of fond memories of the projects and experiments. When my girls were younger, there just weren't a lot of solid, secular science options for elementary school. K12 science was easy to implement and the experiments got done.

We use Medic Alert for my youngest son (who requires medication) and my 16 year old daughter (who has a medication allergy). If you just want a bracelet, and not have it tied to a medical record, then I think the best option is Road ID. I wear a Road ID for running and cycling.

I've only bothered with report cards when my kids needed them for something, which has happened maybe half a dozen times in all my years of homeschooling. I don't do grades or transcripts until my kids are doing high school work.

If people ask, I just say that we've always homeschooled. I also usually mention that I've graduated one child and will graduate another next year. Most of the time, I think what people are really trying to figure out is if my kids have ever been in traditional school. Since so many homeschoolers, at least around here, pulled their kids out of school, there's sort of an assumption that you had a definite starting point. The question is fuzzier for those of us who didn't really have a definite starting point, but have just never sent our kids to school. We started in a state where the compulsory age was different than it is here, so that's not clear cut either.

I think it depends. For us, it was very worth the money. I have no experience with Foundations at all, so I can't compare. I've only used Essentials. My ds used it in 6th grade after years of trying every other spelling program I could find. At the time, he couldn't write or spell, but he was a decent reader. LoE was exactly what he needed. He's totally on track as an 8th grader now. I bought an extra workbook at the time, thinking I'd also use it with my younger ds. He started this year and is doing very well. To answer your questions, it really doesn't rely on games. The game book is supplemental. There are occasional game suggestions in the lessons, but they're skippable. My older ds skipped them, but my younger ds loves the games. My older ds didn't use any of the resources once we were finished, but that's because he thoroughly learned the material. I am using it with a younger child, so I'm getting additional use out of it. It's very easy to teach. The lessons are pretty scripted, but easy enough to follow that you don't feel like you have to read it word for word. The introductory pages are a bit intimidating at first, but once you look at the lessons, it all starts to make sense. I bought the complete kit at a conference, but all I'm using with my younger ds is the teacher guide, the workbook, the phonogram cards, grammar cards, and spelling rule cards. Occasionally, we pull out the game supplement and game cards. The first time through, I used the reference chart quite a bit, especially later in the program when it was hard for me to remember everything. I'm not using it as much this time around. I guess I finally learned all those phonograms myself. ;) My older ds used the spelling journal, but my younger son isn't. I never used the cursive books that I bought. Hope that helps.

My son's ACT scores were posted to the NUMATs toolbox yesterday! I think that's the fastest I've ever seen scores posted!

Build Your Library It's secular, inexpensive and schedules stuff that I was already going to be using.

Have you looked at "test optional" schools? There are schools that don't require the SAT/ACT, including some top tier universities. Here's a link to the list.

I ordered the year 1 kit back in mid-July, and received it within two weeks.