We've done a teen co-op for the last couple of years. It offers mostly elective type classes, and I don't use it for any core classes, preferring to teach those myself. As a result, we do a 4 day school week and co-op is our social/enrichment/fun day. My youngest has medical and developmental issues, so we also have scheduled appointments three days a week that we need to work around as well as doctor appointments. It's rare that we get to just stay home all day! But this is the season of life I'm in, so I just roll with it. I honestly have no issues with fitting things in to four days, but I don't think my 10yo needs a ton of scheduled coursework at this age. He does math and language arts (writing, literature, spelling) daily four days a week, and science and history alternate days. My kids go to Italian school on Saturdays. A lot of our educational stuff is unscheduled and done outside of formal "sit down school" time. We listen to educational podcasts, audiobooks and Italian radio, pick up stacks of library books every two weeks, and go for daily walks with our dog. We use Tinkercrate and Studies Weekly and do art projects. My high school age kids would work from a weekly syllabus that I gave them. They often worked on math or essay assignments or lab reports on the weekends. Once they start full time dual enrollment at the community college in 11th grade, they had weekend work for their classes anyway, so I didn't feel bad expecting them to get some stuff done on the weekends in 9th and 10th grade.

This just depends on the university. Both of my girls did full-time dual enrollment in 11th and 12th grade, but opted not to pursue the associates degree path, because some of the colleges that they were interested in would have considered them transfer students rather than freshman applicants.

I think I'm going to end up putting together my own high school government course for my older son. He's very interested in politics, current events and economics, so he's looking forward to doing government and economics in the fall. I don't share his passion, but I want to feed it rather than stifle it. I've looked at a lot of government textbooks, including Notgrass, and they're either super dry or from a particular viewpoint that I don't like. So, I guess I'm stuck doing my own thing. I think I'm going to use the Documents of Freedom website, along with some stuff from iCivics, the Center for Civic Education and C-Span's 2016 campaign website. I want to include primary sources too. Now I just need to sit down and make a syllabus to gel it all together into a semester. Then I get to start working on economics! :glare:

I've never bothered to count days. I didn't have to in CA, and I don't have to do it here either. For the last couple of years, #4 did a 4 day week while my high school age kids did 5 days. Then we just take breaks when I feel like it. We usually take off the entire week of Thanksgiving, and a couple of weeks around Christmas. My girls both did full-time dual enrollment in 11th and 12th grade, so they followed their college schedules from that point on. The public schools here usually do spring break at the end of February or early March, when it's below freezing and the ground is still covered in snow. I wait until it's actually spring in May, which results in my kids asking "When are we taking spring break?" for about four months. ;) I always intended to do light summer work when my older kids were young, but our schedule would fill and we'd end up dropping formal academics for the summer. #4 is doing summer "fun" school with me this year for the first time (math, board games and reading lots of library books), because he has some medical issues and special needs that warranted a lighter school schedule this past year. #3 is done with his 9th grade work and hardly ever home. We start formal academics again the week after Labor Day.

I use Trello (which is free). I have boards set up for the two kids that are still left at home, and they check things off as they complete them. If I was still schooling multiple younger kids who had shared work, I'd probably organize my boards by quarter, then have lists for each kid and a list for the shared work. If you're not adverse to using something online, Trello is a really good option.

The year before last was very rough for us, since my youngest has a variety of special medical and mental health issues. I signed him up for Time4Learning, and told him to do a set number of activities each day. Sometimes, something would spark his interest and we'd use the lesson as a springboard to reading, watching documentaries, looking up online games, etc. It wasn't the most comprehensive curriculum choice I could have made, but it kept him making progress and he actually learned a lot. He also LOVED Brain Pop and spent hours watching those videos, so the two in combination was plenty. I would absolutely go back to T4L with no guilt, if necessary. He's headed to Mayo in August, so we might have to spend a month or so using T4L again. Another option to consider might be the Homeschool Journals from the Thinking Tree. He's using one this summer. We check out a stack of books from the library, and each day, he does a few pages in his journal. I bought him a stack of new art supplies (crayons, markers, etc.) and he keeps them in a big bin on the floor next to his desk while he works. I'm pretty pleased with how well it's going. My son uses Singapore Math, and I have a list of online math games that I line up for each unit. Each day, he gets to play an online math game before doing his math lesson. That seems to alleviate some of the resistance I get from him. Hang in there!

I use OneNote to gather and organize things, then I use Trello as my planner. I have a team set up in Trello for both of my boys, and they can see what they have to do, click links, add comments and attachments and mark things complete. Right now, my youngest son is working from his "Summer Work" board, my older son is finishing up the last few things on his 9th grade board, and I'm working on both the 10th grade and 5th grade boards for the fall. OneNote has been my brain for YEARS, but I was never quite happy with its collaborative tools. Using Trello to manage daily work was perfect for us this past year.

I just discovered that the Kindle version of the book is available on Kindle Unlimited!

My younger daughter took Algebra 2 and Geometry simultaneously, which is what our local public school does for students who want to accelerate their math sequence. I don't know if that would be a possibility for your son, but it worked well here.

I used it for my son for 9th grade this past year. I added some reading, including David Christian's "This Fleeting World," "The Big Eras" from World History For Us All, and "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond, among others. He also watched the Great Courses Big History lecture series, and I assigned nearly all the videos in the extras section at the bottom of each unit. I used one of the syllabi from BHP's teacher resources to build my course. I wanted to be able to give him a world history credit for the course, and there's a syllabus that turns it in to a UC-approved world history course. It's not the one listed as "BHP World History Outline" in the syllabus section on the console. It was in their dropbox that they linked to in an email last summer. I use OneNote to organize and store course resources, and Trello to manage assigned work. I cut and pasted the entire syllabus into OneNote, deleted the activities that weren't suitable for us, added the activities and readings that I wanted. Then I put each unit's activities into a "Big History Project" list in Trello as a checklist. He really enjoyed the course and learned a lot, but I think we'll still end up doing a semester of Modern World History, because I wasn't quite satisfied with the amount of time we spent on thresholds 8, 9 and 10. I feel like we jammed through those. If I was going to do it over (and I probably will when my youngest gets old enough), I'd plan to spend more time on thresholds 8 and 9, and maybe a little less on 7.

I would definitely look at the requirements for the colleges she might consider and plan accordingly. Some colleges want to see at least 2 or 3 years of a "modern foreign language." My oldest had no interest in foreign language, but knew she had to get through it in order to meet college requirements.

I'm going to do a whole year of US government with my 5th grader next year. My 10th grader will also be doing government & economics, so it's been fun planning two different levels of all this stuff. I'm still pulling together the resources that I want to use (mostly stuff off my own shelves that I've collected over the years), but here are a few recommendations. The US government Federal Citizen Information Center has a couple of free educational posters you can order or download. One is called "How to Become President" and the other is "Three Branches of Government." Some books specifically on the election process: Bad Kitty For President by Nick Bruel See How They Run by Goodman and Smith America Votes by Granfield and Bjorkman iCivics.org has some fun online games and lesson plans

I have no experience with the chem kits, but I used Labpaq BK-1 Biology for my oldest, and the QSL Biology kit for #2. I won't use QSL again. I think I'll probably order the Labpaq chem kit for my son to use this fall. There was just no comparison at all in terms of comprehensiveness and quality. I was really disappointed in the QSL kit after having used Labpaq. The Labpaq lab manual was something like 300+ pages and even covered things like writing lab reports, while the QSL manual was a tiny little book. The QSL dissection samples were very small and had been squished, while the Labpaq dissections were well packaged and high quality. It was the same with the tools. Many of the Labpaq tools are still getting active use in our house, while the QSL tools all pretty much got dumped when my dd finished the course. Anyway, since Foxbridgeacademy mentioned wanting to do a comparison, I thought I'd throw that out there. The Labpaq kit was far above and beyond the QSL kit!

My oldest dd used K12's German I course in 9th grade, then took German II and III through OSU German Online. She didn't continue beyond that, but she enjoyed the courses at the time, apart from complaining sometimes about the weird soap opera style stories in the OSU course.

My oldest is working as a software engineering intern at the same company she worked for last year. They even gave her a substantial pay raise this year, and have told her that they want to hire her when she graduates, so that's pretty nice! #2 has worked for the last four years, but she just quit life-guarding in May, so she's enjoying some downtime before heading off to school in August.

I've already graduated two kids, but figured that my most recent 9th/10th grade is more relevant. #3's 9th grade: Literary Analysis and Composition I Intro to Computer Science Italian I Health (semester) / PE (semester) Algebra II Biology with Lab Big History Project World History #3's 10th grade: Precalculus Literary Analysis and Composition II Chemistry with Lab Italian II AP Computer Science US Government (semester) / Economics (semester)

Each year, I used to have coach my kids on how to answer a few questions. :D "If someone asks what grade you're in, you're in 6th, you're in 4th, and you're in 1st..." "If someone asks where you go to school, don't tell them you don't go to school! Tell them you do school at home." "If someone asks what you do for school, don't say we don't do school. Say 'lots of things.'" I still have to remind my youngest of this each year. Just last week, he asked me what grade he was in, because someone asked him at VBS and he said, "I don't know." *sigh*

My kids all did that until about 7 or 8 years old, so as others have said, it's totally normal!

Both of my girls originally used a cheap flip phone when they started DE, but once they started driving, we switched them to a smartphone so they'd have access to Google Maps. Having reliable GPS access is an absolute must for us. My ds will start driving this summer, and has a smart phone for the same reason. My kids use Boost Mobile, which is $30 a month. I use Cricket, which is a little more but has better coverage in the rural part of the Great Lakes where our sailboat is located. We don't use family plans. For a long time, my oldest and I had a Verizon "family plan" that cost us more than I'm paying now for the four of us on our separate prepaid plans! Plus, Verizon charged us overage fees if we went over our shared data allotment. Neither Boost nor Cricket charge you for overage. They just slow down your connection speed if you use up your data, so we know the kids will still always have access to Google Maps.

Both of my girls did full-time dual enrollment in 11th and 12th grade, but we opted not to have them pursue the AA/AS because it would have made them a "degree seeking student" at some of the universities they were considering, which would have made them ineligible for freshman scholarships. Since both of them received hefty academic scholarships, I'm glad we choose that route.

I really think this stuff just depends on the kid. I have two kids who needed minimal supervision to get stuff done. We discussed a lot, but I was able to give them weekly assignments and be fairly hands off. With my ds, I find myself sitting around a lot waiting for him to need me. We use Trello and OneNote and he works very well independently. If I just had those two, I could easily have gone back to work. On the other hand, my recently graduated younger daughter needed a lot of guidance and supervision up until last year. She had significantly more trouble with executive functioning tasks, like managing time. She's also extremely social, so she sometimes had trouble making the right choice between getting work done or socializing with friends. Tim Urban did a great TED talk on procrastination that she said really hit home for her. Over the last year, we focused a lot of getting systems in to place to help her get things done without me around. It would have been much more challenging to homeschool her and work, I think.

Welcome! High school really isn't that difficult, though it can seem overwhelming at first. I think it's easy to make it more complicated than it should be. Lori D has some fantastic posts on the basics of things like credits, so I highly recommend reading those. The high school years are absolutely my favorite. :D

My child would have needed to sign a FERPA release for us to be able to access her information. She was under 18 when she started college, and still had to sign it. I know it's probably not a popular opinion, but I don't believe that paying tuition entitles a parent to see the child's grades. I actually don't believe that a child is ready to go away to college if a parent still needs to monitor grades. They're adults at that point, and if they can't be expected to act like adults, then they aren't ready or mature enough to go away to school.

I really liked Planbook, but I missed having some of the collaborative tools that Trello has, especially for my high school kids.

I used Planbook for a while, before going back to Trello and OneNote. It's designed for teachers, but it works for homeschoolers too. It has the drag and drop and cut and paste functionality of Trello. They're supposedly adding a gradebook function too, though I'm not sure if it's there yet. To use it with multiple kids, I created multiple school years and named them after each kid.