I would go during the school year and keep the younger two with me. You can find out an awful lot what you need to know just poking around with the younger two. Or go on separate tours. Send the college-bound one off on her own. You can always visit another time without the other kids if this is a serious option for your older child. HTH!

I have heard that for each year of additional schooling, it adds 1-2 points to the ACT score. I don't know if it is true, but it does make sense to me that a student's score WOULD be higher with more time to learn. --M

On the National chart that you can access on this page, it looks like 36 students took AP exams at grades younger than 9th grade. (If I read it correctly. . .I was in a hurry.) These charts are very interesting for showing which are the most popular exams at various grade levels. Mostlyamom http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/exgrd_sum/2009.html

It has a lot of material on the history of science in it, too. I've posted before about the great experience my child had with this course. Another option would be to skip science for a year, which wasn't what you were asking, but it could allow your student to study AP Music Theory or some other course that might be very valuable. Mostlyamom

http://www.ehow.com/how_2129742_demonstrate-leadership-college-admissions.html I thought this was a good starting point to think about demonstrating leadership. Also, you might be able to make their mentoring idea work with some tweaking. Mostlyamom

Do not hesitate to contact any parents whose children are not completing their assignments. It drags down a whole class if there are some who are not working along with the assignments. The parents expect that you will contact them, plus you will lose them in the class if they do not catch up right away. It is hard enough to round up homeschool students for a class--you'd hate to lose them in the first weeks! My latest approach to teaching Henle this year was to type out the exercises they need to do. Then during class we work from a stapled set. It makes one less thing to handle. Plus, it segments the work beautifully. We are trying to do as many exercises as possible during class, and that seems to help it from being overwhelming. It also means the students understand the material better, too. Hope this helps! Mostlyamom

Our home school group has offered the AMC8 for two years now. I think it needs to be offered in a public place, such as a library. The proctors can't be the parents of the students taking the exam. I think we had the proctor mail the test the day that it was offered, but you'd need to read the rules. I may be getting it mixed up with the National Latin Exam that we also offered last year. We divided the cost between students taking the exam, which I think was about $5 each for the 8-10 students. Some of our students received awards for their high score. If your student is eligible for the AMC8, you should take that. In our area, the AMC10 test was offered (for free) at a local college, so our group did not offer that test separately--we didn't have enough students who were interested in it, either. Also, I know of one case where we had great results with having 6th graders take the AMC8 test to prepare for higher scores at a later stage; the results proved to be very motivational for that student. The students use this website for reviewing a problem/day: http://maaminutemath.blogspot.com/ Oh, and if you don't have enough students to make your own group, if you don't mind paying the fee, I imagine you could just have a class of one, but just with an outside proctor. Hope that helps! Mostlyamom

I've posted here a few times, but we had a great experience with the Scholarsonline.org program. My child took the Natural Science I and II classes for two years, beginning in 7th grade, and it was a great experience. Mostlyamom

There are a number of threads on this board about taking an extra year in high school, and just this past week talked to two different middle school parents who are planning an extra 8th grade (or 7th grade) year for their sons who need more maturity before high school. There is such a wide variation in maturity level at this age, and further brain development with just one more year to work on it may completely solve many of the problems in understanding these math concepts. Also, I think there is motivation for students in not getting just "passed along" from grade to grade, but realizing they need to "earn" it. I think it requires a lot of love to be willing to "hold back" a student who needs more time working on a particular skill, too. I don't think kids grow in a linear way, do you? Mostlyamom

I have a friend whose children are students at a very respected and competitive engineering school. When I asked what they would be doing this summer, she explained that community college courses can provide an "intro" to certain subject matter that can really help. For her students, this helps a lot with co-requisite classes. So, you can tell your students that they are not unique--a lot of people do it, and it helps make the class easier. Mostlyamom

My son had a great experience with Dr. Christe at Scholarsonline.org over two years of class. I have posted about this several times before, so hesitated to comment earlier, but she did a GREAT job. We did not have a problem that I can recall about slow feedback. She inspired such a love of science that really boosted his knowledge at a critical phase of development. For our family, she was the professional teacher who really inspired him. I know he aced the science section of the EXPLORE test right after her class. Pat

Use the Homeschooler's High School Journal. This is Item #: 004568 at Rainbow Resource. Also, this year for the first time instead of a calendar from January-December, I purchased an "Academic Monthly Appointment Planner" which goes from August to July. This works really well for planning the school year, so that when there is a break from a class or activity, I don't have to transfer all that information from my notes in December to a new calendar in January when I'm always busy! The one I purchased last year is titled: "House of Doolittle Academic Monthly Appointment Planner." Pat

We listened to the recording of "In Freedom's Cause" in the car this year, and it was enjoyable. The narrator's emPHAsis on some of the words/phrases was different than the way I'd speak, sometimes, but it got better, or I got used to it. Pat

I have been working with a high school student this year who took an online Latin class. The online quizzes were quite a problem. If the word order did not match the answer key in the computer, there was a discount on the grades. I think a teacher-graded quiz would be a nice feature so that the student might have a little help in understanding what went wrong. However, that would add to the cost of the class, too. Pat

We did not use the labs for the courses that my child took from Scholarsonline.org, so I can't answer your questions. I remember looking at the lab instructions and they would have been manageable, but we chose not to do them. And I spelled Dr. Criste's name wrong in my last title, but this is the correct spelling. Pat