Moding is a good place to start, if he knows how to mod, he probably has the skills to create a chrome extension. My dd started this way and has made several chrome extension now. You mentioned he has played around with Audrino, my son started out with that too and he became interested in autonomous cars, so dh joined an autonomous car enthusiast club to give him an environment to explore his interest and find a mentor to help him build one. Taking lots of CS classes will only give your son breadth and what he needs to do well in CP competitions is depth. DH did CP competitions in college and he will tell you that none of the classes really help him do well, the only thing that really help was practice and experimenting. It’s like the math competitions, you can take all the AoPS classes and still not succeed at math competitions unless you have the time outside of class to practice. He can practice learning new skills on Hacker Rank and practice for competitions on Code Forces and he can ask for help on the USACO discord. Most of the kids that make it to Platinum are not taking Alphastar classes, only the kids in the Bay Area.

I see that he has taken lots of coding classes, but has he done projects on his own? Competitive programming is not about taking a class. A class and a tutor will help, but he needs to spend time outside of classes coding to be good at the competitions. My ds 7th grade is in USACO gold and puts in about 3-4 hours a day coding, some of the time is on USACO and some of it on his own projects. Ds has never taken a coding class, your can code without having to take classes and stress about grades. Does your son know C++, most platinum competitor and IOI use C++.

My son also knows some Chinese, it’s part of our heritage as well, my husband is Norwegian and ds knows a little Norwegian too. But I think one if the reason’s ds is not interested in learning a language is because of a speech issue. He has done speech therapy and still has issues with certain sounds. This one of the reasons I thought ASL or Latin would be easier for him. 🤷‍♀️

It may seem weird to give extra credit, but it seems pretty normal to give extra credit in classes. My ds’s classes at the CC all have extra credit. His Calc class has 5% extra credit on every exam. He’s had classes where the Professor will drop the lowest test grade and provides extra credit on the exams.

Maybe he needs to learn how to take the test. My dd had the hardest time with multiple choices test, we worked a lot on test taking strategies, when she was in middle school. I used several books to help her learn techniques for test taking. Here are a couple we used Mastering the Art of Test Taking https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578009986/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_MG5R977JZGSZ28P35KH8 Gruber's Essential Guide to Test Taking: Grades 6-9 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510754288/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_TN6PX4461Q5W5WXDXNA5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

We usually start in September, but UCSD starts in late September We needed to get signatures for the charter school, then the department that the class is in, and the professors as well. They will not let DE students add the classes until after school starts. We found that the math professors were the easiest to get signatures from.

UCs and CSUs have DE for middle and high schoolers. We are looking at DE at the UC for fall if they are in person, but there are more hoops to jump through.

For DE, we went with high interest classes, dd1 took Chem, dd2 took English, and ds took Calc. I think it is very dependent on the student’s interest and strengths.

We usually start with a spreadsheet with the number of hours each class will take, ie a CC class is usually 1-2 hours of work for every hour you spend in lecture and AP classes are usually 6-12 hours a week depending on the AP. For example AP CS is one of the earliest and only took 4-6 hour a week for my dd2 and APUSH took up to 12 hours a week. Then we would add up the number of hours and see if it was reasonable amount of work. If your son is an ineffective worker I would pad the estimate, my dd1 has adhd and EF issues and always took longer to get her work done, even though she is a DYS. So we always assume she will take longer than typical to get her work done.

I took French because a friend was also taking it, but she ended up dropping it. It was not the best choice, I really didn’t like the language. So I just want my kid to choose a language for the right reason, since it will be a 2-3 year commitment.

Great idea, I will show this to my son, we are going to discuss this and he will choose.

What language are your kiddos learning in high school, for those that haven’t learned a second language prior? My son is entering high school so we need to think about 2-3 years of language learning. Learning a language is not something he’s ever thought about nor really has much interest at this point. I’m thinking of talking about the possibilities of Spanish, Latin, Sign Language. Which would you think is best of those 3. He’s a math, computer science kid right now. No idea what his future plans are. He homeschools so not sure where he’d take it.

I don’t know if UCs are truly going back in person, dd is a TA at a UC and she told me that the school is giving the professors an option of teaching remotely. It is possible that students will be in lecture halls with the professors teaching remotely. she said that the TAs may have the option of holding remote office hours, but they will have to teach discussions in person.

You can look at the F=ma exam for physics, they have been very challenging for my son. He took the thinkwell honors physics and some of the F=ma problems are almost impossible for him. There is also the USPhO and USNCO for harder problems.

This year everything is online, but pre covid, we drove 80 minutes/ 3x a week.

SOHS attracts a lot of international students, who want to attend US colleges. A couple my Chinese friends had their kids attend, hoping it will give them an edge when applying to colleges. It is gear towards gifted students, but the heavy work load gives kids who are good at school an advantage.

Dance Mat Typing my son started using it in first grade.

Blue Tent has rigorous math classes as well. What about DE online, there is also ASU.

I don’t intervene and let ds miss the problems. I asked the director of our AoPS academy this very question and he told me that it’s better to have them miss the problems. Alcumus will adjust and give him an easier problem and work him up to the harder problems.

If you are looking for him to work in a small and share problem solving techniques, I would not consider AoPS online classes. The classes are delivered via live chat, no audio. The kids are typing the whole time. My son likes the format, he just wants to solve problems but there is not much socializing or talking

Multiplying by a negative is repeated subtraction. When we multiply a negative number times a negative number, we are getting less negative. for example: Imagine we represent multiplication as jumps on a number line. 3 times 3 on the number line For 3 × 3, we draw 3 groups of 3 moving to the right. Both the number of groups and the direction of each group are to the right. But what about 3 × -3? Now we have 3 groups of the number still, but the number is negative. 3 times -3 on the number line If we find -3 × 3, the size and direction of the number we multiply are the same, but now we are finding -3 groups of that number. One way to think of this is to think of taking 3 groups of the number away. Another is to think of -3 times a number as being a reflection of 3 times the same number. -3 times 3 on the number line So -3 × -3 is, therefore, a reflection of 3 × -3 across the number line. -3 times -3 on the number line In one sense though, this visual argument is just mathematical consistency represented using a number line. If multiplication by a negative is a reflection across 0 on the number line, and we think of negative numbers as being reflections across 0 of the number line, then multiplication of a negative number times a negative number is a double-reflection.

We are in CA and file a Private School Affidavit. We are considered a private school in Ca, so my school, my rules. So no fluff.

My son has dysgraphia. This is why he is using LaTeX. He does all of his homework with LaTeX, not just math. He is using it for Physics this year. It took him a long time at the beginning to get an assignment done. Probably about twice the time he would spend writing it out, but now it is just as fast as writing. If your son wants to learn to code, try Scratch. Ds learned Scratch first and then move on to other languages. Now he can code in Python and Java. We had ds practice typing on dancemat.com to get his speed and accuracy up. He would practice for about 15-20 minutes per day. It was very slow going at first up he is up to about 40-50 wpm.

My son took a couple of weeks to learn LaTeX. He used the quick reference that @daijobu mentioned and also this LaTeX tutorial https://www.latex-tutorial.com/tutorials/amsmath/

Blue Tent Calc is a great class. Shin also teaches at AoPS Academy, she is very knowledgeable and a great teacher, one of my daughter’s favorite teachers.