Yes!! We went through this syllabus in 9th grade in conjunction with our arguments & logic materials. It has a 'sanitized' sister site here: https://callingbull.org/syllabus.html if you want to avoid the profanity. Plenty of articles and class videos on how to judge sources, arguments, misuse of statistics, etc. Highly recommended as a catalyst for great topical conversations.

I hadn't considered that! Thank you!

Computer Science (enjoys coding, game design, problem solving) and Digital Arts. Those two majors are offered online via the 4-yr university we were looking at, so we aligned her curriculum along those goals. The pre-reqs or core courses for those two majors are Calc, Physics, and Programming for CS and Art History for DigArts, so we are covering those bases via AP credits and DE courses, with a few other electives thrown in for some interest-driven broadening (philosophy, astronomy during physics). The other generic APs are just the normal progression along the English, foreign language, and social science (USH, Gov, WH) paths to meet normal high school credit expectations and will also fulfill her college general ed core program.

We certainly could, and our original schedule had a normal 4-year progression. Several months ago we started exploring DE as an addition to our curriculum, and it was a surprise to see our student would be on track at this pace to finish up by the end of this upcoming school year. That lead to the realization that if 4th year would be primarily taking DE or other online higher-level coursework from various sources we could gather (Coursera, MITOCW, etc), why not do them through the full university online program and get full credit and course access toward her degree? Taking higher math and not getting credit for it before retaking it at the university is a hard sell right now. It's still very possible this upcoming year won't play out how we've planned it out (it never does!), so it's certainly not a problem if we spread out the DE and other courses into next year for a more comfortable schedule or to branch off into new areas based on her interests as they come up. I'd expect we'd remove a DE class or two from our current year's schedule and as you mentioned move them to next year, build out a fun lit course, work in a bunch of art and look for the next math class somewhere depending on how she does on the calc exam. We're just getting our ducks in order to help her jump on an opportunity if it presents itself should our plan go off without a hitch (ha).

Downsides of maxing out credits early? Primarily that the potential fourth year of high school would be difficult to build for progression. Aside from the aforementioned Calc/Art history, there isn't much in the way of DE courses or electives that wouldn't be shed once she attends a 4-year school. We could provide some home options and build courses for interest exploration, and we're open to having something like that particularly if she decides she needs more time before moving on. But the downside is she practically wouldn't 'need' anything else and she might be spinning her wheels a bit for a year, with either a thin or elective-heavy schedule. She can't transfer any additional credits via AP or CLEP and there isn't any more DE options to enhance future class placement in upper-division work. I recognize this could simply be a weakness in my lack of creativity or insight in how to construct a sufficiently interesting additional year that would still be valuable for her in growth (instead of box-checking) and still demonstrate whatever rigor & progression she'd need for future admissions.

Unfortunately we have no local 4-yr options. Even the community college that our area has the DE articulation agreement with is 45 minutes away, so online is the most viable option for now. The closest 4yr college is at least 90 minutes away, and lacks online options. The state system does have two good online CS options, one requires an AA and all pre-reqs done as a normal transfer, and the other doesn't (which we are targeting). As far as early grad and moving away, we are the same and don't feel comfortable having her leave home yet. She doesn't yet have the desire to go residential or out of state at this age, and has plenty of time before having to make that decision.

As many others have done above, we took a close look at what colleges were looking for on their admissions pages and worked backwards. There are huge overlaps with most schools, and the basic 5x4 + electives is a real simple starting point. I also found it very helpful to seek out the curriculum guides posted online from our local high schools. The larger schools had extensive public documents that not only broke down the expected credits for the standard brick-and-mortar state requirements, but also suggested accelerated or college-prep tracks that I could compare against our own homeschool plans if I wanted to roughly mirror a competitive home curriculum. I even did a wider search by looking at some of the curriculum guides from America's "top high schools" via Niche to get an idea of what some of the "top tier" private schools plan out for their curriculum for inspiration. For some states and colleges, it is worth noting the importance of GPA calculations with how classes are classified. E.g., in most of my state publics, they will calculate GPA for admissions primarily from core classes (ELA/Math/Sci/Social Sci/Language) on a standardized web application with higher weight for honors, AP, and DE.

Thank you to everyone for your inputs and perspective!! This makes a lot of sense, but she might run into a unique situation: with the AA in hand and a pile of credits from DE/AP/CLEP, she'll be almost maxed out as far as what would advance her further into a 4-year degree plan. In FL, the AA by statute will count as full completion of any public university's GE core, and aside from Calc3 and Differential Equations (for CS or Engineering) or Art History (for Digital Arts) at the community college, she literally might not have access to anything else (3000-4000 series courses) that will count along her degree path. She'll have excess credits for non-major electives to fill out the normal 60 for the first two years. We're not in any rush to push her through, but we just want to get the most out of her time. Corraleno & ScoutTN - Great points, but we are in a real lucky category with her leaning toward state publics. The DE courses are free, so the AA will be free, which just leaves the last 2+ years of the upper division/major coursework remaining for the BS. The tuition for that, SAT dependent, is covered by the state scholarship (FL Bright Futures) aside from housing, which will be a non-issue if she attends online. FL also seems to have a 50% tuition discount for upper-division courses in CS/Engineering and a few other high-need fields, so the costs may be negligible. Our public system is almost comically cheap in-state to boot, so all in all we are incredibly fortunate to not have any particular financial aid requirements and her undergrad might potentially be 'free' with just the basic non-competitive state scholarship. I am a vet and transferred my GI Bill to her as well. That's our plan C for tuition and housing should she need it for undergrad, particularly if she pivots and decides she'd like to attend a private university or an institution that won't make the most of her credits and AA. Ideally that money would be held for a couple years until she graduates and then used to pay for her grad school anywhere in the country she pleases if she chooses to pursue that path.

Good catch, we had an extended Alg2+Geo course a couple years ago

Would it be better to have a full 4 years of high school on a transcript despite less demonstrated rigor in Freshman year for a younger-than-average student, or a tighter 3-yr high school record that showed denser rigor and 'early graduation'? The context: Our student is on track for finishing up her high school requirements in 3 years, and looking to switch over to either our local community college or an online university program once complete. We've been updating her transcript as we go and realizing the 3-year option was a possibility only sunk in very recently. There's plenty of things we can do to keep her busy in a fourth year of high school, but given she is happy to pursue online or local schooling for now (and keeping options open) she is leaning into closing out high school and moving on. She'll be 16 as she finishes our homeschooling, but her graduation should coincide with earning her AA via DE credits (+AP & CLEP) from the community college. She is looking at online Computer Science or Digital Arts&Sciences programs at 4-yr universities, but may do another semester or two via the community college to build out more early major prerequisites (i.e., Calc 2/3, Linear Algebra/Discrete, art history, etc.). She hasn't been interested in attending a residence school at this age, and is considering trying to get her bachelors a bit early and then deciding after 18 if she wants to go in-residence for grad school or pivot to something else. I'm concerned putting her out there with a 3-year transcript might cause her issue with admissions, and have been thinking about retooling the paperwork to classify the 8th grade year as her first year of high school so 4 years could be reflected. The rigor would be less, but we were still teaching with mostly high school level materials in that grade. The difference would look something like this: Current 3-yr transcript (10-12 credits per year, "Finish HS Early"): 9th: English 9, AP Chem, AP HumanGeo, Alg2, Spanish, Various Fine/Digital Arts (prolific artist), PE, Anatomy&Physiology, Psychology 10th: Eng 10, AP Bio, AP World, AP CSP, AP Stats, Precalc, Spanish, Arts, Marine Sci, DE Philosophy (summer) 11th: AP English, AP PhysicsC, AP US, AP Gov, AP Spanish, Arts, 4x DE Classes (CompSci, Astro, Arts) Or 4 yrs (~9 credits per year, "Started HS Early / Skipped 8th grade"), somewhat adjusting the location of the non-AP classes since many of them we stretched out over a year or two (or three) and sometimes did a bunch of things in the summer. We tend to learn and explore stuff year-round aside from the APs.: 9th (previously 8th grade): English, Biology, Alg1, Spanish, Arts, PE, Music, Ancient History, Enviro Sci 10th: English, AP Chem, AP Human, Alg2, Spanish, A&P, Arts, Marine Sci 11th: English, AP Bio, AP World, AP CSP, AP Stats, Precalc, Spanish, Arts, DE Philosophy (summer session) 12th: AP English, AP PhysicsC, AP Calc, AP US, AP Gov, AP Spanish, Arts, 4x DE Classes (CompSci, Astro, Arts)

AP BIO - HOW WE DID IT: We homeschooled AP Bio last year and had excellent results on the exam. I'd like to share some tips on what we did for our particular situation and hopefully it could prove helpful to someone else. All of this is very much Your-Mileage-May-Vary info that should obviously be tailored to your student and home situation! This is just our example. - We arrange our school dates to specifically align with AP season, so starting class in early July to give a bit more time on the front end and give more time to review and practice before the May exams. After the AP exam we are done for the year. - We keep pretty close to a 4-day per week hands-on/in-class model, with 2 on, 1 off, 2 on, three off so that the material doesn't feel overwhelming and plenty of off-time is available for reading, projects, writing, whatever else is going on. - I usually allot 2-4 weeks of review prior to the AP exam, two 2-week vacations around the holidays, and expect several days here and there throughout the year for trips, mental health days, outings, etc. Then I work backwards from what is available and plan out a schedule to cover each chapter of the book with a day or two at the end of each unit for a review and unit exam. This would roughly align to 1-3 sections of the chapter per hands-on day. - We used Campbell Biology as our main text, and I loved it. We covered the majority of the book aside from specific sections that were not covered in the AP course (i.e., plants). I crosschecked our progress against the College Board syllabi to keep us on track as we read. If we hit an interest area we might spend a day or two finding supplementary documentaries or library books, but we generally kept a pretty tight schedule. -- Alternatively I took a look at the free OpenStax AP Bio text and it seemed substantially the same as Campbell. As a zero-cost option I think it would work very well, if slightly less rich visually. OpenStax also has good teacher resources with slideshows and answer keys if you register as a teacher (easy to do). They also appear to have lots of hyperlinks to enrichment websites throughout the text, and for virtual labs, but I don't have a lot of experience using it. - Getting a College Board instructor account and class approval for your unit guides is incredibly helpful. These materials are free, totally aligned with the exam, have videos on every topic, unit exams, pre-test reviews, and a massive question bank. This setup makes grade tracking and progress reports an absolute breeze. Most answers have explanations and cross reference where a student can focus on their weaknesses. Finally, there are full-length AP exams from previous years. These tools were all absolutely invaluable. At the end of the year you can export a full excel sheet with all grades inclusive if you had your student keep up with the question sets throughout the course. - As we completed and discussed material in the Campbell book, I would cross check it with the AP Central discussion questions and assign them to my student via the online interface for in-class work, homework, or discussion depending on time, proficiency, and how we felt that day/week. - I knew little to nothing about biology going into this. I would read ahead a few chapters to gain familiarity with the material and pre-watch videos while I was on the treadmill or doing chores. There are wonderful YouTube science communicators and these were crucial resources for us. My top recommendations: -- The Amoeba Sisters are a wonderfully entertaining creator with short, topical videos that serve as nice introductions and review items to dozens of topics. Everything is presented in a clean cartoon-like format with a warm sense of humor. I would frequently look to them for introductions into various topics. -- Bozeman Science is the absolute GOAT bio guy on YouTube. He has deeper videos on nearly every topic, and was also instrumental for us in AP Chem. These are short-to-moderate in length and Mr. Anderson was practically our default "teacher". Highly highly recommended. -- Crash Course Biology is visually engaging and quick, but the snappy transitions and fast pace made it less optimal for us to use as a virtual lecturer. It was a good resource for 'another look' at a concept from a new voice that might add some new bit of context, history, or something to help remember. Decent for review. -- HeyNow Science has a WONDERFUL set of very comprehensive videos from a clear, easy-to-follow teacher working through well planned lectures aligned with the AP content. Great unit reviews and well recommended. -- The AP Daily videos from College Board itself were 'fine'. They would get the job done as far as being laser-focused on the actual content of the course and would provide some good tips for tackling AP-specific questions for their format, but I found their short lecture formats to be dry and basically just a teacher reading through slides with often lousy audio quality. Did not engage my student. Decent for review and test skills, but not first-pass content exploration. -- Professor Dave Explains, Lasseter's Lab, and Forrest Valkai all have additional materials we would poke around now and then, sometimes for fun/funny side-explorations, sometimes for a unit or section review just to get a new voice. Worth taking a look at, time permitting. Prof Dave has tons of content with some deep dives though he can be a bit dry in presentation. Valkai is hyper-energetic, hyper-engaging, and his passion for biology is infectious, though his materials are purely extra stuff that aren't designed to align with College Board's flow. -- Finally, for AP exam or unit test prep, my student enjoyed the get-to-the-point style of Carrara who gives the feeling of having a student tutor sit down for an hour and go point-by-point in a casual manner everything you need to know from a particular unit from high-schooler to high-schooler. - Labs: Unfortunately you're on your own for this one. See some of the other posts here. I did a combination of cobbling together experiments from different science kits and household items along the way, and did some virtual labs online as well. Overall these weren't a great experience and our student wasn't impressed. It might be better just finding a decent all-in-one kit and the AP lab manual, together with Bozeman Science's explanations of the experiments to give structure. I wouldn't do what we did in such a piecemeal way. - The Exam: Prior to test day we planned out about three weeks of thorough review, and took three practice exams drawn (1/week) from the AP Classroom materials. We used a 5 Steps to a 5 review manual to guide our study, but you could easily put together a fantastic zero-cost review from the free materials offered by AP Bio Penguins. She publishes a very thorough review guide and has short review videos on every topic, as well as longer-form full unit reviews through Marco Learning (free on YouTube). Seeing what our student missed in AP Classroom allowed us to identify sections where she was running into problems, and we'd attack those areas with gusto. My general plan was to make a checklist of high-missed sections and then reach back into our texts and our favorite YouTube science communicators, then I would use AP Classroom's question bank to build custom quiz sets to practice until our student demonstrated a good grasp of the material. College Board does produce a full set of long-form review videos from AP Bio teachers each year prior to the exams, but we found them to be a snooze-fest that was hard to pay attention to. - It was tough and took a ton of work and focus, but the effort paid off! Our student got a great score and transferable credit for two college semesters of STEM-major bio and labs (8 credits)!

Big day - 5's on Bio and World History, 4's on CSP and Stats! Prev year: 5 HUG and 3 Chem. This year: Calc, Spanish, and Physics!

This topic is very timely for us as we are in the midst of overhauling our home schedule to incorporate some CLEPs instead of APs exams for a couple classes. For our particular case which might provide an example, here's the context: - Our student's loose goal for now is targeting our state public flagship (great ratings, tons of options, and tuition paid via FL Bright Futures) - Our state has generous CLEP and AP transfer credit policies, generally up to 45 credits - By university system rules, completing an AA degree via a state/community college will guarantee transfer of 60+ credits and serve as completion of the gen ed/core curriculum, regardless of if the particular public university has a different set of core requirements than the community college. Some of the private universities will also honor the AA to fulfill the same set of requirements and confer junior status, depending on major requirements. - State rules that AA earners are guaranteed admission to a public university ("a" university, not necessarily their first choice, just "preferential admission") - Our student will be taking 15 DE credits via our local community college to meet residency requirements for the AA - A side benefit: DE AA-holding high school graduates are looked at as first-time-in-college applicants for admissions, but may be offered a second look as a transfer if not accepted as a 'first-year' student - CLEPs are widely accepted by state colleges and credit for numerous classes are in parity and in some cases greater than AP (especially for scores of 3 or 4) Some AP courses, like the Physics C's and CalcBC are absolutely best done in the homeschool context. Extensive planning is needed to meet DE pre-reqs for Calc 1+2 and University Physics 1+2 in the college, so those are a keeper and with good scores (4+) a student in our system could earn 16 college credits with those alone. Most AP classes are the equivalent of a 1-semester college course stretched over an entire year; PhysicsC, CalcBC, Bio and Chem are the rare exceptions that can garner two semesters worth each for high AP scores. That said, basic level Chem and Bio can be taken as CLEP or DSST as backup or for non-STEM track kids, but not Calculus and Physics. The advantages for CLEP seem to favor English, history, and economics. For our state flagship as an example, a 3 score in AP English will transfer as first semester 3-credit English, while a 4 or 5 score will be two semesters for 6 credits. The CLEP College Composition exam, with the basic passing score of 50, will always count as both. So my student could take the CLEP whenever she wants to without regard to the College Board once-a-year schedule that must be carefully arranged through a local high school (for $100 while also cramming for her other APs during the same week) and get the same credits for a test with a lower overall requirement (fewer essays) and receive her score in a couple weeks (or immediately for multiple-choice CLEPs) instead of the agonizing 2-month wait for AP scores we are all suffering through right now. Plus, if the CLEP goes bad for some reason, she can retake it after further study without penalty. The test is even free if the student completes the Modern States material, perhaps using it as a pre-exam refresher or test prep after the main body of the course. Finally, she could still take the AP course to prep for it and for the structure and material expected to have it reflected on the high school transcript. So consider getting the college board certification for your homeschool AP English Language and Comp, for example, and teach the course per AP standards to build all the required skills and writing development, but take the CLEP for the credits and not the AP exam. It would be so much less stressful for student and parent. The exam would be taken when the student peaks, not on the CB-approved date come hell or high water. History is another great option here. For example, our state flagship provides only 3 credits of basic general education credit for a 3 on the AP US History exam, while a 4 or 5 are worth 6 credits divided between US History 1 (to 1877) and US History 2 (after 1877). The CLEPs for US History 1 and 2 are the exact same equivalencies. It seems like a no-brainer to take AP US History the class at home, but take the CLEP at the end of semester 1, lock in those credits mid-year when all to pre-1877 info is fresh, and end the year when they are ready with CLEP US Hist 2. Same class on the transcript, same info, same credits. The exams are multiple-choice, without the required essay components of the AP exams. For purposes of credit and transcripts, teaching the AP class and capturing the credit via CLEPs also favors World History 1&2, Macro & Micro economics, and perhaps Psychology and American Government. All free via Modern States, all on your schedule, all able to be retaken. This idea really doesn't apply against highly selective privates or in our case out-of-state flagship publics though! Most of those heavily favor transfer credit from high-score AP exams (always check their policies! They're all over the place!) and will have very strict limits on CLEP. This is just an idea based on our student's situation, and seems like a golden opportunity to net as much recognized credit as possible, on the most flexible schedule, with the least amount of standardized exam pain, for the least cost. This is our first year trying all of this out, though not our student's first CLEP (she passed Spanish last year, a 6 credit equivalency). How it would look ends up like this for her upcoming junior year as an example: - AP Calc BC - Taking the AP exam (Up to 8 credits) - AP Physics C - Taking both AP exams (up to 8 credits) - AP US History: Taking the CLEPs at the end of each semester, but well ahead of AP exam time to give extra emphasis and time for Calc and Physics practice due to their set dates (6 credits) - AP English Language: Take the CLEP College Composition exam (6 credits) at end of fall semester, possibly an American Lit CLEP (3 credits) end of spring - AP US Government and Politics - Starting mid fall and ending mid-spring taking the CLEP American Gov exam. (3 cred) - DE electives via the local community college online to earn residency and fulfill AA requirements So the year's transcript would reflect six College Board-approved AP courses (3 AP exams) and a mix of DE/exam credit sources worth ~ 30-40 college credits (transferable in our particular public system). As a side note, I think AP English/US History/Gov may be a sweet spot for synergy. Done at home, writing and reading assignments can be based along American lit and nonfiction aligned to a historical timeline throughout the year. Essay and writing practice for history and government topics can all build on each other. I like the (AP-approved) Conversations in American Lit book for this idea, and introducing the 1-semester US Gov a few units into the year as the historical timeline starts emphasizing US government establishment and policy. This is my plan for the year after seeing numerous other high schools offer a combined AP English Comp and AP US History setup, so hopefully I'll be able to report back in a year that it was a good path both for the learning experience and for the 18-credit CLEP combination. It makes sense to me to group the US-centric history/gov/lit together.

We're doing AP Bio this year. We didn't use Khan but have worked through the Campbell textbook. To align with AP, we found these YouTube series very useful: - Bozeman science has excellent and short videos with good depth on virtually every topic - The Amoeba Sisters has wonderfully entertaining and short demonstrations of key terminology for a 'first pass' look at a topic, or a quick reminder shown in an engaging way - HeyNow Science is an AP Bio teacher with extensive playlists directly aligned with the AP Bio structure - AP Bio Penguins has a website with TONS of free material including an incredibly comprehensive test prep manual - And finally, a YouTube called "Carrera" has a series of unit reviews done in sort of an informal Khan-Academy-like format from a student's perspective who had excellent teachers and success in his courses. AP Bio Penguin had mentioned several times that her own students love Carrera's videos. Get access to College Board's AP Classroom website by getting approval for your homeschool course as soon as possible. It is always valuable to have access to their huge question database and unit exams that looks like the test itself! While College Board does have short videos on every single section and subsection, the teachers tend not to be very engaging and the powerpoints are sparse and formulaic. They do, however, directly demonstrate how to work through actual AP questions at the end of each AP Daily video, which is somewhat helpful to engage how to approach college board thinking. Each unit also has extensive documentation with what topics should be covered, so you could simply use that as a guideline for any other resources you find to make sure you aren't missing any topics.

My spouse is handling that one, but she plans on working through a standard Physics for Engineers university text and seeing how that goes. Edit: Young and Freeman University Physics

DD still not giving me much to work with regarding particular majors or particular schools she wants to pursue, but she really took to Python coding with gusto this year so I'm going to smooth a CS-path to keep feeding that interest. We've been real fortunate that she's willing to attack even the high-rigor stuff without undue issues. So planning on starting in July (-ish): - Spanish 3 (prepping for CLEP) -> CLEP complete! Now switching to AP Spanish - AP Comp Sci A through Code.org, -> DE Computer science courses (python or web design, then C#/C++). Switching from Java-based AP CSA to two DE courses will be 6 credits toward college residency requirement (15cred) and give DD more flexibility to pick CS topics of her choice. - Math: AP Calc BC (Larson Calc Early Transcendentals) - ELA/History/Gov: "AP American Studies". This is my plan to interlace AP English Lang & Comp together with AP US History, while weaving in AP Government & Politics after unit 3 or so. I'm hoping I can find some synergy there with our readings, essay work, and common content. -> Decided to do the AP courses but take the CLEPs throughout the year instead of the AP Exams. Same number of equiv credits in Florida publics with much lower exam loads. I'm liking Aufses & Scanlon's Conversations in American Literature as my ELA text as it incorporates major US historical periods and voices and will scaffold the other courses. I'm planning on developing this into a CLEP schedule to allow for exams on College Comp and US History 1 at end of first semester, followed by US Gov&Politics mid second semester, and finally ending with US History 2 and American Lit CLEP exams about a month before AP season starts. In FL publics those exams should be worth about 18 college credits total, which seems crazy to pass up. - Sci: AP Physics C Mech and E&M (Young & Freeman Univ Physics) - Various Blender and Procreate 2D/3D art options via Udemy and YouTube. -> DE Astronomy & DE Philosophy Spouse and I sat down with DD and ran through her schedule and were a bit shocked to see with only a few tweaks and blending in a couple online DE classes each semester she'd hit 60 credits and her AA degree by end of junior year even before the Calc and physics AP scores come back next July. Florida publics have articulation agreements for preferential or auto admission for AA holders... this looks like a cheat code for her situation, especially with Bright Futures paying her tuition...

We haven't done art history yet, but in prepping for it (potentially for next year?) we found this: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/907316357 If you use Anki for flash cards, this deck has all 250 art pieces with their time period, artist, and contextual type. I would imagine adding something like this along the way during the course might be helpful, especially if your student is comfortable adding mnemonics to hard-to-remember pieces. I assume it would be highly preferable to keep working throughout the year with the card deck to avoid forgetting many many art pieces, but the AP exam books are great for big-picture content review at the conclusion of your course and to have a big stack of practice tests to mimic the 'real' AP exam experience. I think the last big change to the course was in 2015, so the 2020 edition should be just fine for your exam book!

Take a look at Anti-Social Studies as well. Emily Glankler is in the Big Three of content creators with Heimler and Freeman. Heimler is concise and very engaging, with good review packets. You'll see over and over again all over the internet kids who pass AP history courses repeating the same praise for Heimler: "THIS man made me pass, not my teacher!" 🙂 Freemanpedia has amazing sites for each unit and subunit just chock full of supplementary info, art references, maps, and video links. Highly recommended to find fun and interesting hooks to add to the evidence for CER development. Emily (Anti-Social Studies) publishes 'teacher talks' to guide you into how to tackle each unit and where to put emphasis, what skills you need to develop and where pitfalls are, and publishes a ton of YouTube content that is excellent review, unit intros, or topical deep-dives. Her Patreon is very cheap and she has basically complete turn-key lesson plans linked to the AMSCO AP World History textbook with lots of additional assignment options for just a couple bucks. Very easy to follow, and she is engaging and available to discuss the course with. She talks about the experience not just from the content side, but the actual -teaching- part of it in a very frank and enjoyable way. EDIT: Emily also has a good history podcast series that ties well to AP World. Perfect workout material to brush up on history topics before you delve into them with the kiddos.

After you posted the above, my spouse and I had a powwow to discuss the option and which way we were leaning. It's a fantastic choice, but DD is looking forward to APES and its light output/less rigor allows us to fit it into a science-heavy schedule for this year. As a going in plan, we're growing to like the concurrent physics C/calc BC option, and treating the C courses as full year tentatively. If they go well, E&M might only take a semester in 12th year. Credits would be maximally transferrable, and as several have pointed out she could simply leave those credits on the table instead of using them to accelerate in college if she is STEM path and preferred to take the full in-house progression in her school of choice to align with the degree program. Removes duplication from Physics1/2 since we know she's planning on calc anyway next year, and would still demonstrate functional calc rigor across a 2-year span.

I know it looks like I'm a basket case trying to lock down some of these details, but I find it helpful with our timing. We're not planning on outsourcing anything for now. We're just starting 10th grade, so we know exactly what we're teaching, our materials are set, our calendars are made, etc. It lightens our cognitive load and we can just nip and tuck our daily and weekly schedules as we go along through our courses. For 11th (and beyond), having that semi-solid plan means we have our whole year to lay down more and more familiarity with the material we'll be teaching on the side, gives us time to cross-shop texts and enrichment stuff, and just cuts down the stress of trying to learn a subject right before teaching or facilitating it. I don't have degrees in any of these topics and absolutely zero background in some, so I need to really hustle so I can be a decent tutor across several advanced subjects by the time the year starts. The walk through the pros and cons really help, and reading and hearing the various opinions and pieces of advice on this board has been incredibly helpful. Changing out one class for another can affect how we teach a different one, if some benefit might come from combining some of their content on some way. Absolutely our plans can blow up in our faces with family needs, learning issues, schedule conflicts, or changing desires and directions, etc., but it has paid off to at least have a good outline to build on. The time levy to prep is looking more intensive as we go if we follow a curriculum similar to the one in my original post. This physics decision will reflect what math we teach and how, and if we need to branch out to father high schools to find even IF they can offer C-level exams. By no means are we set in stone or anything for Junior year for a good long time, but we just started looking to build out these schedules because we just entered our next planning phase with our current classes now in action.

That's a good data point, thank you. Any particular reason he didn't also take the Physics 2 exam in 9th, or plan on taking C-Mechanics as senior? Personal preference for the E&M material?

It also looks like CB is revamping the C courses for the 2023+ school year. Found this draft: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-physics-c-mechanics-physics-c-electricity-magnetism-2023-draft-curriculum-framework.pdf At a glance they look to be aligning C better with the latest 2015 revamps of 1/2. Their recommendation is C:Mech as a full year course, or as a one-semester course with E&M followup if the student has already had a year of physics under their belt.

I absolutely agree on the absurdity! There is no where else in the curriculum where so many overlapping or competing options exist in the AP space. This leads into my overthinking spiral. Everywhere does Bio and Chem the same. How each school interprets the physics offerings is infuriatingly varied. Our local high school only goes to Physics 1 as the ultimate science. Our high-end public school in the district with extremely high ratings and college prep success (they even have a large "COLLEGE BOARD (TM)" sign next to their main sign on the side of their admin building) only has a physics 1 and 2 sequence, each taking a full year. The feeder charter tops off at Physics 1. CB recommends 1 and 2 as full year courses...but that wouldn't leave time or room for a C-level course. The combined 1/2 course seems to be very rare, but still out there. That said, Physics 1 and 2 have abysmal pass rates per the CB, and C has far greater exam success (though that is likely survivorship and selection bias). For C, some schools teach both in one year, some teach each across a whole year. Several schools apparently just do C - Mech and don't even offer E&M. Argh. Physics 1 is generally called a pre-req for C in a lot of curriculums I've peeked at, and testimonies vary between the need for calc and physics foundation a year ahead of C, or if only basic calc proficiency or co-current AP Calc is sufficient for success in C. Physics 1 really only gives foundation for the C:Mech topics, and 2 covers foundation of E&M, so doing a typical full year-Physics 1 to a double C-load in one year means E&M would be a bit more challenging without any background. What a mess. I want kiddo to have at a minimum a year of physics, but we haven't done calc yet so at best it would be concurrent in junior year. She's tech and sci comfortable, but has an artsy side and hasn't committed to a STEM (where C would be obvious) or a humanities track (where algebra based would be just fine). It's a struggle to suss out all the if/thens, so I end up with my silly chart to get my thoughts on paper.

I have "Moonwalking" sitting on my Kindle! I hadn't thought about introducing it to her. I read it years ago and forgot (ha) about it. Great book, and inspiring. More for the list, thank you! I'm also a fan of Oakley's A Mind for Numbers, which I think she based Learning How to Learn on. That coursera course blew my mind when I first ran through it, and I realized for years I'd been falling into virtually all the traps she was warning against. Her research validated everything else I was reading about Anki use, the pomodoro method, etc. So, physics. Definitely my biggest sticking point here. Trying to wrap my mind around the ramifications, I get this ugly chart of our science experience multiverse:

Your results certainly speak for themselves! Your story makes a lot of sense. I was hesitant with our local DE options, but clearly your family found huge success and I'll never be able to match any college's labs, resources, or being able to write those all-important LoRs. We'll definitely be figuring out how to work something into our plans for DE if it aligns with kiddo's goals. I like your unique courses as well. Our leery attitude toward DE sprang from long commutes (30-75 minutes each way for our local CC's), low perceived quality (unranked or C- schools), no 4-yr university options, and the threat of untransferable or less respected recognition vs a national program. I think I'd much rather fill that last year's math slot with a DE Calc 2/3 than try to shoehorn something we created at this point, or get her into some art or whatever courses in a college environment so she could begin to transition outside of the parent-tutor format. Your thoughts on CSP make sense, and I'm getting a lot of feedback that it may be wasted time. Have you or anyone else had any success with CSP being a catalyst for building interest or exploring CS as a field or career showcase? Our initial interest in programming it into our schedule was the College Board materials surrounding its theme, which seemed more aligned with a way to bring a kid into the wider world of compsci and encourage future tech interest while giving some exploratory hands-on experience. I wasn't really looking into it as tech 'training' itself, but you bring up the more important point that if she wanted to follow an art path, that time would be better spent on that side working on more advanced portfolio development. Likewise, earlier and more in-depth coding or tech skills would be a better fit to start developing engineering mindset and ability for a STEM path kid. As you mentioned on the Physics side, AP has a wildly large range of Physics courses, so it was expedient to put all four in sequence on my proposed curriculum. Poking around online showed both Physics 1+2 and C Mech+E&M combinations are taught as 1-year courses in some high schools (and each pair needs only their own single textbook to work through), so I added them as our ultimate two years of science as an ambitious (though possibly misguided) goal. We definitely want to do at least one year of physics, though it is now up in the air if that will be junior year AP Physics 1 only, a more ambitious CalcBC + Physics C with a different plan for senior year, or some other configuration. As for the missing AP chem from the curriculum, we just finished it in 9th grade. Fwiw, we also noted at UF that Physics 1 & 2 are each worth 5 credits apiece with lab (their equivalent Physics 1 & 2). The Physics C tests were risky: a 3 on either would only duplicate the credit as Physics 1/2, but a 4 or 5 on the exam would push AP Physics C to each be equivalent credit for UF's Physics with Calc 1 & 2, so potentially another 4 credits each. Obviously the actual value of those credits allocated against a degree program's needs are a different topic of debate and completely dependent on her proposed major and so forth (it certainly wouldn't save her any time if she was an art major). Thank you for the warning on Gi Bill use too! I need to get into the details of it. It's been a nice-to-have in our hip pocket for several years now, but the actual logistics of how to deploy it best against college costs has been on our back burner until we firm up plans a little. I need to get smart on it before kiddo starts finding those $60K/yr private LACs compelling, ha.