My husband double majored in college with a BFA in printmaking and a teaching degree along with a focus in graphic design. He ended up starting his own advertising and marketing agency earning national awards for his logos and identity pieces in addition to numerous regional awards for his actual ads. Later on, his company began focusing on more web sites as advertising, p.r. etc moved to the digital world. There are really good jobs for people with some artistic/design sense and illustration abilities. If this would be a possible direction for your daughter, I would recommend having a curriculum that would satisfy college or design school admissions requirements. In addition, you might want to consider an accounting course sometime during the high school years because often people in these kinds of fields often work in small businesses or independently. The same goes for artists. For example, my husband sub-contracted self-employed photographers, illustrators (even for the digital world) and copy writers. I think your transcript easily covers what it needs to for a college bound student so you aren't closing her future options. In fact, it looks pretty challenging! You have math, english, science, history and foreign language covered along with fine arts and music.

I would give her one semester this spring for sure. If she can finish Algebra 1 over the summer and if you don't have to report anything officially at the end of each year, I wouldn't hesitate just putting the whole year of math on this year. Otherwise, go ahead show 1 semester this year and 1 semester next year. I would seriously consider keeping her on the math over the summer. If she struggles with Algebra, taking a summer off isn't going to help.

I would go ahead and take the SAT in June if possible. You will be able to see how he does and what he needs to improve upon. The SAT will provide detailed score reports (you may have to pay extra for these), so that you know specifically what your son needs to work on. Then you can plan his junior year to address those areas. My daughter did not study the math that she was supposed to between her first SAT and her second. When we did a practice test about a week before the SAT test date, it showed that she wasn't going to improve her score much. So, for 2 hours a day for the next week we worked on her specific issues in math and she ended up raising her score by 60 points. So the SAT it isn't always about having a thorough understanding but rather about knowing what you need to know for the test. I hate teaching to a test, yet, in this case the prep courses, the score feedback, etc.. are all about that. For homeschoolers, the SAT test does matter more in terms of college admissions & scholarships than it does for kids who attend brick and mortar schools. You'll need to have good scores before the start of your son's senior year because many colleges only offer their merit aid to those who apply before some given date in the Fall and have a certain SAT score. Sometimes there's a little more time to get in another SAT for a better scholarship in the senior year and sometimes not. So, it's best to have an admissions-worthy and scholarship-worthy score before their senior year and then maybe take another test to see if you can still increase it for more scholarships that are applied for in the spring. I wouldn't rule out the PSAT yet. You could do both a PSAT and an SAT in the fall if you can't get in a SAT in June. Some kids do surprising well on these tests especially if they learn the strategies of how to narrow down the possible right answers, when to choose between a few possible answers and when to skip a question. This should be being addressed in his prep course. I also wouldn't try to predict his score using the practice tests in the prep books. I love Barron's because the practice tests are much more difficult than the real test which does help prepare for the more difficult questions. But, it can be discouraging because we have found that it will predict a lower score overall. I don't know how the other prep books compare.

I have contacted schools about both financial and transcript issues and found them to be very helpful. As a home school parent, the transcript is in your hands and you'll want to provide it in the format that the admissions people want to see. The financial issues can't usually be addressed by the student either if the parents are the ones paying. In addition, in the earlier high schools years, I called the admissions departments of a few colleges of interest to find out what they are looking for in a home school curriculum, what kinds of tests they want to see, etc. Again, they were very helpful. If you are seeking help concerning admissions, college or department visits, information about residence halls, etc, you should let your student call or email about these. Do make sure that your student has an adult-like email address that has some association to their real name.

To those of you who wonder about the mysteries of the fafsa calculations, this is a link to the fafsa calculation worksheet. This is not like a fafsa calculator because it lets you see how they get to the number that they do. It is 36 pages long with a worksheet for your own numbers and various tables that are used for the calculation. I found it to be very helpful. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0ahUKEwjzudWohYTLAhXLKx4KHU5iBuoQFggrMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fifap.ed.gov%2Fefcformulaguide%2Fattachments%2F100615EFCFormulaGuide1617Attach.pdf&usg=AFQjCNE2RtRXPD2sV-RzRmaPugYz4UnNRg

My biggest gripe with the cost of college and financial aid is that the whole system seems to punish the middle class. Really, college isn't an issue if your poor enough to get a moslyt full ride nor if your really wealthy. But, the majority of people fall somewhere in between making it really difficult to afford. And colleges, for their part, have raised tuition and fees over the last 30 years(since I attended) much more than inflation would dictate. I have to wonder whether it's really the cost of education that has increased or if it's all of the extras. For example, when I attended college where my son is now going, almost none of the buildings were air conditioned. Now air conditioning is considered an essential.

Check in with the financial aid office at the college where your student will be attending. It is very possible that they will make an adjustment due to the settlement, especially if there will be future expenses because of the injury. It won't hurt to check with the college financial aid office to find out. Also, if the settlement is for just one son, that would count in his assets as long as you set it up in his name. It should not effect your other children. Although the son who got the settlement will be expected to pay 20% of his assets per year for college, the other kids aid will not include your son's settlement money. If the settlement isn't in his name, then that's a different issue.

That is a very INFJ pov that he's got there. You might want to google "INFJ careers". I'd think that accounting would be unsatisfying in the long run.

Yes. It's high school level and worth 1 semester of credit. Your student should be proficient in Algebra I before attempting AOPS Counting and Probability. It does not take the place of the high school basics - Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry. Both of my kids enjoyed the online presentations and got a lot out of this course.

I do know how it is. I have one of those kids. The only reason I can see it this way is that he is now in college, has found an interest, a sense of direction and is doing really great. This was a kid who could not manage to learn to spell 5 words in a week yet could read an article about pop machines just once and know all of the buttons to press in some particular order to find out the quantity and temperatures of any given drink option. He couldn't do much math until he got involved with a video game where he had to use physics & trig to know when and at what angle to fire the weapons. I was amazed at the complexity of the thing. This kid made me want to give up at times. And on sometimes, over some things, I did. I figure he's capable of learning what he wants to learn. And it turns out that he is.

You know, you could just consider that a life skill! In the post-school world, we don't usually spend much time and energy retaining things that we don't find useful.

It sounds like he likes to work with his hands and may be visual/spacial. I'm not sure that purely desk job would be satisfying. He might want to try a design type course or even an art course and see if that sparks an interest. Maybe graphic design, interior architecture, furniture design, 2D or 3D art...something along those lines.

We did classical history and literature but didn't do vocabulary as a standalone subject at all past the elementary school level. With extensive reading from various time periods my kids expanded their vocabulary naturally. Both got 800s on the critical reasoning section of the old SAT so I guess that approach worked. I have heard that the new SAT is no longer including archaic vocabulary but is instead focusing on words that people use today. You might want your daughter take a new SAT practice test provided in a study book and see where she stands. Then you can determine what sort of vocabulary course might be helpful or whether you even need to do that.

Yep. Sounds like a healthy, developing 14 year old boy! From experience with this kind of beast, it'll make you appreciate him even more when he grows out of it.

I suggest not suggesting anything. Just give her a bit of exposure to various things and let her figure it out. I made the mistake of trying to figure out what my son was going to be and the stress of it turned him off to trying various things that I would introduce him to as possible career choices. He still explored his interests, but did so in secret rather than under my watchful eye. He learned to program on his own and then showed me afterwards what he'd done. Then he informed me, his systems analyst mother, that he didn't want to do that as a job. He's now in college and absolutely loves the Interior Architecture major that he's chosen. He was introduced to that idea while working construction during his gap year. I would have never thought of that.

Colleges are going to want to see some composition credit somewhere in there. You can cover that by doing various kinds of writing assignments (research paper, comparison essay, persuasive essay, book report, etc...) within literature, history or other subjects. That's what we did. I just added up the hours and when they had spent 60 to 70 on writing, I gave them a one semester course. That's 4 to 6 essays depending on the length. Ours were usually 3 to 5 pages each with one 6 to 8 page essay and one 12 to 15 page essay for the long paper experience. So, in total they wrote about 10 formal essays in high school. In addition they were assigned at least one homework question weekly that required a half to a full page written answer. They each earned 2 semesters of composition credit in high school, which is what the colleges wanted to see.

I don't think that your hurting your daughter in any way. I agree with the post above that maybe she would like to do something that she is interested in rather than doing the physical science course. Both my son and my daughter have had 3 years of science. Neither my son, who is in college now, nor my daughter - a senior this year, have had any problems being admitted to the colleges where they applied. The colleges didn't even know whether their planned majors were STEM related or not as they both applied without declaring their intent, and it didn't raise an eyebrow.

We used Nutrition 101 - Choose Life for my daughter. It covered nutrition and a bit of anatomy. She learned some interesting stuff, it wasn't difficult and it didn't take much time. My son used a regular Health textbook. In a nutshell it covered don't drink and drive, don't do illegal drugs, eat your vegetables, don't be a couch potato, take a shower now and then, put a band aid on that, sex causes babies and bad sex choices cause STDs. For my time and money, the first option was the better choice. On the other hand, my son could pass a Health test without doing any of the reading. I guess I already taught him what he needed to know.

I would weight all of the dual credit courses - not just the core ones. If the scholarship people want to reduce the weighted grades for evaluation purposes, they can do that. If you don't show the highest GPA that you can reasonably show (and extra points for a college course is reasonable), then, if her GPA doesn't fall in with the top applicants, they may pass over even looking at her qualifications closely.

This is correct - it is not universal. I was just sharing an experience that I had with one university. And that university ended up making an exception for him. My daughter had a higher GPA than my son and applied to a satellite of the same system. They didn't question my mommy grades at all. In fact when it was determined that she didn't have a required economics course on the transcript and that she needed one I was going to include in her senior to meet that requirement. I got to talking to the admissions counselor about the expected content of an economics course and mentioned that she took Financial Peace University - the adult version as an extra-curricular. The admissions counselor said that would fulfill the credit. Then I asked how I should evaluate it for a grade because when my daughter took it, I didn't have any evaluation criteria in mind. The admissions counselor said that my daughter would have gotten an A in it, so just go with an A! Plus she was offered their highest level merit scholarship.

Often times colleges give their merit scholarships based on grades, so I'm guessing that you would miss out on that. In discussing my son's transcript with a large public university where he now attends, I was told that usually they don't take mommy grades seriously nor do they give merit scholarships to homeschoolers. They took them seriously in his case because I gave a few Bs and A-'s so he got the merit scholarship. His SATs and APs would have been more in line with a straight A student. I guess they figured since he wasn't, mommy was a tough grader.

If you're just trying to jump through hoops, Rosetta Stone Homeschool version and/or Duo-Lingo would do the trick. If you really want her to learn the language well, then others here will give you better suggestions. Does your state accept ASL as a foreign language? My son, also an artsy type, is in college now and taking ASL for his foreign language requirement. He didn't enjoy Spanish in highschool and was not looking forward to learning another language in college, but he is actually enjoying and doing well in ASL. His adviser suggested it because people who like to work with their hands often learn ASL more easily.

Yes this. I created one at home AP course (CB certified) but my son took four AP tests and received 15 hours of college credit. His colleges of interest gave the same credit for 4s as they did for 5s so we aimed for 4s, though he got a few 5s anyway. My daughter has taken one AP test so far without taking the AP level course and she got a 4. A decent background in the subject, the ability to write an essay and a little bit of time reviewing with the study guides is all that they needed to get 4s. We have found that the 5s require a little more preparation. That said, actually taking advanced courses is beneficial. Overall, they require higher level critical thinking and better prepare your student for college level coursework.

The AOPS Algebra II and Number Theory are 1 and 1/2 years of math so I wouldn't hesitate to give an additional semester of math credit for the NT. To get up to 6 credits, you might want to use swimming as a PE course at 1/2 credit for one year. The remainder of the years, I would use it as an extra-curricular. For music, it really depends how much time he spends on it and at what level of difficulty. My dd is going to be a voice major in college, thus her music credits were quite extensive and involved not just singing & performance but also theory and piano. Music is a regular high school course and credits in the arts are usually required so it wouldn't be unusual to have some music credit on his transcript even if that isn't his focus. You can spread credits for this kind of course across multiple years and just list the course in the year that it's completed. For highschool, 120 to 180 hours of work is considered a one year course or one credit. Overall, I think you've got a great plan for 9th grade. The best advice that I can give you moving forward is to make sure that you mix some easy and fun courses in throughout the next four years. 1/2 credit courses that require 60 hours of work are completely acceptable for electives. The core courses usually weigh in at the 150 to 180 hours of work range. And if your child works at a faster rate than average, it'll take him less time. That's okay too!

My 'can't do math' dd is really quite good at math, but she often felt like she was lost when she, in fact, wasn't. What seems to work best for her is working a large number of problems for each new concept. During the first 1/3 of the exercises, she gets the mechanics down. But it is at about the 2/3s point of the exercise (say problem 20 of 30) that suddenly some connection happens in her head and she announces that now she actually 'gets' it. Then the rest of the work is much more fun for her. After experiencing her own learning process over and over again, she had recognized her need for working through a lot of problems until it suddenly clicks. Sometimes a change in curriculum is helpful if the current one doesn't fit your child's learning style. That said, especially with beginning algebra, it is important to not skip steps until the purpose of the step is solidly understood and can be worked easily without writing it out in full. In addition, I would make my kids test their own answers because it helps them to understand the point of what they were doing. Otherwise algebra can seem like weird letter/number manipulations.