Your student won't learn much new computer science by taking the AP class, but he will learn the same computer science commands in a different language. The AP CS A exam is easy and a good first AP exam to take, especially if you think he may take more APs in the future. But there are other ways he can show achievement in computer science: hackerrank, usaco, robotics, IoT, Arduino, his own projects.

This isn't even necessarily a decision you need to make now. I was still deciding within months of preparing my transcript for college applications. My problem was that mostly I had only end of year grades, without semester 1 grades. But then she took an online class which awarded a semester grade. It was higher than her end of year grade, so I was keen to include it on her main transcript, but that would mean either adding semester grades for all her classes which looked cluttered or just for that one class, which looked weird. Ultimately I stuck to end of year grades only because that nice semester grade would appear in her unofficial transcript from that vendor. For now keep track of everything, do what makes sense, and then you can make a final decision later. I agree it's 1 unit per year (or a fraction of that), except in California it's 10 units for some reason.

I hosted a book club because I wanted my daughters to read more difficult material. I wanted it to be a bit more "academic" in nature rather than just a social gathering with fun activities. Also, I'm more of a math/science gal, so I outsourced it to an English PhD student. I made sure to make it clear to parents in advance the books we would be reading during the year so everyone was clear. (ie, there wasn't democratic book choice, etc.). 7th-12th grade sounds ambitious to me, but could be doable. How about 8th-10th grade?

My dd took AP Bio as a sophomore and did fine. But she'd already taken AP CS A in 8th grade and AP chem in 9th grade, so she was familiar with FRQs and how it all works. And she enjoys the AP format and taking tests. She went on to take many more APs in high school, and it's nice to be able to spread them out rather than cramming them into the last 2 years of high school.

Old Math Olympiads

Economists Embrace R R for Quantitative Economics

Glad to hear your dd has solid plan. She may also want to consider taking some computer programming classes and maybe learn how to use some statistical packages like R. Or maybe study up on machine learning. Depending on her field of economics, our society is collecting tons of data now that require people who are equipped to analyze it. Good luck to her!

I think there's some advice if your student is taking different AP exams at different locations. I believe they need to take their sticker book with them when the exam is over and bring it them to another site. Is that right? Also, don't take any photos of the exam room for social media or you run the risk of having everyone's scores cancelled.

Sorry, but I just have to ask. Why did you mention what sort of cars this student drives?

"Little fish bowls!" I like that!

Take your book to the office supply store and have them cut off the binding and 3 hole punch the whole thing. (It will cost a few bucks.) Staple together each individual lesson into packets and put them into a 3 ring binder. Use the lesson plan above, or design your own using the prerequisite flow chart to create your own sequence. Pull out the first 3 lessons in your sequence. Read through carefully. Put the books in their reading list on hold at the library about a week in advance of teaching, and add additional books from the same shelf and correlated Bill Nye videos. Also a couple of weeks in advance, order any needed materials for demonstrations. Run through the demonstrations on your own to work out the kinks. Spend about 10 minutes a day 5 days a week on science. (This time consuming, but I find some of the challenging material takes some time to sink in. Follow his script with maybe a demo on the first day, reading books on the next day, watch the video another day, etc, so it's broken up into pieces with time for your student to mull over the info. As you complete each lesson, add another lesson to your 3 lesson prep pack and repeat with ordering books and materials. HTH.

Yeah what is up with the Ivy League? In truth, I thought she was a long shot for all these schools and would have been happy to see her at any of these safeties...until she got into Stanford, EA. Then her prior probabilities suddenly changed and she was now a shoo-in for Harvard, LOL! We're grateful for the Stanford admission, but as a grad I know for a fact that (1) Stanford isn't all that and (2) it's tough to be a little fish.

Okay, here goes for dd: Acceptances: Stanford (EA), UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSD, Univ Southern California, Rutgers, Georgia Tech, U Michigan, Wash U St Louis. Rejections: MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown (boo, Ivy League!) Wait List: U Penn Will attend: Stanford

Also ten pages. I included the name of the education partner with each class like this: AP Statistics In this course, students are introduced to the major concepts and tools for collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from data. Students are exposed to four broad conceptual themes: exploring data (describing patterns and departures from patterns), sampling and experimentation (planning and conducting a study), anticipating patterns (exploring random phenomena using probability and simulation), and statistical inference (estimating population parameters and testing hypotheses). Partner: PA Homeschoolers Instructor: Carole Matheny Text: The Practice of Statistics by Daren S. Starnes, et al. (except without the blank lines, and it wasn't in bold...not sure what's going on here)

A few years ago they used DrJava.

This is true and in response to chronic underfunding of public universities. They make up for it by admitting full pay OOS students. These students displace California students who end up as OOS students at other state flagships. UCs also cope by raising enrollment, allowing them to admit more Californians, but also impacting courses and majors. This year UCSC admitted so many freshman, they couldn't house them all and asked faculty to host them.

I don't think I'll be much help but here is what I did. In my case, I wanted my kids to read more challenging classical literature. So I was up front that I would be assigning the books and that it wouldn't be a democratic book club. I am also a math/science gal, so I outsourced it to an English PhD student and later another homeschooling mom with this expertise because I don't have it. We met at my home for an hour, and the students were all girls and in middle school. I also did not have a writing component, but I did want it to be more than just a social occasion. I wanted them to have some real learning, which is another reason I outsourced it. HTH.

Are you trying to determine placement within a textbook for your student? What I would do is have the student complete the end of chapter Review and possibly the Challenge Problems. If your student can complete most of the Review Problems, then you can consider that chapter mastered. If there are some problems your student doesn't know how to solve, then return to those sections for study. The Challenge Problems are fairly optional, and a bit beyond mastery, so I wouldn't sweat it if they can't do the Challenge Problems. I might however, review the solutions so they get accustomed to the AoPS way of doing things.

My School Profile was a total of 4 pages long, and half that was our list of Educational Partners. I put them in order from most prestigious and well known to least. For each entry, I included information about them from their website, lightly edited for consistency and relevancy. At the end in parentheses I included a list of classes taken with that vendor. I think as long as it isn't too redundant or hard to read, you want to err on the side of providing as much information as possible. (Although in retrospect I probably would have edited down the Edhesive blurb.) For example: Pennsylvania Homeschoolers (PAH) PAH offers College Board accredited, online AP courses to homeschooled students worldwide. Courses offer personal interaction with master teachers and motivated classmates. (AP Chemistry, AP Statistics) Edhesive Edhesive brings STEM to schools in a way that is effective, affordable and easy to adopt. It provides an online curriculum from recognized experts, student support, teacher tools and resources, and professional development. Nationally recognized high school educators provide best-in-class instruction. Courses are designed by K-12 teachers for K-12 students, and mapped to a K-12 school year. The courses are complete, not supplemental. Students exchange ideas and help their peers—both locally and around the country—in an online forum. The moderated forum also lets them post questions and get answers from Edhesive’s course instructor and teaching assistants. (AP Computer Science A)

IIRC, the measurement section includes a hilarious parody of Pulp Fiction. "Royale with Cheese..."

My dd had taken algebra and geometry in middle school. I wanted to make a note of it on the high school transcript so that those box checkers didn't think we had somehow skipped those classes. So I organized our transcript by subject with the senior year classes at the top and the less recent classes at the bottom. I had the middle school classes in italics with an asterix to a note indicating that these were taken in middle school, so the grade did not count toward the high school gpa and the units did not count to graduation. Perhaps you could do the same with Spanish classes taken in middle school?

I'm not really sure what you mean here. I guess my only advice is to treat UCB and UCLA the same as you would treat any competitive university. Do impressive work in your classes and extracurriculars in order to be admitted. Dd had a bunch of APs and high test scores on everything, so I think she mostly covered all the a-g except geometry. I'm not sure about arts...we accidentally got P/F credit at a local CC without ever setting foot on campus because of some weird thing with a local children's theater group. And forget about a-g, except insofar as you want to get some AP exams and SAT subject tests and other validation for your schoolwork. It isn't even clear to me that you need to worry about a-g at all if you are homeschooling with a PSA. The quote that follows suggests this is the case, but it still isn't very clear to me. Pretend to be a student applicant and look at their online application portal. There really isn't a way to indicate your classes are a-g, so what's the point? From http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/homeschool/index.html : If your home schooling curriculum is not provided by a U.S. regionally accredited school (or approved by the State Board of Education) and you will not receive an official transcript and high school diploma from a U.S. regionally accredited school: You can be eligible by meeting requirements for admission by exam. If you do not meet the requirements for admission by exam, you may still be considered for admission by exception.

1. UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD so far in 2019. (Not sure if she applied anywhere else.) 2. Dd studied geometry from an AoPS textbook at home with me as a teacher in middle school. So I guess you could say we didn't.

I had my kids take a MOEMS once a week, both for review and to introduce new concepts they will officially learn later.

What's neat about a raspberry pi is that it also has input and output interfaces, so you can wire it to things in real life. So you can use information say from the internet to direct things in the real world. This is commonly known as Internet of Things or IoT. For example, we completed a project where we used an API to access rain forecasts from Weather Underground. We wrote a python program that collected the probability of precipitation, and tested to see if it was above some level that we set, and then send current to an LED, warning us of such a dire situation. (It was called an umbrella indicator.) You can also wire it to a relay that will turn on a real device like a table lamp. We used it as a web server and created a website where if you click on a link, the light would toggle on and off. Like the Arduino, it is small and cheap enough that you can program it for a single purpose, package it up and then buy another one for some other use.