I voted "other" because I don't have any way of guesstimating how many families are educating to a standard I would consider "minimum." I live in a rural area, so I know a number of families who fit the categories listed above. We have a lot of Plain People or families who were Plain and left, but can't imagine sending their children to public school. We have a lot of families who were involved with Bill Gothard's programs. We also live near the Organic Valley headquarters, so we see many alternative, unschoolish families who homestead and such. In either category, I can't tell by the casual contact I have with them whether their children are minimally educated or not. I suspect that some are, some aren't.

What did you end up watching, Attolia?

People who like Wallander, Hinterland, and Shetland, have you seen Broadchurch? For something deep, Nobel comes to mind. "A series of incidents in Afghanistan set complicated political and personal events in motion for a returning Norwegian Special Forces officer." In Norwegian. We've enjoyed a couple of French series that had character depth: Witnesses and The Tunnel. The Tunnel is on Amazon, not Netflix.

More information about the Udacity Intro to Physics MOOC. The 7 "lessons" are more like Units, because once you start the course, each of the 7 lessons is broken down into smaller lessons, for a total of 18 lessons. The course also states an approximate completion time of 2 months. We are using it to get us started on physics (non-science family here). We're spending about a week on each of the 7 units by giving it about 3-4 hours a week. I love the format: A question is posed related to a scientific problem solved by an historical scientist. Questions and math problems are posed for the student to complete and answer before continuing the video. We've had some light-bulb moments as we try to solve the problems. Unit 1 covers an intro to trigonometry (how to find angles and lengths of sides, as Eratosthenes needed to do to compute the circumference of the earth). We were also guided to find the circumference of the moon, distance of the moon to earth, and distance of the sun to earth. Unit 2, so far, has taught us the equations for velocity and acceleration, in the context of Galileo's challenging of Aristotle's premise that objects fall at different speeds. Very well-explained and interesting! Both of us learn well with this type of course.

Has anyone looked at Algebra 2 with Dr. Callahan? He uses a text by Barnett, et al, for College Algebra with Trigonometry from McGraw Hill, which is free online. I'm looking for something to beef up algebra 2 as dd has been using Lial's Intermediate Algebra. In Barnett's text, Chap. 3-5 of the text are mostly algebra, then chap. 6-8 go into trigonometry. What do you think?

Algebra 2 with Dr. Callahan, anyone? He uses a text by Barnett, et al, for College Algebra with Trigonometry from McGraw Hill, which is free online. I'm looking for something to beef up algebra 2 as dd comes to the last 3 chapters of Lial's Intermediate Algebra. I would just do a review of chap. 3-5, then dig into chap. 6-8 for the trigonometry. What do you think?

We are doing MOOCs for chemistry this year. We started with an easy, 4-week long course at Open2Study called Chemistry: Building Blocks of the World. This course would be appropriate for a student in middle school, methinks, or, as in our case, a high school student who didn't have the benefit of a lot of science in earlier years. It is an enjoyable overview that focuses on the basics without getting bogged down in detail or math problems. Then we moved on to Coursera's Introduction to Chemistry: Reactions and Ratios. We are 3-4 weeks into this 7-week long course, and it's getting tough. It is interesting and well-done, with an enthusiastic Assistant Professor from Duke University, Dorian Canelas. The in-lecture interactive questions help us practice what we are learning as we go, and the quizzes at the end of each week's unit seem to be a good assessment of the material covered. One unit per week is too much for us at this point, so we are re-enrolling in another session to give ourselves more time to cover. This seems like a comprehensive chemistry course for high school.

Never mind...

Cannot find these on the Trivedi site any longer.

The MIT Opencourseware links above no longer work.

I am researching CK-12 for chemistry now. The "second edition "textbook linked in the OP is not found with a search at the CK-12 site, though the link for the textbook and teacher's edition still work. The link for the labs does not work. Instead, at this chemistry page, they have 3 textbooks available on the FlexBook Textbooks tab, CK-12 Chemistry Basic, CK-12 Chemistry Intermediate, and CK-12 Chemistry Concepts Intermediate, as well as a text titled From Vitamins to Baked Goods: Real Applications of Organic Chemistry. Only the CK-12 Chemistry Intermediate has a teacher's edition, quizzes and tests, and workbook available. Someone has added answers to the in-text questions/problems for CK-12 Chemistry Basic, however, on the Resources tab. The books are all written with some of the same authors, so the content follows a similar sequence. Just 30 min. of browsing makes me think there is considerable difference between the 3 texts. That's as far as I've progressed so far... There is also CBSE Chemistry 12, which is still in progress and asking for contributors. ? I don't know what CBSE is.

Has anyone heard of this? They are offering a full 4-year scholarship to the first student to receive a perfect test score of 120! https://cltexam.com/index.php/clt/about "Classic Learning Initiatives exists as a small component of a much larger contemporary endeavor to repair the rupture between intellectual pursuit and virtue. The ancient Greek philosophers stressed the same basic ideas about education that home-school parents and classical school educators affirm today. How someone learns to think, what they read, and how they live, are all intricately connected. Mainstream education in America is failing because the pursuit of virtue, as classically understood, has been lost. Ironically, even the best classical schools and Christian colleges defer to the big "value neutral" standardized tests when looking for a measure of an applicant’s intellectual capacity. Historically, colleges have had to defer to these tests because they were the only tests available. Now, however, the Classic Learning Test (CLT) offers students, colleges, and parents a third option. Students can take a shorter exam at a local testing center, receive their score in less than a week, and have their score sent directly to any of the colleges listed on our site. We are pleased to offer the Classic Learning Test to the students, families and college administrators that have been yearning for change in the American education system. We plan to be an active voice in the ongoing discussion surrounding the standards for college acceptance."

We decided to use CK12 biology this year for my 16 year-old daughter. So far, so good. So much better than Apologia that we used for some of the older siblings... more interesting, more detailed, more colorful. Good explanations and graphics, including videos, though we don't watch them all. The workbook is decent, and there is a separate test pdf which we haven't used. Early in this thread (p. 1) is a link to "Otter's biology," which is one mother's adaptation of CK12 biology complete with schedule, experiments, online resources and supplemental readings.

I agree that expecting a 7 yo to master the intricacies of English spelling rules is pushing it. ;) What can you do, other than giving up? Give him time and lots of books. Seeing words spelled correctly, over and over, will help. When you think he's ready for Spelling Power, you can try that. The word lists are arranged according to the rules, as you know if you are using it, so he could become very familiar with which words use "oa" without also learning "ow" words at the same time. In the end, some students aren't as good at spelling as others. That's why we have dictionaries and spellcheck. Rejoice that he's a good reader, and let him enjoy the wonderful words that he finds in great books.