Stay away from the Earth Science probably - we did a Climate one (my son was doing that for Science Olympiad) and we disagreed with almost every lecture. But we had a good time discussing it together so it was OK. The Linguistics ones are great (we watched 2 different ones) and Arthurian Legend. Also Game Theory.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe- I guess it is depressing but I think it isn't too long and I want my kids to read it.

I agree with the advice given above. I have had 3 go off to college now and while none of them wrote a book, they all had things they had spent time on that needed to be highlighted. There were a few ways of doing this 1. They can mention it in their college essays. Most colleges have many small essays students have to write and the trick is to use different things to focus on in each so that a student can show who they are. 2. Many colleges my kids applied to asked for a supplement from homeschool parents. It was a pain as it created work for me BUT it gave me a chance to show that what we had done had gone above and beyond a typical high school education. And I could include things I wanted to highlight in it. 3. The recommendation letters. You will be asking people who know her well to write these and I assume some or all of them will know about the book. Ask them to include it in their letter (I got my kids to create a google doc listing all their accomplishments and they told the people writing their letters what they wanted them to focus on so there wasn't too much overlap) And kudus to her for writing a book!!

Sonlight has a 20th century History / Literature year and that is essentially a World Lit year - but 20th century of course. You can use some of their book ideas. Smarr has guides for tons of literature too and I used those sometimes when I was putting my own curriculum together.

If they don't allow consumer math, think about Statistics. My daughter did that instead of Calculus. I have 3 who have already been admitted to college and I have helped countless other students (I teach at a homeschool co op and end up helping many of the seniors) and I do think you should rather assume a college will not accept Pre-Algebra as a math. There may be some less competitive ones that will, but you would need to check up on that. Could she do her final math course the same year she does an internship? Or she could do it in the summer before that. If math isn't her thing she probably won't want to do 2 math courses at any point. Pity all students are now forced to take 4 math credits in high school. So many (like your daughter) do not need it. My daughter went on to study film - so she didn't need it either!

My kids all worked through Jan's Computer Literacy 101. If you do it online it is all free. They did it as elementary / middle schoolers - and we didn't have to do it in high school here in TN. I just told our umbrella school my kids had all done it already and they did programming instead. If you are sure he has to do it, let him work through the 'advanced' stuff in Excel, Word, Powerpoint etc. At least it will be useful. And if you do really advanced Excel there is a lot of programming involved. Udemy also has lots of course that would be applicable - and many are free.

Sonlight scheduled a book we enjoyed on Mother Teresa - I don't remember the author - and that was a great way to learn about India. Whether you use that one, or another one - or even a movie, something on Mother Teresa would be great to include.

I just came across a blog post called "151 Must Visit Writing Websites" and although it is aimed at people who want to make a career of writing, there were many sites that looked excellent for homeschoolers. For instance, there is a free Writing Class that is done by a screenwriter / author if your children are interested in creating fiction / screenplays. And there are lots of other websites that look great too.

I second the Statistics idea. My daughter had the exact same math going into her final year. By then she knew she was going to be doing a degree in Film and didn't need high level math and she wanted something easier than Calculus. We used Hawkins Statistics - it was online and had a text book. It was one of those auto grading classes so it was easy for me too! She didn't hate it and I figured it might actually come in useful some day.

I think that line really hits the nail on the head. I teach a Speech class at our local co op. I make them do a presentation using a slideshow. I teach them the principles of how to make an effective slideshow but I don't teach them how to actually go about creating one. They should be able to figure that out even if they haven't done one before. Most just go ahead but some struggle because they have not been taught how to learn. I like everything regentrude said. My kids also learned Word, Excel, moviemaking, website creation etc as they needed it for what they were doing. All of my kids used those skills to make money while they were in middle and high school. When they got to college and then into the workplace they were never faced with anything technology-related they couldn't cope with. But despite being a high-tech family in many ways, you will still find all of us using "low tech" when it serves our purpose better - some of us prefer paper books, taking notes on paper etc.

Scratch has just come out with Scratch Jr for iPads btw ... I haven't had chance to look at it yet but it is aimed at 5-7 year olds so should be interesting. I am a computer programmer and have been teaching coding to kids since I was a college student, and I like starting with Scratch or Alice (Alice is more complex so this is a better fit for older students) and then Python.

How about creating a group? We run it through our homeschool support group but for a long time another mom also ran one n our county and they weren't any specific group. She just gave it a name and used our area-wide yahoo group for homeschoolers to advertise it and she charged $10 I think per student.

Does he need a CD drive? If not - that gives you options of lighter laptops. I can't offer any suggestions other than my Lenovo has only about a 1 hour battery life (deteriorated fast) so I wouldn't recommend that. My husband's workplace has all moved to Chrome books .... could something like that perhaps work?

On the Science side, my daughter loved the Fetch programs - I know they are online somewhere - not sure if you can get them any other way. They pose a challenge to teams of kids who learn science as they compete against each other to solve them. The science toy she played most with was her Snap Circuits kit. She got it when she was older but I know there are junior sets. I know you didn't ask for Geography - but there are all the Carmen Sandiege DVDs that you can get real cheap on Amazon (last time I looked I think they were $5).

My kids did science at home and the curriculum we used had a Physics year and then an AP Physics which built on the Physics. So you couldn't do AP Physics without the other. The same is true of the school my daughter is attending in the fall - you have to do Physics before you do AP Physics. Obviously if there are courses that somehow combine both it is a different story, And I agree, my kids had no problem picking up the little bit of Trig necessary. I 100% agree you do not need to have Trig to do the standard Physics classes offered. However, if you choose to do Physics with Calculus ... that is another story. I didn't with my boys and my son who is at Stanford had already told me to change my plan with my daughter as if a student is going to continue with Physics at college that is the one they should preferably do (he also said it is easier ... if you know calculus of course)

My daughter has decided to go to the local public high school (last child - lonely at home and the school is very good) but had she stayed she would have done 2 sciences as that is her bent. She would probably have done Biology and Physics - but not the AP level. You need to do the regular level of each before taking the AP class. She does not like Biology so we would be doing that just to get it done and she would have done a science she actually liked. To do Physics students need to at least be starting on Trig. My boys both did Physics the same year they did Pre-Calc and it worked fine. If you want to do an AP science, then I agree with kiana that AP Environmental Science is the way to go. It is supposed to be one of the easiest of the AP exams. My daughter may do it as an extra this year or next year is public school isn't challenging enough

Do you know about the Medusa Mythology Exam? Our homeschool group has participated in that for the past 2 years and there are different levels of awards. High Schoolers who achieve a gold award can compete for a scholarship. Each year they select a specific area of Mythology to focus on - so it won't cover everything you are studying, but it could be a great additional contest to do.

I would agree with KirstenHill - we played Forbidden Dessert this vacation (similar to Forbidden Island) and I enjoyed it and I am not a big fan of strategy games. What I liked about it: 1. Co-operative. This means either everyone wins or no one wins. Result: less fighting. Also means everyone is playing even when it isn't their turn. Easier to keep focused. 2. Quick to learn. I have a shorter attention span than my kids, I think, so this is important to me 3. Quick to play. A game can be over within 10 minutes (if you lose fast) or last about 30 minutes. It is not one of the ones that lasts hours and hours. 4. Simple rules - as Kirsten said - young kids can manage.

Private Hangouts are limited to 10 people.

I guess I am a math person and a humanities / social science person so not sure how helpful I will be, but my oldest 3 did all the high school Sonlight cores and we all loved them. They were challenging and engaging and resulted in many discussions round the supper table. They also prepared them well for AP exams and SAT subject tests - as well as for coping at college. My daughter got into a pretty exclusive honors program based on essays she did as part of Sonlight and a phone interview, and my sons did very well at all the literature / history / culture studies classes they had to do at college and I feel that was a direct result of doing Sonlight. We didn't ever try TOG so I can't compare.

How about a free online course from Udacity or Coursera? My 8th grader has enjoyed the History of Science one from Udacity even though some of the math was beyond her. She isn't done yet, but she has been through quite a bit. Both have coding ones too ... I tried one through Coursera that I didn't think was great (a Univ of Toronto one) but one of my co op students did the Intro to Programming through Udacity and liked it. You don't get personal help with these - the lessons are there and you do them and turn them in for automatic grading so that can be a problem if one gets stuck. There are forums so you can try to get help there but I think this is the biggest problem with MOOCs.

I looked at everything that was available and didn't find anything very engaging so put my own together and largely used DVDs (e.g. Michael Palin's and Rick Steve's) and then set research projects that were fun (e.g. plan a 10 day trip around Scotland). I also used a book called "Selling Destinations" used by the travel industry. And they played lots of online geography games. The one curriculum I did get my kids to do was Runkle's Geography - but it is mainly earth science. It does have some basic info on political geography. I did that with them in middle school.

On most college and scholarship applications there is a section for Academic Honors. If my boys hadn't been AP scholars with distinction they would have had to leave that empty whereas most academically strong school students would have something to put there. National Merit or Commended would work too. So, in many ways it does't matter but I think having no empty sections is going to give an overall better impression.

Feel free to message me if you run out of ideas during the year. I teach Geography classes too and there are tons of games you can buy that let students learn as they play instead of expecting a specific level of knowledge.

I taught all my kids to program at a young age so an 11 year old is definitely capable of doing a lot. I teach programming at our co op and online and start with Scratch (developed by MIT). More powerful than Scratch but a similar idea is Alice (developed by Carnegie Mellon). I have also used that as a starting language. From there I move to Python - which I prefer as it is a "real" language. But Scratch is an easy and fun way to get started. MIT also has an App Builder which creates Android Apps in a similar way to creating Scratch programs. One word of caution: if you use Codeacademy to learn Python - that is an older version of Python (2.7.3) not version 3. It has quite a few differences and I would not recommend you use that to learn Python. I use http://cscircles.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/ as a supplement to my Python classes. The one thing I like about it is that it teaches the logic of programming - not just the syntax. That is the biggest problem I have with many of the online classes - it is easy to learn the programming language but not so easy to learn how to put a complex game or program together. Once students have learned some programming there are many other options available through Coursera and Udacity. I did one through Coursera that was through University of Toronto (I am trying out what is available) and would not recommend that as they jumped into advanced concepts and the class struggled. I am working through Udacity's Intro to Programming and like that much better but am not far enough along to give a decent critique.