Just to update - my daughter is getting married on Saturday and then next week I plan to get the AP US History syllabus out. I will come back and post when it is ready and I will PM all those who PMed asking for it.

For middle and high schoolers, I second Cargo Bot if you want to challenge them and teach them the basics of computer programming. Master Pieces is an excellent art game that could be used for an art curriculum for a few months Combine 4 is a math game that is very similar to the card game 24 Fuzzy Logic teaches thinking skills (I wrote a blog post on this one - http://fundafunda.co...ing-skills.html) Word Stack (WS Free is the free version) teaches word association in a fun way as does Word Link For littlies, Lost Key and Meet Millie are gorgeous interactive stories

My ds did AP Lit today ... he didn't prepare as NYU where he is going doesn't let him off any classes with it, but as we had paid I wanted him to take it anyway. The topic for the essay did not work for any of the books he had read this year and he ended up having to use Scarlet Letter which he did at the beginning of last year - so not sure how well that went! He said the MC questions were easy.

I would suggest the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum (she can give it a fairy tale spin). I bought it for my son and he got quite far, but didn't actually finish his book.

I have had 3 kids take the AP US History exam without doing an approved course. All 3 got 5s and no colleges any of them applied to asked what course they had done. They were just interested in the scores. If your son doesn't get at least a 3, you can get the score removed (I had to do that for other exams for both my boys who didn't realize they actually had to study for APs!) My daughter used what was then Sonlight 100 (no clue what it is now) and my son's both used a course I put together using Teaching Company DVDs and Critical Thinking through US History as the 'spines'. I added biographies and movies and for the last 2 weeks before the exam they worked through the Princeton AP guide. If anyone wants my syllabus, I am going to post it on my website - I will try and remember to come back here and post the link - but otherwise PM me. I did put it together with AP exam in mind and by the time I did it, I knew the sort of questions they would get and my 'course' prepares them for that. It is quite a bit of work but both my boys felt very well prepared going in, had enjoyed the year, and got the score they wanted.

It will be interesting to hear how the transition to community college math goes. I was one of those who dropped TT after my second child who I knew wanted a sciency career and who I thought was pretty good at math - did not score well enough on the ACT. He had been getting 100% for his TT tests and I hadn't paid enough attention to how easy the work was. We switched to LOF and got back on track and he is doing fine at college - so all ended OK. But do come back in 3 years :) and let us know if it was good enough. The one thing I really do like about TT is having the worked out solutions on CD. I think that is extremely helpful ina homeschool context.

If your kids are middle school or older Discovering Music looks amazing and is what I will use next. It is currently on special at Homeschool Buyers Co-op. This year I read Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought) with my 7th grader and it was great fun. For younger kids, The Music Games International CD Rom games are excellent. They take a composer, eg Tchaikovsky and teach music appreciation and understanding through a number of mini games related to one of his works - in this case The Nutcracker Suite.

Stack the States and Stack the Countries are good geography apps. There are lite versions to try before you spend money. The Lost City is free I think and would be fun to do together ... it is an adventure / solve it game which my daughter and I haave played together and still not solved. My Kingdom has different editions and each has a 'lite' version. It requires thinking skills to figure out how to allocate resources to get to the next level. Starts easy and gets harder and harder Where's my water is popular and requires problem solving skills

My favorite teen dystopian novel for girls is Matched by Allie Condie. It is also part of a trilogy and I think would lead to interesting discussions.

I just need to re-iterate what I said earlier in this thread. Whatever the problems one might have with Sonlight, the academic level (unless it has changed in the last 2-3 years) is very high. My son who is now at Stanford used Sonight from 5th-12th grade and he had no problems with any of the humanties / English classes. He usually gets an A, and As are hard to come by at Stanford. And in his first year he often helped classmates who had no idea how to write a paper, or give personal insights on something they have read. He felt very well prepared by Sonlight - and he is at one of the toughest colleges in the country.

Michael Palin and Rick Steves are both DVD series that you should be able to get at your local library or on Netflix. I wrote a web page on geography suggestions that might help - www.squidoo.com/teach-geography. Many of my suggestions don't cost anything but I do link to some games etc as well.

There are also the Trail Guides to World Geography. I used that and the Apologia - both are OK but a bit boring. Essentially students have to research to find the answers. I have been disappointed with most Geography out there and so ended up making up my own curriculum most years (incl high school). I think one of the best ways to learn geography is through videos - it is far more interesting to 'see' what you are studying. We did go through continent by continent and then used Rick Steves, Michael Palin and other ones to provide the interest. Of course my kids would also look at where it was on a map, learn the major rivers, mountains, capitals etc. There are tons on free online sites and apps for kids to practice the basics of where countries are and their capitals / flags etc so between using games and DVDs and a lot of real life travel my kids are all pretty good at geography. And they enjoy it. Doing too much research based stuff would have killed it for them

My son took this test and got caught out as he was expecting to get formulas, but you don't. You have to go in knowing them all. I am sure this is well explained in the test prep and he just glossed over it, but I just thought I would mention it as if you don't know the formulas you aren't likely to do well.

I bought all my cores a while ago and haven't bought anything for a while, and realize I have missed a lot of drama. What I can say is that I chose Sonlight and chose to use it all through high school because of the academic level ie because it wasn't light. From previous remarks I assume the newer versions have dropped some of what was in the old ones because my kids finished high school having covered so much more literature and history than the local school kids and their homeschool friends. Mine all wrote AP exams without doing anything extra apart from using an AP review book and got 5s for US History, English Language and my daughter got a 5 on English Lit after doing the Brit Lit course. My older 2 coped very well in humanities at college - my daughter got into the Honor Program which was literature / philosophy / history and graduated with a perfect 4.0. My son is at Stanford and has achieved As in a number of his Humanities classes. I did not supplement Sonlight's literature at all - I did make my kids read the notes and write the papers and it really worked for them. I did use different Bible a lot of the time and have never used the new LA for the younger cores. I also supplement in Geography, Economics, Computers, Art etc for the younger cores and add electives for the high schoolers. I have no idea if I would feel differently if I were to buy the newer cores - I just know that the ones I bought 5 years + ago were great.

I teach a math club for middle schoolers and I have written about the games I used in a blog post. There are many sites (I list some in the post) that have math brain teasers, and while not a game, they are 'fun'. I also teach a geography class at our homeschool co op and I we play games each week. Many of them I just make up as variations on regular games eg Taboo, Pictionary etc. This does mean there needs to be someone else around to play as if you made up the game you can't play it. I am planning on posting my games on my website soon so that might work. If you have an iPad, the Amazing Race app is fun and not very expensive. You can also get it as a DVD game. I also believe the Oregon Trail Wii game is great.

I must agree. I also did not have the Zillions book for my 2 boys but have now bought it for my 7th grade who is doing Algebra. I did not supplement with anything else. The first time we stopped using LOF was Calculus. My oldest son just couldn't understand it with Fred, so switched to Thinkwell - but after getting to college he felt that wasn't rigorous enough so my next son has done Art of Problem Solving Calculus instead. Mine scored well enough on their standardized tests and SAT Math 2 subject test.

I second Secrets of Great Communicators. I have taught speech for a few years now and using that, Standard Deviants Public Speaking and the Toastmaster's methods of critiqueing all the students come out speaking well and many win speech competitions.

My 17yr old read Fahrenheit 451 over the summer and listed it as his favorite book on his college applications.

My kids are now too old for these and I feel so done in! My youngest is 12 and I am not sure if she will ever reach Algebra as I just keep buying the pre-algebra books as they come out. I hope Stan doesn't have anymore coming out soon or we may never get to Algebra. One just doesn't want to miss out on any part of the story! So ..I guess .. if I were you, I would buy them ... just in case .. and to be sure you didn't miss any part of Fred's life.

Sonlight is designed to be used for more than one grade. At one point I was using a core with an 11th grader, 8th grader and 6th grader. You do need to pick one that won't be too hard for the Kindergartner ... Sonlight has all kinds of options though to make that scenario work. Do you have a catalog? If not order one. You can also talk to their 'online' assistant (I haven't tried that so don't know how it will be)

We do this as a homeschool group and everyone pays $1 to sign up. We have a mom in charge who signs us up as a 'school'. That way our kids compete against each other as well as the whole world. We award gift card to the top scorers in each age group. American Math Challenge which is in October is not as competitive and last year we had a student in the top 20 and our homeschool group also made the leaderboard. It is similar to the World Math Day.

We use Sonlight all through out and my kids not only love history but remember so much of what we study. A few years ago Sonlight added SOTW to 2 years of their history and so I am using it with my youngest. It is her least favorite book ... fortunately Sonlight uses lots of other ones that are much more engaging. SOTW is better than a text book, but it is not very exciting.

Freerice.com would be a way of practising vocab - plus many other subjects. My daughter likes taking the quizzes as she feels she is benefitting someone at the same time.

We are going hopefully next weekend as a family - cool to have a movie both kids (12 and 17) and both parents want to see. My 17 yr old is happy to come with us as he hasn't any friends who would be interested in seeing it. Glad my kids actually want to see a 'history' movie!

Our homeschool science olympiad team won our state tournament last year and got to visit UCF as that was where National Science Olympiad was held. My 12 year old daughter really liked what she saw and at this point is putting it down on the list of schools she is considering. I know she is young, and may change her mind, but I just wanted to say that from our few days there we got a very positive impression of the place.