I used them with all my oldest 3 - to create electives. I didn't do a mishmash, but created "Linguistics" (2 Great Courses series + a final research project), "Arthurian Legend" (read the books and wrote essays), "Meteorology" (used a textbook as well as this son had it as his Science Olympiad event), "Game Theory" (video series, some online exercises I found and a final research paper). My kids all got into colleges with acceptance rates less than 40%, and one got into Stanford. So as long as you come up with a reasonable title and explain what they did, it will be fine. I think it makes sense for homeschoolers to do things like this. Why just do the standard classes when you have freedom to do anything for electives?

My oldest daughter who is currently doing her PhD has been visiting because we had a family wedding and a few days ago she got online to buy her books for the semester. I had completely forgotten about a website I had taught her about - fetchbook.info. Be sure to first put in your country of residence so that shipping fees are taken into account. Then put in your book and it will show you the cheapest place to find it.

For Shakespeare, I love Macbeth and then Hamlet. If you are only doing 6 a year you may have to take into account whether you have a son or daughter. For a girl, I would include Pride and Prejudice or Emma - but my boys were not fans. Great Gatsby And then so many ideas come crowding ...

We used Sonlight Brit LIt for AP English Lit. I never bothered to get anything classified as "AP". My kids would just use whatever curriculum we decided on and use a test prep book at the end. On their transcript, I just listed it as English. Many colleges asked for a breakdown on exactly what books we covered so it was clear it was a rigorous course. It is not an issue that no American Lit is covered. The way you prepare for AP Lit is to select 2 or 3 pieces of literature you hope you can use. My daughter selected Hamlet, Emma and The Importance of Being Ernest. She felt those 3 were likely to cover any question she would get. The topic that year was something about talking about a character that was a foil so she used Laertes as Hamlet's foil. She felt very well prepared and got a 5. My kids all got 5s for AP Language as well and we did Sonlight every year in high school. They felt the Word Power Made Easy book was the best vocab book they had used (we did lots of vocab!) I was an English major and did read almost all the books with them. I graded all their essays and they did everything Sonlight assigned. And they all still love reading and classics - which I consider an even bigger win than their AP scores.

Thinkwell is possibly an idea too - we used them for some classes and you go at your own pace and the questions and tests are automatically graded. They have a number of AP classes which means if a student did those and wrote the AP exam and passed, I can't see any high school not accepting them. My boys did some of their AP classes and did get do well enough to get credit for college so they do prepare students well.

I remember using one by an ex-Nigerian foreign minister about why aid to Africa isn't a good idea. That was the TEd talk. And then I used podcasts from Planet Money where they trace the manufacture of their tshirt around the world. I used the part from Bangladesh. Not sure they will make sense unless you are creating a similar "story" to what I am - but you are sure to find other things that will work for your lessons. It takes longer finding everything but my students love it and they come away with a better understanding of the world. In the 4 weeks we cover Africa I weave through all 4 weeks the idea that the West should be more careful about aid. They listen to that TED talk, look at a case study where aid failed miserably, look at another where it was successful and finish up by investigating charities in Africa. But they also learn about a variety of African countries and the cultures and they learn the basic geography.

I am teaching this at our co op and I literally made up the whole course as I have never found any good curriculum. I tried a few things with my own kids and eventually also made that up. I use a lot of video and google street view and I get in some speakers from other countries. I do focus a lot on culture. I found some good Ted talks I use. Also some podcasts. And a few games that are great. I do it as a blended class - one hour live at co op and then 3 hours online where they work through assignments in a virtual classroom.

I just googled for examples and made my daughter's like that. Just pm me if you want me to send a copy of it.

I have been through this 3 times so I know how you are feeling. English is my native language BUT I am South African so the cultural part of your concerns does apply to me. We were under an umbrella school so I didn't have to write the counselor's letter, but most of the "hard to get into" colleges required additional info from me about their homeschooling. I know that you will need to explain the level of the curriculum you used (ie we used lots of college level but I didn't want to call it "Honors" as I really have no idea what makes a class an Honors class). I also explained how I assessed their understanding if I wasn't using tests (eg in electives I sometimes got them to write research papers, create websites etc). I did not pay anyone to help me and my 3 were accepted into all these colleges which are fairly to very selective: Stanford, University of Southern California, Wake Forest, Emory, UNC Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt, NYU. I would suggest you just find someone to read over what you write and you should be fine.

It's a well-written review - and both mom and student write it so you hear from both perspectives. And they point out what they don't like as well as what they like. So if you need test prep, you should take a few minutes to read it.

I would go with this - you can say Trigonometry instead of Precalculus if you feel he didn't finish Precalc. Many schools offer Trig and not Precalc so either is fine. And I agree with everyone else. This is not messed up. I have graduated 3 and all got into very competitive colleges (one went to Stanford) and all of them had math spill over years and I just "tidied" it up to make sense on the transcript. Mine all started with Algebra 2 (you could call Intermediate Algebra that) and then Geometry, either Precalc or Trig and then they did different things for senior year. But you will have no problem with putting this on a transcript. It is pretty much what my kids had.

We used Sonlight and LOVED it. It is also good for AP Lit prep if you want to do that. My daughter got a 5 after doing Sonlight. My boys managed a 3 even though they did no prep at all as they were seniors and both knew by the time they took the AP exam it wouldn't count at the college they would be attending. (Of course, we didn't know that when I signed them up for the exam). And they couldn't see the point in working for an exam they could get no credit for and had no bearing on them getting into college. I made them still write it as I was curious to see how well they could do with literally no prep at all.

My kids liked to ask the students who gave us tours questions. Things like what they did on the weekends, how often they went home, how they liked their majors. They found the perspective of the current students very useful.

You only need Algebra 1 for Chemistry - my youngest decided to go to public school and they do that in 9th and Biology in 10th for the kids who have Algebra 1. For the 3 I homeschooled through high school they did Physical Science in 8th and then 9th Biology 10th Chemistry 11th Physics 12th Advanced (AP) Chem or Physics They all did science electives too - one did Forensics, one did Meteorology and one did Epidemiology

I love Duolingo not just for my kids but for myself - and my adult children use it too. And my one son used Italki for German practice. I know they cover all languages. He did pay but he felt it was worth it. For myself 1. I am trying to learn Thunkable which is a drag and drop language to build apps. I want to see what I can create with it and then will turn it into a class if I like it. 2. I have just signed up for this Coursera course: e-Learning Ecologies: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning for the Digital Age. It starts on Monday. I am always looking for ways to learn new teaching methods.

I am not at all interested in Biology but I heard a Radiolab podcast on Crispr and it fascinated me.

We moved to the US when my kids were 12, 9, 7 and 2 1/2. The oldest 3 had been in public and private schools in South Africa until then and we decided to homeschool because of the poor academics of the schools they were zoned for in our town. This worked great for them and they homeschooled all the way till they graduated. But my youngest is 5 years younger than her youngest sibling and she found 8th grade alone in a quiet house hard. She was attending a co-op once a week and we were involved in a very active homeschool group. In particular, she was on a few academic teams. And she did 4-H. And church sports. But she wanted the experience of a classroom and hated being home alone. Two years prior to this our local high school became an IB school so that improved the academics and we agreed to let her go there. She has not been tempted to return to homeschooling, but it has also not been easy. Many of the girls are mean. She does have a small circle of friends - but most of her classmates she is unlikely to keep contact with after graduating (she has just finished her junior year). She is not impressed with the way the kids behave before, at and after the winter formals and proms. But she has found a few students who share her values so she is not miserable. Her advice now to incoming freshman is to seek out the nerd group. It took her a while to figure out they are nicer and more fun to be with! As far as academics go, she has had the opportunity to take AP and IB classes BUT she has not had the same quality education her siblings had. We did Sonlight plus some Great Courses, AOPS, and various electives I pulled together. She does have some good teachers - but a good number of mediocre ones and some who were downright bad. I hate the huge amount of time she has to spend on summer assignments, how few classics they read and the busy work. All that said, "regular" school was the best choice for her. She did not want to stay home and it would have been a struggle for 4 years. Instead, I have a great relationship with her and school has not negatively affected her character. But, I still feel that on the whole, homeschooling is a better system when it is done correctly and the student is happy at home. I have stayed involved with the homeschool community and the kids I work with show a lot more intellectual curiosity than most of my daughter's classmates. They are also nicer people :)

What does she want to do in college? My son felt the most useful math he had done at high school was AOPS's Number Theory. He just did it at home (ie he didn't take the online class). If she is contemplating any career that might require any amount of coding, I would suggest that. It's a 1/2 credit but you can pair it with AOPS's Probability and together they become 1 credit of Discrete Math.

I used it as a supplement to whatever math curriculum we were using. After a few years of homeschooling, I realized it was advantageous to use more than one curriculum as it allowed my kids to see there were multiple ways to get answers and they could find the approach that worked best for them. I also realized that more practice made them more comfortable with math - but I wanted them to have fun doing it. So - I came up with a reward scheme tied to the number of points they earned and the badges they achieved. I have actually used it with inner city students I am working with too. For my own kids, the points translated into dollars and they could choose anything they wanted to buy with it. For the inner city students, I had a range of items they could trade the points for.

I used this with my oldest as she only started homeschooling in 9th grade and hadn't done it as a middle schooler. She did the American Lit at the same time and the US Government and Civics so that gave her a very American year! I added nothing (well, we did watch various movies but nothing else) - except an AP test prep book 2 weeks before she took the AP exam. Yes - she took the AP exam after SL 100 - and she scored a 5. So I would definitely say it is high school worthy as stands!

I do think it is pointless to teach something that is wrong. And as Geography is ever-changing it does make it a challenge to teach. I have just been going through my homeschool material and actually threw out one of my favorite Geography books as I realized it was just too old now and too much has changed. I hate throwing books away but it really has no value now to anyone. If you do use old curriculum you will need to point out whenever things have changed to your children. South Sudan is a country that is new so be sure to include that. And Czech Republic is now officially 'Czechia'. Even some capital cities have changed since I was in school. So - any Geography books are likely to be outdated quickly and one can't replace them each year - so you just have to try to figure out what is new. Digital curriculum and online classes should hopefully be keeping up better. Fortunately, the cultures of countries don't change as rapidly as borders and country names do so that part usually stays the same at least!!

Haha your post brings back memories!! I can remember coming home from grocery shopping and one of my sons would have his computer in pieces all over the kitchen table while he was installing some new parts that he had just bought. All his school work, 4-H records etc were on that computer (this was in the days before much was on the cloud) and I would be so freaked out. They would always tell me to calm down - and they did always get the computer working again but I never stopped being stressed by it. Now to your question: Yes!! Always make anything your kids spend adequate time on into a 1/2 or full credit. I did that for the Science Olympiad events they took if they did them over a few years and had been in 65 (1/2 credit) or 130 (full credit) hours. It makes them look interesting on the transcripts!! I would simply call it Computer Hardware.

OK AP Lang and Comp is an easy one and my kids really just did their usual English (we did Sonlight) and then wrote it with pretty much no prep. So she should be fine with that. Mine all did APUSH in 11th grade and al managed 5s BUT we are a history loving family. We had done Sonlight since we started homeschooling (they ranged from 3rd - 8th grade) and so they had covered it well in the past. My oldest took APUSH after Sonlight's core where they use History of US but my boys had already done it by the time they reached high school so I made a curriculum that used Great Courses, Critical Thinking US History, lots of movies and some non-fiction. So they came into the year with all the basic knowledge and we just went deeper. They wrote 2 to 3 short essays for me each week based on prompts from the Great Courses videos and my boys said they felt those prepared them well for the essays. The Critical Thinking books plus they completed for a few years in National History Day, meant they knew how to work with primary sources so the DBQ was easy. The hardest is going to be the MCQs. I helped a friend's daughter last year and in the final prep I realized she just didn't have the depth of knowledge that my kids did to be able to make educated guesses as those are hard (this also meant she struggled to give enough detail in the essays). She got a 3 (and she is a good student and wasn't lazy!). There is just a lot of detail to know. My kids all read a lot of historical fiction, watched lots of historically based movies (not just in their junior year but since they were in elementary school), had been on quiz bowl teams etc so they didn't study the detail - they just knew it by that point. Hopefully that rather lengthy response helps. I just know the only reason my friend's daughter didn't manage a 4 was because it was hard to try to cover the depth that was needed in a year. Obviously, one can do it - but as your daughter will have limited time, I would suggest that you take her prior knowledge into account.

Yes it definitely does. Both my boys took the AP after they did it and so did a friend of mine's daughter. All got 4's. We use Princeton Review to do prep in the last 2 weeks. And this is a very useful website - http://blog.prepscholar.com/ap-government-review

I would second this. My oldest son has now graduated from Stanford and he told me that the one math he thinks every high schooler who might ever program (and in tomorrow's world that could be most of our kids!) should take is Number Theory. He did AoPS. We just ran out of time to do Counting and Probability. I know your daughter did not list anything computer related - but last week my oldest ,who is a phD student in Media Studies, sent me a photo of the program she had just written! Yes, in Media Studies! They need to program to do work on the statistical side of things!!!! For the first time she was relieved I insisted she learn to program when she was in middle school.