I just wrote a guest blog post on 10 Middle School Science Contests. Some are well known (Lego League, Science fairs) but some you may not have heard of. Our homeschool group students have done most of those on the list so I could include photos too! Would love to see more homeschoolers participating and winning!! Feel free to pm me if you need help on any of the ones I have personal experience with. My own children and many of those in our homeschool group have learned so much (and achieved success!) participating in these contests. It is a great way to show colleges that your kids can hold their own academically when compared to those who have attended private and public schools. Some of these are also for high school btw. Here's a link to the post: http://learninghypothesis.com/10-science-contests-for-middle-schoolers/

I use the icivics online games in my classes and the students LOVE them. There are quite a few so I could use one almost every week. There is also a very good Redistricting Game I get them to play. All these games really reinforce the concepts. And Mr Smith goes to Washington is an excellent movie that shows how the Senate operates. The whole movie is on Youtube. West Wing is also great. I had never seen it (I come from South Africa) and I actually started watching just before I started teaching my class and most of the episodes bring to life topics that are covered.

We just used the workbook and textbook. If they did that quickly I preferred to add in a different curriculum so that they could see there are many different ways to do math. For the younger levels we used Miquon which is more hands-on and then we moved to Life of Fred (my kids loved it - but it seems kids either do or they don't). We also used Khan Academy and I had a reward system going that related to how many points they earned on Khan

To answer this question - I assume you realize as others have mentioned, that he does need 4 sciences if he is on a college path (or at least 3 - our state only requires 3). But they do not need to be Honors level. My oldest 3 did a variety of sciences (all did Biology and one year each of Physics and Chemistry and then an AP for either of the latter + they added Forensics, Meteorology, and Epidemiology - each did one of those). So each only did one AP in the science field. The rest was just "regular" level and they all got into very competitive colleges. My youngest has gone to an IB school and she will have Hons Biology, Hons Chem and 2 years of IB Chem ie no variety at all (which I think is sad ...)

There are lots of great online games where you have to identify where countries are etc - seterra, lizard point etc. I use those to quiz my students and they do the quizzes till they get about 80%. Geography Now videos cover the basics of countries in about 10 minutes - you could perhaps get your child to draw posters on some of the countries. I think if you can't find a curriculum that works just make your own one. Find appropriate videos on Youtube and let your child do assignments that work for their learning style.

Here are two online games: http://www.mission-us.org/pages/mission-1 - For Crown or Colony http://infinityring.scholastic.com/games/episode2 - Revenge of the Redcoats (you need to create an account to play online - it is also an app)

1. Yes - been doing it for about 13 years now. I don't even have any kids on the team anymore ... so I think that speaks for itself 2. There is a closed FB group for homeschool head coaches. If you decide to go for it I can get you in. I am not sure who is 'recent' but you would get help. There are 3 teams in our state that I know of. We are the oldest but everyone has been around at least 4 years 3. Yes. We started with 10. We seldom have 15 when we go to regionals. We have an A and a B team and we like to leave space on the A team to move students up 4. You don't have to 'do' anything. No one has even checked ever - not even when we made it to Nationals. But we always have stuck to that. We are allowed to take any counties to regional but have to drop to just 2 if we make it to State. So we often have to re-organize teams to make that work. We represent a homeschool support group so we can't advertise ourselves as 2 counties. We just take whoever wants to do it and figure out the logisitics later. At least anyone can compete at our regional. But I know other teams in other states say which counties they are. We have one main county, but change our "contiguous" county dependent on the kids we have. 5. No - it is the best, most rewarding thing I have ever done. Nothing like it. It is crazy-making I will admit, but we love it. And I don't even like science! I am a history / languages gal!!

I struggled to find any engaging Geography curriculum when my kids were in middle and high school, so I ended up creating my own. There are lots of great online resources that you can use now - everything from online quiz games to learn where states / countries / rivers etc are, to google streetview where you can "visit" places, to videos and websites where you can "be" there. In the class I teach at our co op and online, I use "Stephen Fry in America" and get the students to create a map of his journey using Scribblemaps. Do be warned though - I did edit those videos as they had some inappropriate sections. But the appropriate parts are fun and informative. I also let my kids (and now my students) research places and then create websites, posters, videos, games etc - then the learning sticks a lot more than just going through workbooks.

I know a SAT coach who does online coaching who is creating a product she thinks will be useful for homeschoolers and more affordable than paying for individualized coaching. She has created worked solutions for all the math problems (written out and also in video format) for a number of the actual SAT tests. In time she will add reading and writing too. The solutions include tips on easy ways to solve the problems, shortcuts, ways to make educated guesses etc. The idea is that students will take a test (they are available free online) and then use her solutions for problems they got wrong, guessed at, or took too long to do. I have found her a number of students already but she is looking for just 5 more high school students who are taking the SAT in May or June. They will get free access to the material in exchange for honest feedback. If you would like your child to get access to this, please PM me and I will pass on the info to the first 5 I hear from.

We used kits at home and I suggested that to her but I think she wants him to go somewhere else to do it :)

Thanks! I will tell her to look there.

There are 5 years between my 3rd and 4th child so my youngest was in 8th grade when she became the only one at home. Although she had classes at co op, was involved in the youth ministry at church, did 4-H, was on our Science Bowl and Science Olympiad teams - she still found the long hours working alone at home more than she could take and she asked to go to school. I must admit I found it hard at first and one instinctively feels rejected. But my husband and I also saw it from her perspective and quite frankly I knew it would be hard homeschooling her if she didn't want to be here. Our local private schools are not great so she ended up going to the local public school which offers an IB program so the academics are reasonable. She does not have the breadth and depth of education she had at home, but it is not too bad and she has had a few really good teachers. There is a lot of wasted time and for the first 2 years also too much busy work. But now they are into the actual IB program it is much better. She likes being in a classroom and having study groups and that sort of thing. She has also become involved in the stage management part of their theater program and loves that. So it has turned out the best thing for her. I was sad at first but I realized a lot of that was because I loved working with homeschoolers - teaching and coaching the academic teams. And I realized I could still do that even if she went to school and that's how it has worked out :)

I have just been contacted by the mom of one of my online students. She was planning to use Landry Academy for biology and chemistry labs for her son and now does not know what to do. She in East TN and is prepared to travel. My own kids just did their labs at home (and my brother-in-law is a doctor so he did dissections with them) so I have no idea what her options are. She does not want to enroll him at a community college as they can't be locked into a schedule like that as her son is an actor. So she is looking for an intensive camp like Landry offered.

In case some of you don't know about these two, take a look at Analyze My Writing and the Hemmingway App. Both are free and provide info on readability, which sentences are in the passive etc. I plan to encourage my co op Speech students to run their speeches through one of these in future.

I checked in with our Spanish teacher and she is going to offer Spanish 3 in 2017/18 and Spanish 4 the following - so sorry, can't help for next year. We do have a special landing page for Landry people now - http://www.fundafundaacademy.com/go/landrya/ We will give discounts based on how much was paid originally and how much each teacher has offered to do. We will also forgo our admin costs . This will apply for now and for 2017/2018. We are happy to accept generics for any of our classes.

Thinkwell has a number of different ones. My kids used their Pre Calc, Calc, Economics and Government and enjoyed them all. I know they also have others including some science.

If he has a good grasp of Python, Coursera has a fantastic 2 part course done by Rice University on Python. I took it and it was really really great. It says it is for beginners, but I think it would be tough if one didn't already know some Python as it is pretty fast paced. You do learn to create some fun games and even though I knew Python (was taking it to see how they taught it), I really enjoyed it and the presenters are so much fun! You can get help in the forums - but as it is free there aren't teachers you can email for help.

I used Penny Candy + Clipper Ship Strategy and the one with Money in the title together with the Bluestocking guides for each of them for my daughter who wasn't much interested in anything business related. She enjoyed those and learned a lot - as in she really understood what she had learned. I also got her to play the Stock Market Game (our homeschool group participated in that but there are free online sites that are similar). I am teaching it online and at our co op next semester and I plan to use Penny Candy as it does explain things well. I also plan to use Crash Course as kids love those. I am about to do more research but I know there are also free online simulations and games about economics. I don't use tests much so if you do make up your own course, just get your children to do a few projects. Here are some ideas: 1. Create a poster to explain some economic concepts (Canva.com is a good site to do that on) 2. Create an animation to explain concepts (moovly and powtoons are good sites) 3. Create a slideshow (use keynote, powerpoint, Google slides or prezi) You can find quizzes on sites like Quizlet, Sporcle and Quizzizz is you want to add some of those in.

I saw your post and messaged our teacher. I am fairly sure she plans to add Spanish 3 next year but not sure about Spanish 4. My own kids did 4 years with her so I know she does have lessons planned for 4 years. Will let you know!

I run FundaFundaAcademy - we don't have nearly as many classes offered as Landry, but if any of you need help with the ones we do offer, I will work with our teachers and give you the best deal we can if you already purchased from Landry. If your children are 1/2 way through a full year course and the teacher isn't continuing we will work with you so they can transition to the second semester of our full year courses. We have classes for Biology 1, Spanish 1 and 2, Photography, Government, Scratch and Python Programming, Computer Applications (Digital Literacy), Economics, World Geography. Either pm me or email me (you can find the email on our website)

I recently discovered Write the World website - https://writetheworld.com - and wish I had known about it when I was still homeschooling. I heard about it on a podcast I was listening to and thought some of you would like it. It has writing prompts, ways for students to earn badges while developing a writing portfolio and monthly contests (free to enter but there are money prizes!)

Adam Norris review videos on Youtube (my daughter used those and got a 5) Quizlet has lots of quizzes for APush And there are sites like these: http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/quizzes.html http://www.raleighcharterhs.org/faculty/bnewmark/1apushquizzes.html

Thanks! I am glad it has worked for you. I am South African so also learned the material with my children. We moved here about 14 years ago. That's also when we started homeschooling. We loved the John Adams DVD too. I watched with my older son and my husband watched with my younger. The Critical Thinking book exercises will help them in the AP. There are lots of places to find review quizzes - take a look on Quizzizz and if you have more than one, Kahoot is fun too. And of course Quizlet. Those are fun ways to go over the detail that might come up.

You can find it here - http://fundafunda.com/blog/shop/ I developed it for my own kids and figured I would share. I included quite a few "extras" - books and movies and Critical Thinking through US History - and you can pick and choose how much you want to do. My boys both got 5s on the AP exam after doing it exactly as I set it out. I know the exam has changed since then, but as I didn't try to teach to the test anyway, it shouldn't matter. It is just a rigorous walk through US history (though you can make it less rigorous by leaving resources out)

I think this is now the 5th year of the "Hour of Code". This whole week there is a big emphasis on getting everyone to try coding for at least one hour. Sit with your children and watch the video on their website and then go and look at the huge number of tutorials you can select from - there are ones for all levels of ability and all ages. There are even offline activities. I highly recommend this as a fantastic way for the whole family to get started with coding! https://hourofcode.com/us