If he's interested in the hardware side, you can do something my son did here. He asked for donations of laptops and desktops that people weren't using or were broken. He spent time figuring out what needed to be done to them to get them working and then fixed and/or updated them. He then reached out to a group that works with refugees that pulled together a group of teens to receive the computers. He spent three afternoons holding classes to teach them how to use the computers and the internet. He had eight teens attend the class who then received their own computers. The project taught him quite a bit about the computer hardware and software and also about how to teach others. I counted it as a 1-semeter credit in Technology Support Services.

I used this from their website: High School Curriculum 1A covers the basics of the Spanish language, including the alphabet, pronouns, greetings, “to be” verbs, cardinal numbers, date and time, and saying “I want.” After completing this course, students should have a foundation for basic conversational proficiency and an understanding of the fundamental components of the Spanish language. High School Curriculum 1B serves as a continuation of the topics covered in 1A. In this module, students become familiar with nouns and articles, regular verbs, forming basic sentences, “to like,” “to have,” possessive pronouns, and introduction to future and past tense. This course should provide students with a basic comprehensive understanding of Spanish and provide them the knowledge needed to converse on a basic level with other beginning Spanish speakers.

Thanks for the clarification. CK12 is one of the resources we were looking into for next year.

Seriously???? I thought CK12 was supposed to be secular. Well, I can cross that off the list of possible Biology resources.

Each child had their own laptop. I had a laptop and a projector to display what I was doing.

Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant.

If you want something for your computer, Audacity is free and good.

Jessamonk, you should be fine with watching TWSS over the summer. It's nice to have them to refer back to, but with all the support on thier website and the Yahoo group, you should be able to get any questions answered.

IEW is the one that worked for my reluctant writer.

We've used K-2 Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley and 3-5 Zoology. The kids enjoy the links and activities. My son still remembers quite a bit about Ancient Egypt and we used that two years ago. If you have the time and energy, you could certainly plan out your lessons and find the links yourself, but I think it's worth it (especially when there's a sale) to pay someone else to do it.

JAG is for younger kids (4th and 5th) and AG is for older (6th+).

I taught Scratch programming a few times and it was always popular.

I really enjoyed No Time On My Hands by Grace Snyder.

I just bought IEW yesterday to use with my son. He's just starting level 8 of Barton. I don't think she says you have to start IEW right after level 4, but rather that's the earliest she'd recommend it. We've used WWE for the last year and a half and I feel he just isn't progressing. I'm hoping the IEW approach works better for him. On a Barton group I'm on, several people there have used it with success.

If you don't feel comfortable or safe, then by all means transfer packs. You can pay a small fee ($10 perhaps?) to the district to transfer, but you might need to pay that new pack's dues again. (The pack dues are separate from the district ones.) My sons are both in cub scouts and my husband is the cub master. While there certainly are some personality issues, there's nothing like what you described in our pack.

We do something similar with our boys but our stories always end up with alien chickens. I guess that's a difference between girls and boys.

For us the answer is an emphatic YES!!!!! I got just the DVD and my son who struggles with rote memorization learned his multiplication tables in a few days.

We used it last year with my 9 year old after ditching another program that wasn't working for us at all. We spent just one week per civilization for a high-level overview, but you could spend more time and supplement with library books or something else. My son really likes hands on projects, and he learned a bit from this program. This year we're starting with Great Explorers and he loves the activities. Our plan is to use a couple more in the American history series through the year. We're secular here and so I have had to edit some of the text, but really not too much.

I highly recommend going through each step now and getting them firmly in his brain. My son is now on level 7 and just this morning we went back to thinking through the sounds in a syllable and sounding it out on our fingers, just like in level 2. As the levels and complexity increase, you want to have that firm foundation that they can always pull from.

At the end of WWE2, some of the challenge divtations were rather difficult. My husband had our son make motions while trying to remember the words (kind of like pantomimes). It worked great for him. I'll never forget the proud look on his face one evening at dinner when he could still remember the passage. I don't think I would have ever thought of that, but for kids who like to move, like our son, it worked wonderfully.

For listening to, I really like Bruce Springsteen's album The Seeger Sessions. He sings Pete Seeger songs, many of which I remember learning as a kid in school. My kids have picked up on some from this. It's only one song writer's songs, so I imagine you'll want others as well.

We don't have this, but I do like the look of it: http://www.xump.com/science/Tree-of-Life-Poster.cfm

n=(r+p)*m

No specific advice, but that's just what I'm planning on using with my dyslexic son this upcoming year for 4th grade. I'm glad it worked well and hope it does here too.

It's only mid-July and the BTS sales have just started here. I go every week to Staples and pick up the few really good sale items. I have gotten a few things so far, but we still have more than a month until school starts again. The better sales will come. And while I believe there's plenty of waste, there have been so many cut backs that schools rely on parents for some items. For example, my younger son (who is in PS) needs to take hand soap because with the budget cuts, they don't have money for that anymore. If parents don't supply it, the classroom teacher must provide her own. Now the 36 pencils = 1 per week and there's no way that they'll use that many. I'll send him in with one box and if the teacher requests more, I'll send more then.