Mystery Disease by Prufrock Press - I've taught this three times to different groups of teens/tweens. I love this curriculum. I use it over a 12 week period. http://www.prufrock.com/Mystery-Disease-P194.aspx Exploring Bioethics by the NIH - free downloadable curriculum. It is very well-designed and easy to use. It promoted lots of discussion. https://science.education.nih.gov/customers.nsf/HSBioethics.htm I've taught Great Chocolate Caper and One Hour Mysteries, but to a slightly younger age group. I've taken old Mathcount Club materials and done a Math and Logic Fun class. Mathematical Mystery Tour - fun class http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Mystery-Tour-Higher-Thinking-Tasks/dp/0913705268 I put together a class based on Ed Zacarro's books - 10 Things every Future Mathematician and Scientist Must Know in combo with 25 Real Life Math Investigations that will astound Teachers and Students http://www.amazon.com/Things-Future-Mathematicians-Scientists-Rarely/dp/0967991544 http://www.amazon.com/Real-Investigations-Astound-Teachers-Students/dp/0967991587 I've done some hands-on chemistry and science classes that I've put together myself. Have fun. Hope these ideas help someone.

It is licensed for one user, but I know I've read that people let their kids share the account and create separate mods.

IEW did not help my reluctant writer much. He could follow the formula, but had a horrible time coming up with words of his own. Bravewriter has been wonderful for helping him find his voice.

I've done two Bravewriter courses now. Both were courses that I as the mom was the student and then passed on the comments to my kids as well as posted my kids writing. Kidswriter Basic - This is basically The Writer's Jungle. I could not do it justice implementing it myself. My kids learned a lot and more importantly I learned to be a much better mentor and how to break the process into smaller steps. At the end of the course my oldest (severely dysgraphic, reluctant writer) said that he liked this kind of writing better than anything we had done previously. We just finished Just So Stories. The class stepped us through how to pick apart several Just So Stories. We then played with words and learned a lot through playing with language. All my kids wrote a just so story. The teacher comments about how to revise were excellent - lots of praise and pointing out things that were asked for of the assignment as well as constructive criticism. I passed all the teacher comments directly to my older kids and picked and choose what to pass on to the younger ones. My experience of the teacher comments was that they picked several things to praise about the writing as well as gave lots of constructive feedback about how to revise it to make it better. You can go through several revisions and ask for lots of advise. In the classes we took, the comments on the final papers tended to positive (rah, rah), but the feedback through the revisions was excellent. I am a better teacher, and my kids are better writers because of the classes. I am looking forward to more Bravewriter classes in the future.

Can you buy just the books and where?

I agree that his math skills are likely to be the problem. Also, chemistry would be very difficult for next year as it requires a lot of algebra.

I'd email AoPS and ask your questions. I know the majority of the online AoPS students do not take the class for a "grade".

I agree with Kathy. The physics courses by Walter Lewin are excellent as well as very challenging. I have an engineering degree and took most of the course this year, but had to abandon it after one of my kids had a big trauma and needed multiple surgeries - just couldn't keep up with everything. I'll finish it out and I plan on having my oldest do the course in another year.

We do all the problems in AoPS (usually). We do every problem in the sections before the review exercises. We often spend a week on the review problems from a chapter. My kids tend to do all of the review problems before the challenge section alone and then we often do the challenge section together. Oftentimes, we'll go ahead and start the next chapter as we get near the end of the review problems.

I don't have and floating black patches.

Vinegar and baking soda volcanos. Diet coke and menots (bigger volcano).

I'd also recommend Alcumus for reinforcement.

:) Lots of fun!

I don't have a schoolroom per say, but lots of people drool over my shelves. In the formal dining room, we built floor to ceiling cabinets and shelves (started with unfinished cabinets, stained them, built a counter top and then shelves on top to ceiling). We have a dedicated table that we can leave school stuff on all the time. In my kitchen I have a 4x4 ft write on wipe off board. We have a sofa next to a couple of windows that is frequently used for reading. I'd put a computer in a schoolroom. I'd be happy with a schoolroom to store all my stuff in, but we'd get cramped all trying to do school in that room.

If you already own the old core 5, I'd just look at the list of new books and see if any books sound interesting and then just add them in or swap for a book you don't like as well. This is what I've done with my old cores. I don't see any point in replacing good readers or read-aloud with different good readers and read-alouds. I look more carefully at any new history books and decide if it will add something more.

I'd recommend to just keep plodding along teaching your kids good math. Some kids will want to do more and more - others may be great at math, but would never choose to do more. My oldest is complete math geek. My second is very good at math and dislikes it very much. I say he'll learn enough math that it will never keep him from doing whatever he wants (he's a very creative engineering sort of guy - just not mathy). For you - I'd recommend getting a free account on AoPS and doing Alcumus. It can be a lot of fun and you will probably learn a lot of math along the way.

The most important thing is to get algebra down solid as that is where many kids falter in the future. I'm not sure how colleges look at calculus, but I wouldn't rush to get there. I might push ahead and you can combine geometry with algebra 2 if you want, but don't rush through those early topics just to get to harder math.

My oldest does AoPS and loves it. The challenge problems fascinate him - he's at the level of finishing both the Int. Algebra and PreCalculus books. My second did AoPS Prealgebra. We had to take parts slowly as we worked on the math. He does not like the challenging problems. In the prealgebra book, we did all the challenge problems together. He then started the AoPS Algebra book together. He got bogged down before too long and we switched to Dolciani. He has been doing Dolciani for a few months now (slowly). Since he now has some algebra in his head, we will try to pick up AoPS again. Meanwhile he has started the AoPS Geometry book and is doing well at the beginning of the book. He has now finished the first four chapters. I sit with him to do the challenge problems and give hints as needed. I think part of the problem with AoPS is just the maturity to be challenged. Also he doesn't particularly like math even though he very good at it. If returning to AoPS Algebra doesn't work, then we'll just stick with Dolciani or pick up some other challenging problems. I'm not sure that he will ever use the intermediate series of AoPS books.

I think Dolciani is fine as a stand along. However, I am using it as an introduction and then moving my son to AoPS. My oldest did AoPS and I love it. My second doesn't like to be frustrated with hard problems. I'm using Dolciani to introduce topics and then redoing it with AoPS. I'm not trying to get to the hardest problems of Dolciani.

This year my high schooler has done a lit class through Center for Literature and has learn a lot. You can do the class with or without the writing portion. Next year, I'll have a middle schooler doing a class with them.

I think number theory was explained pretty well by previous posters. No, you don't need number theory to be able to do precalculus or calculus, and I don't think knowing more number theory would make it particularly easier. I like Kathy's suggestion about playing around with number theory on Alcumus to see if you like it. For the tricks preformed by the kids in Cheaper by the Dozen, I think you would be better looking at Secrets of Mental Math by Arthur Benjamin http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Mental-Math-Mathemagicians-Calculation/dp/0307338401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400533474&sr=8-1&keywords=mental+math+arthur+benjamin Personally, I like counting and probability better than number theory, but I'm coming around as my oldest likes to turn so many algebra problems into number theory (usually using modular arithmetic) and then he has to explain to me how he got the answer so quickly and easily.

I agree. Try it and see how it goes.

It looks fine for me. I'd probably err on not doing weekly short essays that only take 30 minutes each, but have fewer longer essays that take some work to put together.

Generally, I say no schoolwork on vacation. I usually make whichever child is learning to read, do a little reading practice each day. My oldest (math geek) takes hard math for enjoyment. If it is student driven work, it usually gets done. If it is mom saying you need to do work, it doesn't get done. We do a lot of audiobooks (fun and educational) in the car.

I like co-ops where I get to choose what I teach and not be told what to teach. Be sure you know what is expected of you by the co-op leadership as well as the families involved. For instance, if it is a co-op of enrichment classes, don't expect kids to study or do projects at home for your class. State your expectations the first day - I tell the students and email the parents. Something that can be helpful when working with young kids is to remind everyone to go to the bathroom before class so that not everyone has to go in the middle of class.