I agree with the teacher is probably more important than the subject. The electives I’ve appreciated the most as a parent are the ones that are hard to do at home alone. We had an excellent Drama program for awhile at the co-op we went to. My son is doing drawing and painting this year with a teacher he really likes. My daughter did several years of sewing with a great teacher. She (my daughter) actually just designed (no pattern) and made herself a dress today based on the skills from that class. I taught a class in medical ethics/bioethics. I’m a doctor and it’s an issue that really interests me. I felt like it was a good class because I brought in a perspective they wouldn’t necessarily hear otherwise. Our old co-op had a cooking program that was really good, also due to teacher. And a life skills class which could be really lame but the teacher was excellent and brought in outside people to do things like teach kids how to change a tire.

What year is she? The way I looked at it was that if we had some AP scores or DE it would show that the student was capable and that the home/outside grades were valid. I didn’t feel like we need scores to back up every subject. So if she has other scores or could do them next year you might not need to worry about it for those particular classes.

I haven't really. I'm not particularly looking for college credit for him. The AP classes for my oldest were mostly because he wanted to challenge himself with the harder classes and it seemed like it made sense to also take the tests. My middle son would do DE more to have classes outside the home and to have classes in a group setting. He hates the idea of studying something just for a test so I think CLEP would not work for him. Thanks! Yes, he has struggled with Math not because he can't do it but because he finds it boring and just has to do it. He was doing a self-paced program because I thought that would be good for him. But it gave him no motivation to get it done. I've realized he has to either have some kind of external pressure to get something done if it's boring, some kind of motivating factor (like Driver's Ed or lifeguarding- both of which he got done this year because he wanted the end result) or if he is really interested in it he will self-study and immerse himself or spend a lot of time hyperfocusing on an interest/skill. I think what I've realized is that something like "because you ultimately want to go to college and you need this class" is not enough of an external pressure/motivating factor. It needs to be more immediate or he gets bored. We switched to a fast-paced Math class this semester and he is doing very well. Although it's more work, he finds it less onerous as he isn't bored and it doesn't drag out past his attention span. 🙂

Well, as a Chemistry and Biology double major I never really understood how we got 4 credits for a class with lab when it equaled 6 hours in class (3 lecture, 3 lab). Basically the 1 "extra" hour was for the 3 hour lab. It didn’t really matter in the long run but it always made me skeptical of the whole idea that credit hours matched to hours spent in class.

Thanks everyone for the responses. The main thing I’ve gotten out of this discussion is that I probably don’t need to overthink it. 😀 Which is and of itself helpful. My oldest didn’t do DE classes at all for various reasons. He did a lot of AP classes which kind of served the same purpose. So this is all new to me even though I’ve gotten one kid through HS and into college. We are definitely looking into DE for his brother, my rising 11th grader. For him, the purpose would be more to have an outside experience than to either get college credit that transfers or to look towards selective schools. He is definitely not looking at selective schools. He’s smart but has never enjoyed traditional academics. His transcript is going to embrace the weirdness and individuality of homeschooling. We live in VA and have basically no requirements as far as reporting to the state. (It’s not none, but it’s about as easy as it gets.) So for high school I’ve been comfortable having them do the work that seems to equal a credit and then calling that something on the transcript that sounds reasonable. We don’t have to worry about number of credits so I just try and make sure they are taking about what the local PS students take so it will look normalish to a college. I’m thinking about ASL because he has taken it online and would prefer an in-person class now. He’s taken two years from Open Tent. I know the CC has a placement exam or something that he could do to see what class he would take. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has to somewhat repeat part of it but he has done very well and two teachers have commented that he’s a natural. It’s one of the few classes he likes and he has a solid A...so I’m hoping he wouldn’t be put in an Intro Class. That said, the local CC only is offering a few in-person ASL classes next year so we’re looking at other in-person options. One of the main reasons I started this thread I had also thought about Chemistry for him but weirdly the local CC only offers Chem for majors which he has not had enough Math for (they want you to be done with Algebra II and he would be taking Algebra II) or one semester of the Chem for non-majors without a second semester. I felt like it would look weird to only have one semester of a Chem class but it sounds like that might be valid to count as a full high school credit, depending on the colleges he’s applying to. The other reason that I’ve thought about CC classes for him is that he has ADHD and seems to do better with a college type of schedule where he has fewer classes to focus on at a time. So it might work for him to do English one semester and History another. It sounds like it would be valid to do that and count each as one credit. I’m still figuring it out but this discussion has been helpful, so thanks to everyone who chimed in!

Maybe I should have been more clear...or maybe I'm just too confused to be clear. 🙂 I can understand the credit transfer but I think what I get confused about is what do people actually do as far as classes... -So if my son takes ASL as DE next year and does two semesters, I can see that I can list that as Two Credits. And I'd list it on the transcript as ASL 201 and 202. But would a college see that plus his two previous years of ASL as 4 years of ASL or 3 years? I know the answer may be that it varies but I'm trying to figure out in general what people do. -Or if he does a one semester English DE credit....can I just call that a one year 11th grade English credit? Or would he need to do something else the second semester?

I have read about this and just seem to go in circles. How do you convert a DE class taken at a Community College into credits for a HS transcript? I've heard one semester of college equals a year of high school. Is that really true? And what about classes like Chemistry, surely one college semester of Chem does not equal one HS credit? Or for a language course, if you take two semesters of a language to you consider that equal to one year or two?

FWIW, my oldest had 0 fine arts credits on his transcript and got into most of the schools he applied to (all smallish liberal arts colleges). He also got a good amount of scholarship money and honors program offers. He does play piano and he did list that as an extracurricular. He has played for 13 years so it was a significant interest/EC. He also did drama at our co-op, he was always just a small part of the show and not the lead but it was a fairly significant activity for him in terms of time commitment. I felt like it was stronger to list those as extracurriculars to round out his application (which was super heavy on the Math/Science courses) than to try and claim them as credit.

Yes, my son is a swimmer and I keep telling him he's going to have to be very clear on his roommate form that he will be getting up super early and not wanting to stay up late. This is a great thread..so many things I haven't thought of.

My son did a gap year this year. He knew he wanted to do that going in so we asked everyone about it during the admissions process. He applied to 11 schools (all small liberal arts schools) and they all said sure, it would be fine. They also all said any scholarships would carry over. For others who might be interested, he is also going to be swimming (DIII) and all the coaches were also fine with deferral as long as he continued his conditioning/training. We heard from several colleges who said from their perspective, they like gap years for maturity. For the school he actually chose (and will be attending in the fall) he just wrote the admissions counselor and told them he'd like to that. They needed a specific letter sent in. They did want him to say why the gap year in order to approve it although I got the feeling that approval was kind of a formality. I think they don't want it to be "I'm applying elsewhere in hopes I get in somewhere better". For him it was just that he wanted to travel and have a break. They were fine with that, it didn't have to be a big justifiable reason, just clear that he was truly planning on coming to their school at the end of it. We had to pay the deposit to hold his spot. We also got it in writing from the financial aid office that his scholarship would also defer. The rest of the financial aid package we had to reapply for, but you essentially do that every year anyway. It ended up being exactly the same but there was a small grant we weren't sure if he would get. Most places told us to be careful about him taking classes during his gap year. If he had taken any classes for college credit, it could impact his standing and make him a transfer student and not a freshman, is the way I understand it. But he was not planning on doing that so it didn't matter for us. The only other thing I'd say is that we did find that the small college didn't have a ton of experience with gap years. There were a few kind of weird things...like they didn't really know how to classify him so they kind of moved him out of the admitted student bucket as far as email access and other things so for awhile he was getting recruiting emails from the college. But because it was small we also were able to easily contact people who could look at it and go "oh, yeah, it's fine...we know who he is."

I think it probably doesn’t matter that much, at least not enough to try and force teens who aren’t interested to keep doing something. The one thing I did want to add to previous responses is that I have a competitive swimmer and missing ANY practices is a really big deal to him. We’ve definitely had minor conflicts over that where I will say “it’s just one practice a month and you practice every day” but to him that’s his first priority after academics and he only misses if he’s sick or out of town. I don’t always personally agree with that choice but I have realized it was important for me to honor his priorities.

For kids (I'm a pediatrician) we learned the rough estimate of 90 + 2 (Age in years) as a rough estimate for median BP. But we also have BP tables that are by height, which is more important than age in determining if a BP is abnormal. Height roughly correlates with age also so I guess that's where the age thing came from. The other problem with the formula you posted is that for adults a normal BP doesn't increase that much with age. By that standard an 80 year old would have a normal SBP of 150 which is just not true. Plus, what is meant by "normal"...do they mean median or mean or maximum that is considered ok? If they are presenting it as a "formula" that is always true, that's wrong. If it's an example of a way to roughly estimate something, it's ok.

My son is going to swim next year D3. He's doing a gap year this year so he's already gone through the whole application process. Last year when he was applying he emailed all the coaches at the places he was interested and that was a large part of his decision making. There is a big range within D3 teams. We met some coaches who do cuts after the first season or will not take everyone who wants to swim. And then other places where you could probably just show up the week before practices started and be on the team. One advantage to emailing now is that we found that having the swim connection helped when we went to take tours (especially on campuses that were closed during the pandemic) and it has given ds a connection to the school during his gap year, he's on their group chat and stuff and sort of already "knows" people.

I love those scarfs! I have the same pair of jeans in different colors that I wear pretty much all winter on rotation. I’ve been having a lot of foot pain in the past year and so I finally bought myself a pair of Birkenstock sandals and a pair of Dansko clogs, based on the fact that those seemed to be the biggest recs for people with foot pain. I am now a convert for both and pretty much wear one or the other every day.

Thanks, Susan. Yes, I agree...I plan on sitting down with him this week to talk about what the issues are and what he would like to do. Your suggestions are helpful. I especially like the doubling up on Algebra 2/Geometry if needed to finish out. I hadn’t really thought of that as a option.

I’m trying to figure out what to do for Math for my current sophomore. Background: He is a bright kid but doesn’t like Math. He has ADHD and find it boring and so gets distracted. My goal for him is to get through PreCalc or possibly Algebra II and then Stats. I see him as wanting to go to college and I think he needs four years of Math for most colleges. He is not a kid who will be looking at highly selective schools and his transcript as a whole is going to embrace the nontraditional perks of homeschooling. He may want to do something like Environemental Science or Psych and he’ll need some math for those. He has the ability and I think frankly would learn it quickly when he saw that there was a purpose. Right now it’s hard for him to get excited about Geometry when he just has no interest and can’t see why he has to learn it. He’s doing Derek Owens. He did DO for Algebra and it was a good fit, especially to get me out of the equation (pun intended). He did well in the class but did it slowly, over about a year and a half. My goal was for him to truly understand it rather than try and rush through and finish. He started Geometry second semester of freshman year and is doing it incredibly slowly. He’s doing fine (has an A average) but I can’t see him finishing it this year at his current pace. I cannot imagine trying to push him to do Math in the summer to “catch up” (I know there are arguments for this but he’s a kid who you have to know what battles to pick and that is not one I am willing to fight). He did take the SAT last year in the fall as a 9th grader after only having not quite one year of Algebra and no Geometry and did reasonably well. Not great, but ok considering where he was and that he didn’t want to get accommodations for more time and so probably didn’t finish any section (in his words...”you want me to sit there and try and take a test for LONGER...are you nuts?”) Current thoughts: -Continue with what we are doing and just let him go slow. I could provide more scaffolding and be more on top of him about requiring a certain amount done each day. For the most part, I’ve let him work at his own pace because I’ve learned that when I push for a certain amount of time he doesn’t necessarily learn it if he’s not focused. If I do this we’ll need to figure out what to do if he doesn’t finish this year. -Switch to something else. We’ve essentially paid for this year with DO but I’m willing to switch. One thing I had heard about was Mr. D- I don’t know a lot about it but my feeling is that maybe it’s easier and we could just get it done. I saw in particular that he offers a one semester course that counts for the full year....has anyone done that? I’m thinking about that for second semester. We’re obviously too late for the full year live class but I think he has an online option or the one semester option. I know that might sound weird since speed has been an issue but I think he might do better if he has someone else saying that he has work required at certain times. Part of the attractiveness and perhaps problem with DO is the self-paced nature. I also wonder if the live classes might appeal to him more than the videos from DO. -Switch to something else I haven’t thought of yet...ideas?

I think it depends somewhat on the kid, like everything in homeschooling. For us , my AOPS kid was my kid who loves Math. He will likely major in Math in college. He worked through AOPS on his own, for the most part.Early on I checked to make sure he was getting most of the practice/end of chapter problems right. Those he missed he reworked. Because he loves Math he had no desire to not actually learn the material. I gave him a final exam in Algebra because I felt like I should but it seemed like just a checkbox and not that it added anything to his learning. So I felt like it was ethical and accurate to give him A’s for all his Math classes even without an exam. I also labeled them as honors based on the material covered. For the exam in Algebra, I asked a friend who was a middle school Math teacher at a private school if I could have a copy of the exam he used. Colleges seemed to have no problem with the “Mommy grades" on his transcript. I just explained somewhere that we work to mastery and that it was designated Honors based on the material covered. In the curriculum section of what we sent to colleges I used the AOPS course descriptions to show what was covered. Colleges knew he was an intended Math major, and he talked to a lot of the Math professors at the schools he was interested in. He did have very high SAT Math scores and an AP Calc score to back up the grades given at home. I don’t use AOPS for my other kids because it would not be a good fit. And if I did use it I would likely be much more hands-on and needing to do some kind of evaluation to make sure they were learning the material. Math is not something they love and just want to master for the pure joy of it. 😃

My current just graduated student is doing a gap year now. He chose to mostly travel...his goal is every state in the US (except Alaska and Hawaii....although his aunt might fund those). He is a swimmer so is trying to swim in each state as just a fun thing to say he’s done. He is actually on the second leg of his trip now (he’s doing it in loops, not as one big long trip). He should be somewhere in Missouri. He doesn’t turn 18 until November. Some challenges for travel at his age they may help you if your son decides to travel... -You can’t rent a car under 21 so for some of the legs/loops he will have to take an adult with him or he has to fly and then use public transporation. For example, his first loop was a family vacation that we all did in OR/WA/ID/WY/MO. Or he’d have to just drive his own car everywhere but for long personal reasons that didn’t work (mostly related to swim and wanting to come back between loops and train so he never wanted to be away long enough to drive all the way to the West Coast and back). -We didn’t realize the hotel thing until pretty soon before he left on this trip. He was planning on doing a mix of hotels/camping/staying with friends. But we suddenly realized that wouldn’t work. We tried calling hotels and asking if he could stay alone if we put it in our name and on our credit card and he had a letter of permission but it was a solid no. So we reached out widely to friends and family and found places for him everywhere along the route except two places. Then I stumbled on a website: Hipcamp that is sort of like an Air BnB for camping. It has very cool small campsites and he booked two of them. One was a treehouse in Ohio and one was a small hobby farm in South Dakota. I think he will probably use it more for other loops as they were both cool experiences. We also discovered that alot of hotels said 21 so it won’t even be possible after his birthday. He did end up staying in one hotel...one of the contacts decided last minute that it was maybe risky with the pandemic and so booked him a hotel and then went with him to check him in. So that is an option if you know someone who maybe doesn’t have the ability to host but is willing to go and be the adult checking the person in. The hotel did know that the adult wasn’t staying and they were ok with it. -We required him to have a companion for his trips. So his brother (10th grader) is on this one and will likely go on others. My husband is going on one. Etc. He would probably have enjoyed going with friends but all of his friends are either in high school or college so it didn’t work out. The travel is really growing him and pushing his comfort zone in a good way. He is a complete introvert so having to contact all the hosts and then follow up and then talk (!!!) to them when he stays there is very much outside his comfort zone. He had to save and then budget for the trip costs. He had to research where to swim and think about routes and things. He had to figure out laundry somewhere along the path. He researched fun things to do where he was going so it wasn’t just drive, swim, repeat. We haven’t heard a lot but we have heard some of the fun. The other main thing he’s doing when he’s home is to get certified to teach lifeguarding (he’s already a lifeguard) and then he’ll work at the rec center teaching classes. Which helps fund the trip. He thought of that on his own and pursued it and it looks like it will be a great opportunity for him.

My son did Latin with Lukeion. I called all the classes Honors as I think they are well known as being rigorous and I felt like they were at an Honors level. I had a place for Testing Record on the transcript where I included SAT, AP exams and the National Latin Exams. I listed all 4 Exams with the award given for them each even though his first one was before 9th grade. I know some people don’t putting all that on the transcript but I liked having it all on one page so it was easy for an admission officer to see Courses, Grades, GPA and Test Scores all on one page.

We do the live class.

My son is doing animation classes through The Animation Course. They also have drawing classes. The animation classes have been excellent.

My oldest also just did the books. The classes were at a terrible time for us on the East Coast so I never really looked into it. He will likely major in Math in college. I pushed him to have a tutor for Calculus just because it felt wrong to me to self-teach and I knew I couldn’t support him anymore. We found a recent college grad who was a Math major. She had been homeschooled herself. They met online once a week and worked through problems together. They did both the Calculus book and the Intermediate Counting and Probability books together. What we found is that he probably could have done them alone but having someone to talk about Math with once a week really made for a better deeper experience for him.In the end he took the Calc BC AP test and did well so it worked out for us.

Immediately. He also drove the whole family quite a bit with his learner's. Our state limits how many non-sibling friends you can have in a car to only one for the first year after your license. We have allowed him to drive friends (one at a time).

We have a friend who ended up at Florida Institute of Technology. He’s a freshman so just started but it seems like a great fit for him. It’s on the Space Coast and apparently there are opportunities to do things with NASA. We also know someone who went to WPI and loved it. Another option might be 3+2 schools. At a bunch of the smaller liberal arts schools we looked at offered some kind of dual-degree engineering program with a larger school. For example, ds is going to Centre College in Kentucky. They have dual degree engineering programs with University of Kentucky and Wash U. My son is not planning on doing engineering, although I could see him on that route so we had looked into schools that had some kind of option. It might not be as nice as going one place for 4 years but on the other hand it can give you both the experience of a small place and a larger engineering place.

We also use Derek Owens, for what I would say is an average-ability Math kid. He doesn’t find it hard and I like that it has a lot of Algebra review built in. I will say compared to Algebra with DO, he and I both found the assignments/schedule with Geometry a little confusing. It’s a bit of back and forth between things (videos/book homework/homework to turn in/etc). My son has ADHD and it was a little hard for him to remember what to do. So I had to provide some scaffolding at first and help him with that. But the geometry itself he is finding fairly easy. ETA: I don’t know how long he spends exactly but I’m guessing about an hour a day average.