HS sounds scary but you can do it! Farrar is totally right that you don't need an accredited HS diploma in the US. There are options for getting an accredited HS diploma though if it helps - like NARHS, North Atlantic Regional High School. I enrolled my high schooler in NARHS because she needed an accredited HS diploma to enter university in my (non-US) home country.

Building off JazzyMom’s breakdown Has English 1 and 2, needs: English 3 (you are thinking Shakespeare), English 4 – Creative Writing? (Could use the Nanowrimo High School workbook). Or a genre-based course – mysteries, sf, dystopias… Has 1 CR Algebra and 0.5 Geometry, needs 2.5 CR more. Recommend that you get a really good in-person math tutor and work through Lial’s or similar at M’s pace Needs 0.5 CR Personal finance Has all 3 science Has PE and health Has 1 social science (govt), needs 1 CR World Geography? Something super-simple like Simply Charlotte Mason’s Visits To…, or Cooking around the world, or pick a selection from the smorgasbord of Guesthollow’s World Geography and Cultures? Alternatively, Modern History – use Build Your Library’s World War 2 unit study. It’s scheduled for a whirlwind 9 weeks but has 3 read-alouds and 3 complex novels, could be spaced into a meaty but doable credit. 6 electives – has 1 or 2 Spanish, 1 or 2 music (are there enough hours to have a credit of piano and a credit of choir?), 1 or 2 credits art (again are there enough hours for a credit of drawing and a credit of painting?) Possible other elective credits, if needed: Zoology, Culinary Arts, Photography. Could M be a teaching assistant for choir? My older student had 1 CR from being a teaching assistant in the ESL math class at her high school.

Sorry - late responding to your question here. I am a planner - but my plans always flexed and changed as my daughters kept changing too (laughing at myself here). My carefully curated booklists adapted. I did very deliberately decide not to include works that had despair, indifference, or cruelty as major themes for 9th and 10th grades. I found it helpful to think in terms of literary genres - so 9th grade was about heroes - the hero's journey, epic, mythology, which shaped the themes we covered - what it means to be human, to be mortal, to excel (or not!) et cetera. For American Lit later in 11th grade, we started with Dark Romanticism - which led very organically to a focus on the Other, racism, and queer lit. Back to your original question - what about looking at fantasy literature? It's arguably the most significant modern genre. In addition to Tolkien, there is Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter; Peter Beagle, The Last Unicorn; TH White, The Sword in the Stone, and so many others!

If you end up needing to do it yourself, Memoria Press has literature courses with excellent teacher's guides, with answers for all the questions, including discussion questions. We used their The Divine Comedy course for literature this past year in 12th grade. The teachers guide had everything - even lecture notes for introducing and contextualizing Dante. The rubric for writing essays was very clear for both my student and myself. Hewitt's Lightning Literature guides also cover their chosen literature thoroughly with good teacher helps. Both Memoria Press and Lightning Literature have a range of different works or periods to choose from, and are the closest to actually being open and go I have found.

You might like Build Your Library Year 1. Build Your Library is very much a more feminist take on classical education. You can see the full booklist at Purchase: Level 1 curriculum - Build Your Library

I’d like to put in a plug for continuing to read the classics. I think continuing in your course of reading works that are well-established cultural touchstones and feature complex literary language is an excellent support to your partner’s homeschooling. You are doing bedtime read-alouds to dd13 and dd10. This is a great time to read books that might be passed over later in high school but that you haven’t read yet. For example: Treasure Island, RL Stevenson Hound of the Baskervilles, A Conan Doyle A Christmas Carol, C Dickens Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery (because Canada!) The Jungle Book or Kim, R. Kipling Wind in the Willows, K Grahame The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien When my students were 13 years old, I also felt pressure to engage with twentieth century works that seemed too depressing and dark. The best thing I did was put off US literature until 11th grade, when we were ready to engage with it and could discuss some of the mature themes intelligently. Your dd13 has lots of years of development and high school to come. There is time for Elie Wiesel later. OP, I also gently encourage you to reimage how you think about heavy themes in literature. You maybe got a little too emotionally invested in Oliver Twist? Feeling things deeply is a good gift! But not necessarily while reading aloud. (Confession: I was fired as a reader-aloud during my girls’ elementary because I cried reading Molly, an American Girl. My partner did an excellent job, and often picked things I would not have but that have become wonderful memories and part of our family culture.) Fairy tales are full of child abuse – but we read them to young children, who love the gruesomeness of Cinderella’s stepsisters getting their eyes pecked out! Bad things do happen in Dickens, but there is also justice, redemption, love, and hope.

I used all these books in middle school. The excellent illustrations and geographic focus worked really well for self-designed courses. Especially liked the volumes on Africa, China, South Asia, and America and the Primary Sources volume. The assignments in the OUP Teacher's and Student's guides will be too light, in my opinion, for a high school world history credit; I agree with HomeAgain that you would need to design more on-level thinking/processing and output. If you love teaching about material culture and primary sources, these books are excellent entry points for a student to start making how and why connections while looking at what actually survives as historical evidence. If on the other hand you need something more open and go, SWB's The History of the Ancient World is excellent. The Teacher's Guide and Student workbook are really well done and easy to use.

Update: thanks everyone for the thoughtful and helpful responses. It encouraged DD17 to reach out to her admissions counselor, who was super helpful. She wrote a short letter, sent it to her admissions counselor who passed it on. The deferral was granted within 24 hours. Now we can concentrate on unpacking and finding new doctors in our new state...oh, and finishing up senior year 😄

DD17 would like to defer her entry to her chosen school, a small, liberal arts college, for a semester or year in order to get a persistent physical health issue diagnosed and treated. What's a good way to approach the school? Email? Call? Admissions counselor or academic counselor? How much should she disclose? If you have btdt, what was your experience? Thank you!

High school literature picks being too depressing was an issue for us too. One thing that worked well was to pair the dense, difficult read with a lighter piece that tackled the same themes from a funnier and/or more uplifting perspective. Short stories that satirized the genre of the chunky work really helped us discuss literary elements as well as themes. I paired Lord of the Flies with O Henry's short story Ransom of the Red Chief - the ruthlessness and lack of mercy of Johnny (and his father!) and the narrator are balanced by the comedy - it's very funny - and satisfying comeuppance. Another great suggestion from LoriD's list - The Full Cupboard of Life by A McCall Smith. I would pair this with Pride and Prejudice - both comedies of manners, women and men maneuvering against each other. The Full Cupboard is very funny, and set in modern Africa. For Poe, you could pair a story or two with Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost which satirizes Gothic horror. Some other not-depressing classic literature not mentioned yet: G Eliot Silas Marner - short, serious, dense 19th century language and moralism. Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter - lovely fantasy literature, lyrical language, often shoved aside in favor of Lord of the Rings (which is great but very long!) And I have to put in a plug for DD17's favorite, The Journey to the West, one of the four great Classic Chinese novels, usually titled Monkey in English-language abridgments. DD started with the very short abridgment Dear Monkey. For Shakespeare, have you considered analyzing the Sonnets instead, and just watching several plays for cultural literacy? Live is amazing but there are great Shakespeare movies out there too... I would second Clarita's suggestion of Hamlet, or if adventure stories are of interest, what about Henry V? We struggled more with the Shakespearean comedies than the tragedies, because the abuse of women (Hero!) was central to the humor.

Since most of the linked threads are older, here's my 2 cents. Getting info: Is the school planning to have an info night or open house event for the IB program? Dd19's HS did an info session at their fall back to school night and a separate info session as well. They laid out the basics of the program and you could meet teachers and current students. The IB director at the school might be willing to meet with you and ds too. There was also a good description of how their IB program was implemented in their student courseguide online. Pre-IB: DD's school has a world languages focused IB program. There was only one feeder school with a pre-IB (French dual immersion) but a lot of schools in the large local district with dual immersion programs in various languages. The HL level language classes were 90% students who had come up through the dual immersion classes from K. The 10% were native speakers and returned exchange students. Study skills: At Dd's school, these were taught in a required 9th grade class which taught notetaking, research, and presenting skills. The core of the IB program is taking the Theory of Knowledge class (which will help with study skills in terms of critical thinking and essay writing), three exams in 11th and three exams in 12 grade, 150 hours volunteering over 11th and12th, and the research essay. There were 2 or 3 year class sequences leading to the HL exams - for example honors Chemistry in 10th, IB Chem 1 in 11th and IB Chem 2 in 12th if you wanted to take the HL Chemistry exam. SL exams could be taken after 1 or 2 years - for example Environmental Science SL was a popular non-sciency student science exam taken in 11th or 12th after one class. If Bio and European history are your 9th grade classes, I would expect the IB classes to be on other topics because you can't take IB exams until end of junior year - so perhaps no Biology HL class is available. Homework: IB classes functioned as a rigorous honors track. Science classes did have a lot of homework. Students who were taking 2 IB sciences definitely were super-stressed. Humanities-focused students really thrived. As a senior, Dd was taking IB Math Studies (the easiest math track), IB Global Politics SL and IB Spanish HL - homework was about 90 minutes a day. When looking at college credit, it seemed more US universities granted AP credit than IB but that affected the more obscure classes (like IB Global Politics!) A high exam grade for most classes got the same credit as the high AP score. Things to consider: Is it an open program where all students in the school are encouraged to take as many of the IB classes as they want or do you have to be full IB to get access? Do they have the right HL classes for your student's interests? (Maybe a Music HL class?)

What jumped out to me is that you have stepped back and are just grading his work. When my dd was taking Algebra 2, I imagined she would be able to teach herself using Derek Owens. It didn't work - she needed a live teacher working with her on the math when it got tough. Perhaps your ds needs a live teacher or tutor now? With teaching support, he might be able to finish MUS Algebra 2. Is it divided into units like other MUS levels? If he has 4 lessons left, is he in the final unit for the course? If his grades are okay for the previous units (I think MUS says 88% or up?) then could you start from the beginning of the last unit with teaching/tutor support? For the asd kids I know, "failing" Alg 2 or going back to the beginning would be a big, huge deal - so I would work hard to help the student finish the MUS course as a first step.

DD 17 read a lot of fiction and lit, especially through 4th to 8th grade. We did First Language Lessons and MCT in elementary, and dabbled in languages including Latin. This language rich environment (channeling Julie Bogart here) probably helped her develop her strong natural abilities. When I realized that the SAT might not be cancelled (after a year of cancellations) I had her go over some English sections from the official book of practice tests so that she'd understand the format. I definitely recommend at least prepping by working through a couple of practice tests. DD got a 760. For learning grammar specifically, I have come to think it is best learned through using a new language - not one that is native to you. This can be done with Latin, but it's harder because you're not speaking, and you're doing very little writing. Both my dds became interested in really understanding grammar to improve their chosen foreign languages.

Fafsa done. My docs done. Common app profile done. Next up : entering her colleges... . @Arcadia my oldest's EFC was something like $176,000. We were glad we did the fafsa though as she did get scholarships, including WUE.

Gil's Academy for the Dangerously Gifted in Erudition and Technology Gil's Awful Dungeon of Grievous Educational Torture - just kidding!