One helpful thing for this is to get a roll of art or butcher paper and trace an outline of your child's body. Then you can have a place to paste all those life size organs.

Not sure if you are a Christian or a secular schooler, but Sonlight Eastern Hemispheres or Bookshark's secular version might be a nice tie-in.

I would totally take advantage of the short trips. There are so many interesting places to go. China is so huge that you could even just do at least six 3-5 days to various areas there.

Sometimes, you might be surprised at whether or not a student rises to the challenge. I was prepared for PA to take 18 months for my DS. I was pretty hands off with it as he demonstrated that he was comfortable with self-teaching with the book. He only asked for help on a few of the challenge problems and was able to work it through when I asked him to think about x or y as a hint. He worked at his own pace and finished the book in 10 months. He did every single problem in that monster. He was 9/10 when he did it. We are on a bit of a break doing Jacobs MHE right now which he is also self-teaching. I think he's grown a lot through the process and learning to read a dense text and really thrived with the discovery approach. I'm not certain if we will continue with AOPS beyond Algebra because I'm not sure how much time he really wants to vest into math. These discussions make me wonder if he is the type of student that should continue with AOPS because of how PA went. The amount of time though is a big deterrant unless somehow PA is a predicator of how much time latter courses take. I already know that we won't be doing AOPS geometry. He's just not fond of geometry, so we will be detouring to Jacobs for that.

Another free option is ABC Jesus Loves Me curriculum.

It's so close to the end of the school year and they are pretty young, so scaling back during this season is pretty reasonable. She can still have the kids do reading. I am assuming that the 8yo can read. Just get lots of books. Perhaps you can help by selecting books or even videos to place on hold. The only thing I would really ask him to do is to do math. Is she using a curriculum for math? I'm never sure when you say CM folks..MEP for example is free. Perhaps BrainQuest or other grade leveled workbooks would be good. Hmmm, perhaps also some handwriting practice books? Thoes are pretty self-explanatory and open and go. It's getting to be the time of year when those show up at Costco.

I don't think that one student should be allowed to ruin the experience for everyone else. That student's parent should be made aware of the issue and forced to babysit said child if the disuptive behavior continues in order to remain in the class. I would be mad if I spent good money on that and that was happening. Also, why is the teacher permitting access to chat box and whiteboard if it is being abused. That makes no sense to me.

With respect to the long range plan, when the vision and goals of the community are clear and embraced, it carries on and becomes self-sustaining. The group I am a part of was started in the early 90s. It's been through ups & downs, but the consistent inviting like-minded leaders to come alongside the core group have mostly been those who embrace the shared vision and work is why we are still here even those who started the group have long since gone. It doesn't mean that the group can't evolve, things naturally do so as the landscape of homeschooling changes. I think knowing that you have a clear calling to do it helps a lot to carry you through the hassles and problems. Just don't go it alone, that's a recipe for burnout for sure.

I am on the board of a mega co-op in SD of 110 families. My suggestion is that you start small with 2-3 like-minded families. Build a small core and get a feel if you really enjoy doing this. Keep the commitment window to a year. Halfway through, you will know if you like it or not. There's a graceful way to end it, but there's also the option of agreeing as a group to go on and to form a vision and direction for this group if the desire is to grow as a community. Co-ops rise and fall on leadership. Whoever is the core leadership is who defines how the group functions and operates. Also if the core group is strong, then the leadership load and work is spread out and less chance of burnout.

@Plum Does your dad have a smartphone? They have an app to view on the phone.

You can request to cancel an exam score. The form says you can cancel at anytime, but there is a deadline you have to meet if you are sending scores to colleges. That shouldn't be an issue for you since she is in 10th grade. https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-score-cancellation.pdf

@mathmarm I didn't spend time thinking about whether or not my son being ahead of the BA curriculum schedule. I just work with my son at the level he is at and thought mostly about going broad with math exposure especially with problem solving and non-traditional math topics. We used a lot of other math resources (that are mentioned on these boards) along the way as I was disinterested in racing forward to get to calculus early. Being ahead meant that we could do take time to explore rather focusing on the next grade level progression. While he could be even further ahead if I just used one curricula and avoided all the math resources we incorporated, I think that his grasp of math and his enjoyment of it would have not been the same. I just used BA in tandem with my main curricula. So while I was using SM 4A, I had SM IP3B, SM CWP 4, Fan Math Express Math Strategies 4, BA3C/D plus several other resources in play. I just had Beast going on to go deeper in topics he had seen already in SM. He didn't have to learn the basics, but he could take what he knew and go deeper with the problem solving if that makes sense. I just used the resources sort of in a loop schedule. Nothing strictly planned out. We just fell into a rhythm. That might drive other people crazy, but that's what worked for us. He likely would be in Geometry by now if we didn't spend time meandering around doing other stuff. It's not important to me to get there faster as long as he is exploring math in ways that is still enjoyable, challenging and thought provoking.

On the online class thread, there are some posts commenting that they replaced another provider that shut down. This was posted by @CAtoVA Apparently, homeschoolworks4U is out of business. From the website: It is with both a heavy and glad heart that we announce homeschoolworks4u.com has been sold. As a result, HomeschoolWorks4U.com will eventually go offline. TRUE NORTH HOMESCHOOL ACADEMY (TNHA) is now the owner of this website and its content. TNHA is working to transfer the information from this site to their new website. TNHA will provide you with numerous choices for homeschool and tons of free information to help you, your child, and your family along the way. There will be a huge announcement once TNHA launches their website (anticipated launch date is the first quarter of 2018). To get in on any early-bird specials they may offer, email them and request to be added to their email list. The email address to use for this request is: YES@TRUENORTHHOMESCHOOLACADEMY.COM Thank you to everyone who has entrusted us with helping your child learn and succeed. May God Bless and Keep You!

I just looked back at my notes of what we did when DS was a K'er during the latter half of that year. It worked well for him because he was reading about 3rd grade level if I recall correctly. We did not separate the problem sets. He is not the kind of kid who likes to go back through a book. So, I waited until I knew that he was ready to tackle Einstein level challenge problems. He was also using the Borac Competitive Math Practice books. BA2 wasn't around when my son was that age but since he was doing SM3 that year, it would not have been a problem. I had used BA a level behind SM all the way through. So, my notes say that he was doing BA3 in first grade.

Not a side by side for Wheelock, but there is a side-by-side with Henle. Those seem to be inexpensive used. https://classicalacademicpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/LA-vs-Henle.pdf

If anyone has used CAP's Latin Alive, I would be interested to know at what point you would be ready for the subject test. I'm paying attention to the OP's request for prep books as well.

I was poking around their website more and saw that they have a 21 day guarantee for their classes for a full refund. That's pretty generous.

If you have Netflix, I recently discovered that a lot of the children's shows can be switched to another language. We are actively studying Chinese & Latin right now. French is a bit idle for us right now. Obviously Latin is not an option, but I was pleased to find lots of shows can be watched in Chinese with English subtitling. I will also say that I only took things to a basic level. More grammar and vocabulary acquisition. Beyond that, I prefer that he learns from people who are native speakers or have a deep love for the language. This is the highest priority for outsourcing for our family. I've been very pleased with how much he has progressed with Latin and Chinese after I started outsourcing.

I doubt he would exhaust the courses since his interests are wide ranging. They do add courses monthly. I'm thinking this is a far cheaper way for him to dip his toes in subjects that he normally would not go out of his way to try. If anyone is interested, this is the current list of available courses. https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/allcourses

You can quit anytime you want. It just locks in your rate. Once you quit, obviously you give up the rate. So, no, you are not tied to them for life. It bills quarterly though.

Harold Jacobs wrote another book called Mathematics: A Human Endeavor. He is really enjoying it. Stimulating his brain in thinking about math from a different point of view after doing PA for the past 7 months. I posted the TOC today on another thread and will post it here for you. Some people have used it as part of their pre-algebra. I didn't use it, but if I didn't decide to go AOPS PA. I would have seriously considered doing MM7. Mathematics - A Human Endeavor Table of Contents 1. Mathematical Ways of Thinking - The Path of the Billiard Ball, More Billiard-Ball Mathematics, Inductive Reasoning: Finding and Extending Patterns, The Limitations of Inductive Reasoning, Deductive Reasoning: Mathematical Proof, Number Tricks and Deductive Reasoning 2. Number Sequences - Arithmetic Sequences, Geometric Sequences, The Binary Sequence, The Sequence of Squares, The Sequence of Cubes, Fibonacci Sequence 3. Functions and Their Graphs - The Idea of a Function, Descartes and the Coordinate Graph, Functions with Line Graphs, Functions with Parabolic Graphs, More Functions with Curved Graphs, Interpolation and Extrapolation: Guessing Between and Beyond 4. Large Numbers and Logarithms - Large Numbers, Scientific Notation, An Introduction to Logarithms, Decimal Logarithms, Logarithms and Scientific Notation, Exponential Functions 5. Symmetry and Regular Figures - Symmetry, Regular Polygons, Mathematical Mosaics, Regular Polyhedra, Pyramids and Prisms 6. Mathematical Curves - The Circle and the Ellipse, The Parabola, The Hyperbola, The Sine Curve, Spirals, The Cycloid 7. Methods of Counting - The Fundamental Counting Principle, Permutations, More on Permutations, Combinations 8. The Mathematics of Chance - Probability: The Measure of Chance, Dice Games and Probability, Probabilities of Successive Events, Binomial Probability, Pascal's Triangle, Independent and Dependent Events, The Birthday Problem: Complimentary Events 9. An Introduction to Statistics - Organizing Data: Frequency Distributions, The Breaking of Ciphers and Codes: An Application of Statistics, Measures of Central Tendency, Measures of Variability, Displaying Data: Statistical Graphs, Collecting Data: Sampling 10. Topics in Topology - The Mathematics of Distortion, The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg: An Introduction to Networks, Euler Paths, Trees, The Moebius Strip and Other Surfaces Appendix: - Basic Ideas and Operations, Angles and Their Measurement, The Distributive Rule, Signed Numbers, Percent Answers to Selected Exercises Index

Thanks @Farrar! I talked to my husband, and he thought it would be a great supplement. Plus my kiddo is the type who loves this kind of stuff anyways.

I went to Jousting Armadillos and then AOPS PA. We came from SM5 and he only did half of BA5. Then he said he wanted to move on. He went through JA in 6 weeks if I remember correctly. He was about to self-study AOPS PA and got through it in about 7 months. We are now doing Jacobs MHE before we start Jacobs. I am planning to do two passes through Algebra since we aren't in a hurry.

I'm unclear if you are referring to WA or your charter above. I spoke with WA, you can choose just one class only. Also, it's not clear from the current schedule online, but the MS leadership classes are moving to the MW or TuTh model as well.

I don't think I would make a tradeoff between math and English. I would cut back on something else or drop elective stuff. Alternatively, you can carry on with math through the summer like Kiana suggests. Algebra is fundamental to all higher math. You do not want to shortchange them on this.