As much as people like to complain about UC OOS admissions, it is capped at 18%. Other state flagships are far higher. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/03/29/flagships-go-national-at-u-michigan-nearly-half-of-students-now-from-out-of-state/

I hope it isn't going to the hot mess they turned the Chemistry into.

Is the UM school aware of how much grammar instruction that you have done? Sounds like this is a blanket recommendation? Would they have some sort of skills evaluation that you could have your child do to prove level of mastery in grammar? Perhaps providing a scope and sequence of the different grammar programs you have covered would suffice. I can understand their point because grammar instruction in traditional public school is often barely there.

Two come to mind. Wes Callihan's Schola Tutorials. You determine the output. http://www.scholatutorials.org/ Angelina Stanford's Great Books Literature courses. The writing is minimal for hers. Two short papers for midterm and final. http://angelinastanford.com/courses/ I'm just sharing my research because this is exactly the issue I need to solve for my son. I have seen positive reviews about both of them.

I know we covered exponents because it pops up in Beast Academy 4A. I really don't recall it in SM. We did both programs plus other math resources. I know we extensively did exponents in AOPS PA which in comparison to Jousting Armadillos was like a five course meal versus an appetizer.

Here is the language about Admission by Exam. The phrasing would line up with UC Admissions advice I mentioned above because public school students do have access to meet the regular subject requirements because they are in a public school. Hopefully, this makes more sense because they will look like they did not utliize the resources they had available to them. Homeschooled students generally would not have access to these same resources. Though generally speaking, homeschoolers aiming at UC admissions are usually getting the similar type of courses that they are looking for broadly speaking like English, math, science, foreign language, etc. How they are doing it is where the path diverges from the public school path and that's where things could get very interesting and unique to the student. Students who don't meet the minimum requirements may be considered for admission to UC on the strength of their test scores as part of the comprehensive review process. In general, this method of consideration is designed for students who, through no fault of their own, have been unable to meet the regular subject requirements and/or earn a high school diploma.

@Mabelen I think you may confusing admission by exam and satisfying a-g requirements via exam (subject SAT or AP score). Those are two completely separate things for UC. Admission by exam is a completely separate process from a-g. This is the public school student option. This is not at all the Admission by Exam process that we are talking about for homeschoolers. This is what the UCOOP offered clarity on that homeschoolers did not have to go through this process. http://msa2.magnoliapublicschools.org/Documents//College Center/UC Options for Satisfying A-G Requirements For Freshman.pdf

I don't think exponents is covered from what I remember about SM Standards edition. I didn't do 6A/6B, but exponents isn't covered in the table of contents. I think it shows up in the middle school books. Which version of the placement tests are you doing? I see exponents is introduced in Dimensions 6A. I don't know to what extent they cover it. The third question does involve order of operations which is covered at the beginning of Dimensions 6A with exponents. Maybe they are trying to suss out if you are testing at too low a level if you can answer that question correctly.

I think the charter school folks confuse the information that is out there because they think they are classified as homeschooled. If your child is using a charter, you are considered a public school student and are subject to a-g requirements. When people ask this question, it's important to know what their status is. I do remember that people who attended some UC admissions workshops said that you should not attempt to do admission by exam or exception if you are a public school student. Somewhere on here at some point, I had posted text from a letter from the UC Office of the President that Laura (one of the mods at CA Homeschool College Seekers) got which explicitly stated that homeschoolers (PSA/PSP) do not have to adhere to a-g requirements with a-g approved courses. Of course, the expectation is that your coursework should reflect your interests and a rigorous course of study. Ideally, a direction in your studies & activities that shows how you took advantage of being homeschooled to pursue XXX (insert whatever that student's interests ar

Each CWP is about 200 pages long. So literally 100s of problems in those books. I don't think you will feel as if you will run out of problems. Each topic has two sections. One is on level with the level it corresponds to in SM and the second section is much more challenging. The word problems that show up in SM's TB/WB are too easy IMO. The CWP book makes you have to think and work harder at it. There are a couple of worked examples before each section. Other than that, there is no instruction in the CWP book. Fan Math is good if you need explicit instruction on the problem solving strategies being used. It's not necessary if you can figure it out from the examples and teach your child from that.

I haven't seen the Fan Math word problems, but I would imagine that it does not get as challenging as the CWP book does. I have the other Fan Math Express Math books and they seem to stay on grade level. The CWP book has no instruction in it just a couple of worked out examples for each section. It's just a book filled with word problems by topic. For each topic, there are two sets of problems. The first set is at grade level of the textbook. The second set gets pretty challenging. For IP, the problems start off at the same level as the SM textbook and then they get harder and harder as you go along in the topic. I didn't have a problem with teaching my son how to use bar modeling techniques to solve the problems in CWP. However, that is not true for everyone. So, I would say it would depend on how you think you would do (and how he would do with you teaching him) without the explicit teaching of strategies for approaching word problems. The CWP books are filled with lots of word problems as they are about 200 pages. The IP books are a mix of problems and word problems.

Were you looking for culinary arts classes in another post? I was trying to remember where that post was. There's this class from Williamsburg Academy which I have heard a few positive reviews about. Not specifically about this course though. https://www.williamsburgacademy.org/high-school/electives/introduction-culinary-arts/ I am wondering since it is self-paced, if they would let you see a sample?

With Beast, it's hard to say how a kid will react to it until you actually try it out. That being said, I did not use Beast 2 as it did not exist when we were doing it. Beast 3A, Chapter 1 Geometry is not easy. IME, it's the toughest chapter in Beast 3. In fact on their website, they suggest that if it is too difficult or frustrating to skip it and loop back later. Saxon never appealed to me personally because it is far too spiral for us and moves too incrementally. Singapore Math worked very well for us especially the Intensive Practice and Challenging Word Problems books. Some families choose to only do the TB with the IP and/or CWP. I think that the best part of SM are the word problems. I actually used both SM and BA as I think there are weaknesses and strengths with both programs. DS wrapped up AOPS pre-A which he primarily self-taught himself with the book in about 7 months. Cleo Borac has a series of books called Competitive Math for Gifted Students which is pretty good. I sincerely hope that the revised edition does not have so many solution errors as the first edition. Zaccaro's Challenge Math series is another good resource. Glen Ellison's Hard Math for Elementary for upper elementary students is excellent as well. Borenson's Hands On Equations will be good fit for your son if he responds so well to visual approach to word problems. The HOE book of word problems is really good. We also did a lot of logic type books as well. Maybe consider Math Kangaroo for a low key math competition? He could do it next year.

There are so many Raspberry Pi kits out there now. When we got ours, we got a Canakit one. Usually the reviews of each type of kit on Amazon are fairly detailed. I got the Canakit because it was rated pretty high at the time. Still is according to this: https://makeradvisor.com/best-raspberry-pi-3-starter-kits/ I didn't get something with projects because I just got books about raspberry pi 3 (be sure that is what you are looking at because the other stuff for earlier versions will not be compatible). There are also resources online like this: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/ If you are looking for something with projects/curriculum built around Raspberry Pi, this looked pretty good from Ready Set STEM, but I have no idea when they will be in stock again. http://www.readysetstem.com/product/ready-set-stem-creator-kit/

UC Scout is another option. I don't have a comment on the quality. https://www.ucscout.org/courses/ap-computer-science

If you google math circle and probability, a lot of things will pop up as well.

Probability is covered in any of the Zaccaro Challenge books. It's only one chapter though. It's covered in Singapore Math starting in 4B. It comes up as a topic in Glen Ellison's Hard Math for Elementary as well. Julie at Living Math has a list of readers about probability here: https://www.livingmath.net/probability-and-data

If you truly like Singapore, perhaps you might want to consider their newest offering. Dimensions Math 6A/6B. The teachers' guide for that is available for $29. Here's the sample from the textbook for 6A. http://www.singaporemath.com/v/vspfiles/images/samples/sp_dmT6A.pdf

I would actually suggest to go a step further and considering organizing his study notes from lecture, reading and homewrok using th Cornell method and writing out questions. Mental questions may not be as helpful for revision and study prep for a test if he is pressed for time. Then when you study, you can cover up the notes side/or fold it over and self- quiz on the questions and not have to spend time on figuring out how to self-quiz or what you don't know that you need to know. It would be easy to flag/highlight whatever he is shaky on as he goes along.

Just a suggestion that maybe math and science should be separated as the list of providers is growing long. I haven't used it, but there are tons of rave reviews of Dicentra's Clover Valley Chemistry classes. The link under gifted for John Rosasco is broken. He primarily offers math courses though so not sure if it should also be listed up math. http://mathandmusicstudio.com/About_John_Rosasco.html

I think you probably should remove Lone Pine from the Foreign Language listing. I will add Lingobus for ages 5-12 Chinese classes. I know that there are people with kids on the higher end of the age range, but you have to be aware the style is to engage younger students. My son has studied Chinese using a variety of resources and in person classes. This is the first time that he has actually been eager to do Chinese classes. He actually loves his Chinese classes. His speaking comfort and fluency has greatly improved with Lingobus. This is an extremely large company based out of Beijing. I was invited to visit their offices about 2 months after starting classes since my family was travelling in China. I thought it was maybe going to be 50 people at most. I was really surprised to arrive at an office of over 1,000 people at that one location. It was overwhelming to see what a large scale operation that builds Lingobus ( and their older sister company VIPKID - provides English classes to Chinese students). You schedule classes at your convenience with teachers up to two weeks in advance. You can choose from your frequently used teachers (3 of them) or from all teachers. You are able to cancel classes up to 24 hours prior without incurring a charge. You buy classes as needed, in bundles, or you can save significantly during sales (the best one is Black Friday) and get classes discounted up to 50% off which worked out to about $10 per class if you buy a 100 classes bundle. Discounts are less for smaller bundle sizes. Classes are 25 minutes one on one with a teacher and are immersion. These can be taken on a computer or iPad via their app. You do it as frequently as you like. While you can hire tutors at iTalki and other places, the advantage of LIngobus is that it is a thoughtfully designed curriculum with a progression of 7 Levels (so far) designed to get your student to pass the YCT (Youth Chinese Test - international Chinese test). No matter what teacher you happen to schedule, the class structure and the material delivered is always consistent. The beauty of the number of teachers is that you aren't stuck with a teacher that your student doesn't click with someone in particular. I know that they take their teacher quality seriously and parent feedback as teachers have been pulled off the schedule and sent for training if there's something that they notice needs improvement. I believe only 4% of applicants actually make it through and become teachers on this platform. Learning resources to review prior to a lesson as well as after the lesson are available on their platform. All classes are recorded and available to rewatch. This is excellent for review and reinforcement. Plus you can watch it back yourself to see how your student is doing without hovering over them during the live class. Teachers provide written feedback for students within 24 hours. If your students have studied Chinese prior, you will want to let your advisor know so that they can schedule a free evaluation session. Your advisor is the person that contacts you via WeChat or Facebook after the demo to answer questions. Your student will be placed at a higher level based on their evaluation. Most students are non-native speakers and will be enrolled in the Chinese as a Second Language course. If your child has fluency coming from a Chinese speaking family, there is a separate track for Chinese Literacy. You are able to do a free demo and of course, you can buy a small number of classes to see if the program is a good fit or not. While some people use it with very young children below age of 5 at times, I really think people should be cognizant of their child's ability to remain focused, participate, respond, and engage in online learning. I do notice with the younger children, parents are sitting with their children and prompting them. My preference is to be a lot more hands off with online learning so that my son is personally engaged without me since I have a toddler in the mix. It seems more effective to do online learning around 7. or 8 Sometimes a little earlier or later depending on the child. There is some reading and writing that will be required in Chinese and pinyin is there to assist with pronunication, so it helps if a child is reading and writing already. That's just my opinion though. I'm also of the mindset that I want to get my money's worth out of the class I'm paying for. You can get a couple of free classes if you sign up using a current LB user's referral code as well. There are a couple of fairly activie Facebook Lingobus groups. One has people from LB on there. The other one is parents only. These are good for asking questions and even getting recs for teachers.

Did you know that there's a Latin translation of the first two Harry Potter books? The LIttle Prince, Winnie the Pooh and the Hobbit are also available in Latin.

Go with Little Men. Mine did not go for any Little House books except Farmer Boy. Forget any Anne of Green Gables books. It's ok, I know a lot of it was that he was trying to relate to the characters, and he just couldn't.

No personal review on this. Just a friend's son enjoyed the class he took with them. This provider is based out of the UK. So for example, UK 6 PM is 1 PM EST 10 AM PST. The class lengths are shorter in duration. It seems similar in the way outschool works from what I can tell. A variety of classes, multiple subjects, 3 age groups 7-10, 10-14, 14-18. https://www.thinkersmeetup.com/?fbclid=IwAR10j-m87vQ1TaEjrttQhJrlld6VXxOoWhC50mgoB_WHtB7bET-3cCw6bcA

A online homeschooling friend of mine just shared about this opportunity for 10 and up. She is going to facilitate one of the sessions. This is what she shared with our group: Below is info on an online symposium for kids to discuss BORDERS AND JUSTICE. It's FREE! My 10 y/o did an online class with Thinkers Meet Up back in the fall, and the person who runs it is in a different homeschooling group I'm part of. My kid loved the class and the discussions they had. The goal for this symposium is to get kids from all over the world, talking to each other, and discussing with experts the ideas of borders and justice in a critical way. We want to inspire and challenge kids to be change-makers, and want to help them develop the intellectual tools they need. The symposium is free. Everyone doing it is volunteering their time. We are collecting donations for scholarships, but the donations are strictly voluntary. Please see if your kids might be interested and please share - we really want a vibrant and diverse groups of kids inspiring each other. Oh, and I'll be facilitating one of the discussions! And in case you forgot, it's FREE!! https://www.thinkersmeetup.com/borders-and-justice?fbclid=IwAR10j-m87vQ1TaEjrttQhJrlld6VXxOoWhC50mgoB_WHtB7bET-3cCw6bcA