Wow that's amazing! How do you do it?? And what helped your oldest 3 stand out to get accepted into top schools?

I found this on Brightstorm that goes along with World of Chemistry. Only watched a few videos and they seem promising. https://www.brightstorm.com/textbook/chemistry/world-of-chemistry/

The WHA assignment guide you PMed me is SO helpful! In the guide, their honors course assigns 25-30 problems in average for each lesson. Think we can reduce the Exercise problems to half, instead of doing ALL odd-number problems, then we can definitely finish the whole book in a school year with room to take more time on some difficult topics. He rarely makes mistakes, so I don't see any issue with reducing the assignments. Also, the WHA course finishes with Analytic Geometry and doesn't cover chapter 12 Limits and chapter 13 Statistics, if it uses the same text, but we will try to do those as well if we have time. Now I have a clear picture of the expectation and how to achieve it. Thank you, cintinative!

My rising 8th grader has been studying precalculus since the beginning of this month. He initially started with Thinkwell Precalculus, but soon insisted to switch to a textbook approach. The textbook we are now using is Larson's Precalculus with Limits, 3rd edition. I chose it because it was the cheapest used one, whose odd-number solutions are available on the CalcChat and LarsonPrecalculus websites, I could find then. He is doing it independently and it has been going really well so far as it has been mostly review of algebra 1&2. Here is how we do it. Day 1: He studies a lesson and examples, solves checkpoint problems (about 8-10 each) on his notebook, and self-check the answers with the LarsonPrecalculus solutions. Day 2: He solves the first half of odd-number problems (about 25-30) in Exercise, check his answers with CalcChat and studies with the worked-out solutions. Day 3: He solves the other half (about 20-25 including word problems) in Exercise. And he moves on to the next lesson, next work day. He spends two days on each Review and one on Chapter Test. It takes about 1 hour to 1 hour and half each day. I calculated and, with this pace, it's going to take about 250 more work days to finish the entire book this way. He is highly motivated and hard working, but I don't see him finishing it within this school year, which is fine with me. We school year round but take weekends and holidays off and take two-week vacations a couple times. I took integrated math at high school in another country, not precalculus, so please bear with my questions. 1. What is required to label a homeschool course as "honors" on a homeschool transcript? Should we take a little longer than a year to finish the entire book? Would it be enough for that label? Or too much? There seem too many number of lessons and problems for any school to cover in a year, but I am not sure what a typical honors course's expectation is. 2. Is the "Limits" part supposed to be included in high school honors precalculus? There is a textbook without "Limits" by the same author, which I suspect is the one for a regular class, but I am not sure. 3. Our local public high school doesn't have honors courses nor gives weight for CC DE. Only APs get weight to be 5.0 and all the other courses are on a 4.0 scale. Neither any high school level classes taken prior to 9th grade nor any CC DE classes outside of the school offerings go on their high school transcript. Should I follow their policy for my own homeschool transcript or do the conventional way of including all high school level courses with weight on honors (4.5) and DE/AP (5.0) courses? Any insight would be appreciated.

Thinkwell math courses from Pre-algebra to Algebra 2 are complete programs if you do everything including printable worksheets. The exercise problems on the worksheets are identical to the ones in Holt McDougal textbooks (by Burger), which offer enough practice for most students. Both of my kids (one gifted and the other autistic) preferred Thinkwell's layout and instructor's style to DO's. My older kid is currently taking Thinkwell Pre-calculus and we are bummed there are no longer any worksheets included. We added a Larson textbook to it in order to supplement it.

I haven't tried these but CompuScholar offers both AP CS self-paced courses. https://www.compuscholar.com/homeschool/courses/csfoundations/ https://www.compuscholar.com/homeschool/courses/java/

Khan is good for that purpose. Similarly, Thinkwell offers Essential Review courses: https://www.thinkwellhomeschool.com/collections/essential-review-courses/products/algebra-1-essentials. If you want more challenging problems, AOPS has a free self-grading practice program called Alcumus: https://artofproblemsolving.com/alcumus. IXL lets you pick and choose topics and exercises to review: https://www.ixl.com/math/algebra-1.

Bump, because I have the exact same question for my rising 8th grader. TIA

If one takes, say, DE General Chemistry at CC and retakes it for pre-med requirements at a 4-year university, would it be okay, too, or be marked as "repeated" on an application to medical school (AMCAS) and put him/her at a disadvantage in med school admission?

We love Thinkwell math too but wish labs were included in Thinkwell science courses.

This framework looks mostly identical to the topics covered in Algebra 2 class that my first kid, a 7th grader, is currently taking in PS and Thinkwell honors Alg 2 that he is using to supplement the class. Does Precalculus overlap a lot with Alg 2? Even a lot of additional topics that are not included on AP Precalculus exam are covered in honors Alg 2. It's almost like a repetition (am I missing something?) and this makes me reconsider our plan for the next school year. Algebra 2 is the highest math course his junior high school (6th-9th) offers. There are just two students in this class, him and a 9th grader. My 7th grader is excelling and getting high A's from this class so far. The school said they would bus him to high school for next year but unfortunately we just moved to another town (he's still finishing this year there). I was thinking of bringing him home this fall and homeschool for 8th grade doing just reviews and possibly taking his first ACT, instead of sending him to a new middle school that doesn't even have anything beyond Alg 1, so that he can take Precalculus as a public high school freshman. After looking at the contents of AP Precalculus, however, I feel he would be more than ready to take it this fall. I'd have to homeschool him anyway since no schools around here offer precalculus for a 8th grader and he's too young to go to a CC. I'm also from a country where every high schooler was required to take Calculus regardless of their intended college major, just at a different level and depth depending on their path, but that's now changed and only STEM-pursuing students take Calculus in the last year of high school. Others choose Statistics and Probability. Before then, high school maths are all integrated--no algebra, geometry or precalculus-- and Precalculus topics are definitely taught in high school, not in college.

We have used 6th & 7th essential courses, honors pre-algebra, honors algebra 1 and honors geometry so far. I would categorize Thinkwell math as "standard," right on par with average PS regular/honors classes. Like any self-paced programs, it is what you make of it. The video instructions by Dr. Burger are excellent. The examples in the notes and the practice problems in the worksheets are same with the ones in the Holt textbooks written by him. We did every problem, both online and in printable worksheets. My kids wrote them all down and showed their work in the notebook. With videos and detailed worked-out solutions, they rarely needed my help or other human support. I mostly just graded the worksheets. The online practices/quizzes/tests are based on multiple choice questions at a basic level. I've heard some people do the online portion only but, IMO, doing so would make the course too easy and light. To add more challenge, we pulled out some problems from texts like AoPS, Jergensen and Dolciani when needed. We heard DO is also solid and looked into his youtube videos, but my kids much preferred Dr. burger's (seeing his face with other visual demonstrations) to DO's blackboard teaching style) and insisted on continuing with Thinkwell.

Thanks for asking this question! I’m all ears to the suggestions, too. Think I’ve read most pinned threads on the high school board multiple times. Learned a great deal, esp. from the older threads when this forum was more active with many veterans who sent their kids to selective U through homeschooling and generously shared how they did it in detail (some of they are still here, and I’m grateful for everyone who posts and shares her/his wisdom and up-to-date information for us with younger kids). I’ve found wealth of information here, a lot more and better than in much larger FB groups. Still, the fear of homeschooling high school is real. Can’t bear a thought that I might close some doors for mine if I homeschool through high school. Think our location in the rural Midwest makes it a bit trickier as well. When my anxiety hits me, I read the pinned threads and start breathing again.

Congrats! Would you mind sharing what kind of ECs she's done? I am currently debating whether to send my academically-accelerated DS back to PS for EC/leadership/award opportunities. Need some inspiration. 🙂

But isn’t that why SAT or ACT doesn’t test on specific content knowledge? These tests only test very basic reading comprehension, writing(grammar) and math (up to Alg 2) skills that can be developed through lots of reading, doing well in math classes at any high school or with Khan Academy and some free SAT/ACT prep resources. SAT2 used to test subject knowledges but they are gone. I don't see SAT/ACT as IQ tests but something achievable with practice.