My plan for 9th grade is to do biology over the summer then a second science elective during the year. DS likes working with his hands. He does origami, grows plants, knits, build balsa wood towers and wind turbines. He is also the kid who doesn't get scared off by the physics events in Science Olympiad. What fun or interesting ideas so people have. Links to specific curriculum would be great. Eta: Even if you don't know a specific curriculum but have ideas of areas to study that would be great.

Ok, this is going to sound very ignorant, and kind of odd from someone who has actually done science in a couple of different fields during her professional life, but what the heck is a high school science lab supposed to be, anyway? I keep using that word, but I do not think it means what I think it means. ;) When I think about a lab, I think automatically about doing an experiment - coming up with a question, doing some research, formulating a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, analyzing the results, and writing up a lab report. But when I look at curricula, books, online description of labs, I see a lot of other things being done that I'd call something different - demonstrations, dissections, observations, collections, projects, investigations, analyzing data sets. Do those things all count as labs? How do you define labs for the different sciences? Can you give me examples of things that you've done for labs for the different sciences? And how many you've done in a year? I like the idea of doing experiments, but those suckers can take some time. I can't imagine doing one a week. One every two weeks if that's all you are doing, maybe. One a month sounds more civilized. But are there a bunch of things that count as labs that maybe I'm not thinking of that way? I'm kind of hoping so. I want to do a bunch of those things, too, and if they are also considered labs, I'm golden. :)