McLinda Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 Help! I am looking for a rigorous program that will meet the needs of my extremely bright daughter. She is currently in the 8th grade and I am researching for next year. Has anybody tried K12 AP and Honors courses? Laurel Springs Gifted and Talented? Pennsylvania Homeschoolers? Patrick Henry? Scholars Online? Veritas? Please give me some feedback. :bigear: Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merylvdm Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 I have loved Sonlight. My kids aren't geniuses, but are very academic and love learning and it was a great fit for them. They all have taken a lot of AP exams, but they didn't do AP classes - we just do our regular curriculum and then take the exams. I added a lot of electives to keep mine excited about school - Teaching Company has great DVD courses and once completed my kids would write a paper or two on the topic. Art of Problem Solving has excellent math courses you can do online or at home through their books. Friends have used and like Pennsylvania Homeschoolers. And there are now top colleges offering free online courses. My son took and Artificial Intelligence one last year and is doing a Computer Human Interaction on now. The courses are not all technology related. I wrote a bolg post on what is available that might be helpful - http://fundafunda.com/blog/bored-high-schoolers-free-online-courses-to-the-rescue.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candid Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 Tapestry of Grace is strong in both history and lit. They also include other electives such as philosophy, history of art and music, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gwen in VA Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 We have done a LOT of online classes, and for most of my kids they were the way to go. Many of the classes out there are rigorous. Caveats -- 1) You may not want to start your child in all or even in many online classes at once. Phasing them in gradually may be easier for your child. Online classes can take a LOT of time! (Dd is currently taking one class at a local 4-year college, one at a CC, two online, and one with me. The two online classes take SIGNIFICANTLY more time than the two college classes!) 2) Not all kids learn well using online classes. I have talked with several parents IRL who signed a kid up for a class and ended up dropping it because of the online approach. One of my kids hated every online class with a passion but really enjoyed his senior year, where he only took CC classes, and is loving college. He likes having a teacher and other kids in the class, and online was not a good approach for him. There are a number of threads about good online classes. You might try searching either by subject (Latin or history or biology or whatever) or by program name. Hopefully a number of relevant threads will pop up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenny in Florida Posted October 6, 2012 Share Posted October 6, 2012 Help! I am looking for a rigorous program that will meet the needs of my extremely bright daughter. She is currently in the 8th grade and I am researching for next year. Has anybody tried K12 AP and Honors courses? Laurel Springs Gifted and Talented? Pennsylvania Homeschoolers? Patrick Henry? Scholars Online? Veritas? Please give me some feedback. We don't do any of the above. Instead, I plan my own curriculum for the most part, taking into account my student's interests and abilities. It's such an individual thing, finding the right educational materials and path for each kid. My extremely bright daughter finished high school at age 12 and went into a residential early entrance college program. My extremely bright son has chosen to de-emphasize academics a bit and stay closer to home longer. He will likely finish his high school program at about age 16 and do a year of community college before heading out into the wider educational world. Each of them has had a personalized series of classes planned by me with their input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mckive6 Posted October 7, 2012 Share Posted October 7, 2012 My daughter is in 9th grade this year, her second year of homeschooling. She really wanted to take an AP class this year, so she did some research and decided to try PA Homeschoolers AP US History course, taught by Susan Richman. It is challenging, and she is really enjoying it. Hope that helps. Pauline Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted October 7, 2012 Share Posted October 7, 2012 I, too, have accelerated/gifted students. We do not use any boxed curricula or online courses. I can not imagine one single curriculum meeting our needs and being of equal quality across all subjects. For math, we use Art of Problem Solving, which is probably the math program with the widest scope and most challenging problems; great for kids who love, and are good at, math, but not a good fit for every student. I design my own history and literature courses, borrowing ideas from TWTM and tailoring the focus to my kids' specific interests. For sciences, we use introductory college texts. We use College Physics by Knight et al) Chang General Chemistry, Campbell Reece Concepts and Connections for biology. We use dual enrollment at the university for French 2 and up. DD 15 is currently taking two four hour courses at the university, French and calc based physics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebacabunch Posted October 8, 2012 Share Posted October 8, 2012 The AP website has a lot of sources as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McLinda Posted October 14, 2012 Author Share Posted October 14, 2012 Thank you, everyone! :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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