GRADUATED!!

Congratulations to Ian - he is a high-school graduate!!

After passing all 3 portions of the TSI, we decided to leave high-school behind and start the college-degree journey.  For now we'll take it one step at at time (or maybe two steps at a time).

He currently has 8 college credits completed with a 3.0 GPA.  He is registered for 6 more in the Fall:

Physical Geography - to nurture a long-standing interest in palenotolgy and to a lesser degree, archeology, we found what appears to be a FANTASTIC teacher, so he can gain exposure to the field.

Drawing I - to nurture an interest in animation, graphic design, and his love for drawing.  Found another great teacher, and he'll get to take this with his big sister (because SHE also wants to take an art class "for fun.").  Also, Drawing 1 serves as a pre-req to lots of graphic arts, game design, web design classes.

(In the SPRING we are considering online core history, in-person English Comp, and possibly Speech.)

So now Ian's Fall Schedule will look like this:

Geometry - Hybrid/gifted school
Geography - Community College
Drawing -  Community College
Algebra 2 - Teaching Textbooks (to prepare for college algebra CLEP)


I'm thinking about dropping EMF.
We've dropped drums (to focus on fencing)
No Best Brains (after passing the writing of TSI)
Stopped Acellus (Power Homeschool Language Arts) and Reading Detective after passing Reading Comp TSI.

All this makes room for focused study on the geography, and geometry, and algebra 2.

CONSIDERED holding off graduating him until after this (what would be his 7th-grade year, at which time, he'd be 13) for ACT/SAT and Talent Search entry.  I probably still could do that without much ado.  But he has no interest (whereas Haley did and studied on her own to compete with a classmate).  And I don't think the merit badge will add significant value to Ian's portfolio because I've learned, once the kid is in college, nobody (NOBODY!) cares about a 7th grade talent search thing.  And he's not interested in going to any of away camps at this time (plus they're expensive and money better spent elsewhere for him).  Finally, the Talent Searches (Olympiads, or math competitions) aren't enough of an impetus to delay high-school graduations as the benefits of graduating outweigh this one (potential) drawback (especially since he's not a serious competitor nor vying for accolades in these arenas).