Some Resources for the Academically Talented Home Schooler

When my youngest daughter was little we lived in a town whose school had a talented youth program and she thrived. Four years ago we moved to a new town that had no such program and she felt that she was getting dumber and dumber. At that point we decided to home school her for a year (the High School has enhanced programs). We had several resources at our disposal, some dirt cheap, some fairly expensive. Let's start with the cheap:

In many states home schooled can attend the local community college starting somewhere between their 14th and 16th year (my local community college accepts 15 year olds, though my 14 year old was let in as she got an 1150 on her SAT). The community college environment is generally a good one as it prepares the student for a more traditional college education. It also gives the kids college credit. Families that need financial aid home schooled children can participate in work study. We have several students that have full academic loads (16-18 credit hours) and 20 hours of work a week. This will pay for the semester and books if the young person works over the entire semester.

Now, about her getting an 1150 on the SAT thing. My young lady was identified as talented by one of her 7th grade teachers and who urged us to look into Center For Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University (http://cty.jhu.edu). Anybody can try to get into CTY through this means. By scoring well on the SAT (which she took essentially on her 13th birthday, ok pardon me for being proud). This allowed her to take the full range of classes offered by CTY.

For her home schooled year she took her math and composition through CTY with a summer course at Sienna College in astronomy (also through CTY). We supplemented this by having her take two history of science courses, a humanities course, and a geology lab course at the local CC. She also participated in a local choir for the year (Sang the Messiah with the Hartford Symphony). I think this was a well rounded year for her. In later summers she took cryptography and music theory. She also takes a Humanities course at the local CC each spring. By the way, all of these courses are college level (though the CTY does not give college credit). The summer courses are intense 3 week courses.

By the way, CTY has programs for younger kids, but I am not familiar with them. Finally for young kids many CC's have "Kids Academies" for quirky special interests