<p>we love teaching company courses and they are excellent -- they also usually have textbooks that they recommend you purchase to accompany the course.</p>
<p>our library carries many of the teaching company courses and they are also available through inter library loan.</p>
<p>for general sciences, our whole family enjoyed Joy of Science!</p>
<p>Clarification: it turns out that the school puts students straight into AP Chemistry, so the student would like (at least some semblance of) an "Honors" course to make the very fast-paced AP course a bit more manageable.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>So she's looking for some kind of summer study in chemistry that would give her a bit of a leg up on the material so she can start prepared and use the slight reduction in pressure to improve study skills, etc.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>I would find the ISBN # of the book that will be used next year in the class, buy it on amazon (used) and then pay for you to tutor her over the summer. </p>
<p>The other thing that I note is that the first part of chemistry is spent learning how to change units (from g/dl to moles/l for example). A little brush up on this sort of calculation could go a long way to help the early chemistry fears.</p>
<p>I would certainly want to do some summer study, in that case.</p>
<p>My suggestion -- get the textbook the class will use. Read it in the summer, make excellent chapter notes and flashcards.</p>
<p>I would also recommend the Friendly Chemistry book -- it really covers the moles, measurements, and those basic chemistry concepts that many have trouble mastering at first. </p>
<p>I think the combination of the two would allow her to succeed.</p>
<p>I might also suggest she get an AP chemistry prep book and look through it along with the textbook.</p>
<p>She has no chemistry option besides AP chemistry as a sophomore? That's really asking a lot of a kid. If she struggled with first level biology, I'd be very concerned that she may be in over her head. CTY fast-paced chemistry would seem the best option because it would at least familiarize her with the prerequisites for AP Chem, it's unfortunate that that's not an option.</p>
<p>She's in an accelerated high school program, so that's why the course schedule is as it is. All the suggestsions about books are great. That will certainly be an important part of whatever happens. The one concern was that (being still fairly young) she could use some discipline and deadlines (otherwise perhaps the work won't get done), so in this sense a community college course may not be a bad idea --- just to enforce a pace.</p>
<p>Thank you all so much for the many useful ideas and suggestions.</p>
<p>(Incidentally: I ended up doing reasonably well at the whole Chemistry Olympiad thing, but I think that going straight into AP for me would have been perhaps too much, even without struggling with science in high school.)</p>
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I think that going straight into AP for me would have been perhaps too much
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I don't think this is inherent in the material to be studied. I think that it is just a matter of the teacher's expectations. If a teacher assumes that everyone in a class has already had a year of the subject, then the class is likely to be "too much" for a student with no prior knowledge. But if the teacher knows that no one has had the subject before, there isn't anything so intrinsically difficult about AP science that s/he couldn't cover in one year everything students need to take the AP exam. My son was homeschooled, so we could do whatever we wanted. We went straight to AP in all of the sciences, and he had no trouble covering the material for each one in one academic year of self-study. I've recommended the same thing to other homeschooling families since, and it doesn't seem like it's been a problem. We did rearrange the order, however. My son is awesome at math, and was very interested in physics from a young age. So I had him do AP physics first, in 9th grade, which built on the math and general knowledge that he already had. The physics (and math) then helped him with AP chem in 10th. And the chem helped with AP bio (and AP environmental science) in 11th. It helped a lot that he was older when he got to bio. He disliked (and dislikes) both bio and memorizing, so it was good that he had a little more maturity when he had to slog through that.</p>
<p>My S traveled exactly the same path as Texas' S (though he did the Fast-Paced High School classes first) and had exactly the same reaction to bio for the same reason.</p>
<p>take a good look at the local community college classes that are offered. I know that our local cc offers several level of chemistry.</p>
<p>My biggest concern would be that the fast pace of the class would do more to frustrate her and give her a bad taste for chemistry -- not the way to start out the next school year. College classes usually cover a year's worth of high school in a semester and the summer pace is twice as fast -- so you are covering a year's worth of chemistry in about 8 weeks.</p>
<p>I think that even more than taking the class, it would be more important to spend some time outlining the text she will be using. This will review study skills at the same time as the chemistry topics.</p>
<p>In a fast paced class (where she has not had an prior exposure to the subject matter) my concern would be that she would just be memorizing what was essential for the short term and struggling to stay on top of the material because of the fast pace -- and would develop even poorer study skills.</p>
<p>Just my thoughts on the matter -- If you have to have a set class, i would go for a high school summer class over the cc class.</p>
<p>How about auditing the CC course?</p>
<p>My son did the same thing as Marite's and Texas137's sons and for the same reasons. However, he's been surprised by biology. He likes it better than chemistry, despite the memorizing (but not as well as physics). </p>
<p>I've read articles recently that physics-chemistry-biology is a more natural sequence as each builds on the former. That is, students who have already taken physics will find they already know the material in several chapters of their chemistry books. Students taking biology will find familiar material from both physics and chemistry. Schools tend to teach the sciences in the biology-chemistry-physics order because physics requires more math than the other two.</p>
<p>If people don't mind an expansion in the scope of this thread (since Ben seems to be satisfied with the answers to his original question), how about home-study (EPGY like?) courses for a youngster with interest in mechanical or electrical engineering, in topics like circuits, logic, thermo, or fluids? This would come after AP physics and multivariable calculus (but not chemistry). Thanks.</p>
<p>4th floor - <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html</a> if you don't need credit. Free!</p>
<p>If you do need credit, there are engineering courses offered thru several universities, particularly in mountainous states (try U. Colo Boulder and U. Idaho). These are very expensive, like $1500 per course.</p>
<p>Thanks. I haven't thought of Open Course Ware previously, mainly because it doesn't provide feedback in the form of graded homework and exams, but yes, it is certainly a good way to get started.</p>