What an awesome opportunity ...

As a parent of school age kids I am sad to see them rushed trough so much test-oriented useless material followed by senseless amounts of will-breaking assignments and tests.

My kids spent a significant amount of years through Montessori education. On that environment, they pursued areas of interested on their own with the guidance of classroom guides. The main difference is that the kids chose their area of work (they do have to complete a minimum required across all other areas). There were no exams, mostly projects, but my main point is that it is amazing to see someone work on something they are passionate about. They spent day and night, on their own, working on projects that were interesting to them; for something that was not even going to get a grade.

So ... ask your students to submit 5 reaserch proposals to you. Give them a week, write a page or so about each proposed topic. Once they pick of their own topics (just so everyone commits to the reaserch), let them trade some of the unused ideas with peers. Go outside the book, the real world does not come with a book !!! I believe this initial reaserch will help them explore their own ideas. I suggest you provide incentives to have this project play bigger and bigger % on their final grade based on the increased levels of commitments to the project. Maybe they present to peers for a basic grade, but maybe they can submit papers to some conference, or present at local university to a bigger % of final grade.

In terms of ideas ... how about some blender rendering (www.blender.org), its free ... It will teach them awesome modeling/rendering skills. Take it up a notch and have them create chemical models in it, animate them. Introduce them to, or challenge them to higher levels of programming by developing python scripts to simulate temperature on their models, animate chmical reactions, etc ...

Congrats to you for having a genuine interest in your students.