I love the planning part of school. I enjoy seeing what's out there, the endless choices I have before me. Ater 8-1/2 years, I no longer see them as the endless choices I have to screw up my kids' lives either! I love to look at everything, touch it when possible, and imagine the possibilities. I've been pretty good at fighting the "grass is always greener" syndrome, an early challenge for me. When we find what works, we stick with it, and when we change, it has been for the right reasons.
With Holly in high school this year, I now need to keep track of credits. It's no longer daunting. I've watched enough of my friends go through this, quite successfully, and two books have been particularly helpful and encouraging, Barb Shelton's Form+U+la and Cafi Cohen's Homeschoolers' College Admissions Handbook.
Here's the rundown on our plans for the year. I prayed about this a lot last year, needing the balance of the teaching/learning style that has worked for us, yet knowing that I'd again have outside commitments.
Holly, 9th grade:
Algebra. Life of Fred. The biggest challenge might be what to call this on a transcript, lol.
American History, American Literature and Composition, and Biblical Issues in American Christianity. Notgrass. Covering three subject areas and credits, this will be the bulk of her daily work. Some of the Composition portion will be substituted with The Institute for Excellence in Writing's Student Writing Intensive Level C.
Latin. Getting Started with Latin, and when this is completed, my current plan is for her to begin Henle, along with the syllabus from Mother of Divine Grace.
Classical Astronomy. Signs and Seasons, including the lab/field work.
Biblical Worldview. She'll take this one-semester outside class during the second half of the school year.
Holly will be playing fall and spring rec league soccer, and horseback riding a few times a month, both of which will count towards a P.E. credit. Additionally, she'll be volunteering again with the Bible Club which our church sponsors. It will be a busy year, I think.
Trevor, 6th grade:
Memory work. I'll continue to select a variety of materials, a continuation of what we've done for several years.
Bible. Boyhood & Beyond by Bob Schultz. For now, we'll be reading this together out loud.
Math. Primary Mathematics/"Singapore." This has been a good fit at our house for a while now.
Spelling. Spell to Write and Read. This has been my favorite curriculum for the elementary grades, and it will be sad to stop using it--almost sad anyway!
Grammar. Shurley English. This fell off the radar last year. Trevor began Level 5 in 4th grade, but at the beginning of 6th grade, I noticed that we are only on Lesson (Week) 15! We've used Shurley for years, and I'm confident we'll keep up with it this year. I've always disliked Shurley's writing instruction, so we skip that.
Writing. Writing Strands. It looks like we're overloading the Language Arts, but in reality, each of these fits into a piece of the puzzle. I'm not a big fan of Writing Strands' author's writing style, but my kids are good with the instruction. Instead, I use the author's writing as an example of what I *don't* want them to do. :)
While we're not formally using Teaching the Classics, I have to insert it here. I frequently use the methods taught in TtC, and it's been my favorite curriculum for the upper elementary and middle school grades. Typing this, though, has me consider that we CAN use this if we let anything else fall off the schedule. Hmm, that's so tempting! (And THERE's that 'grass is always greener' mentality....)
History. Story of the World, vol. 3. I've used SOTW and the accompanying Activity Guide with one or both kids for the past 6-1/2 years. It's the longest-running curriculum that we've stuck with. I love the flexibility! Trevor's not wild over a lot of reading assignments, so we'll be supplementing with my long time favorite Art in Story by Marianne Saccardi, and Trev's excited to once again be using the test booklet that is available with SOTW too.
Science. Rainbow. I think Trevor's most excited about this. Holly used it two years ago, and even then, he couldn't wait to try it himself.
Trev will also be using a keyboarding/typing computer program, playing soccer, and he may join the chess club nights when soccer is over.
So that's it. Usually a few things fade away, but we're still left with a solid year. I expect this year to be no different than any other. Yay!!!
6 comments:
We are doing MANY of the same things! How fun is that. Are you only doing Life of Fred for math? Did you buy the workbook type things to go with it? I'm just using it as a living math type supplement.. I was too chicken to ditch a traditional text book.
I really should post something about school because I think some people wouldn't even realize we homeschool with as little as I blog about it.
Yes, we are using the Home Companion for Fred. It just lays out exactly what to do each day, a lesson plan. So far, it's been great, Holly's enjoying it (I guess!) and doing WELL. She's getting it, and the best part is that she's learning it so far on her own, which is definitely a goal of mine. I've heard about it for awhile on WTM boards, and Chris had good things to say about it. I figured it was worth the chance, because it was sooooooo much less than anything else $$.
I have barb shelton's book and it left my head spinning! How do you get thru that book?? It's so confusing!
I agree, the Shelton book made my head spin at first. I finally jumped in, skimmed over her obnoxious writing, and took the GOOD stuff from it. I just had to pick it up and start reading from the beginning. The odd page numbering drove me nuts too, I wanted to know what was in the book BEFORE I began reading, but even the Table of Contents and Index were odd.
The good parts though far outweighed the bad. I found a lot of encouragement, that I can do this, I can do it any way that I want, and we can be successful doing it that way.
What a gorgeous header Kristine! We've seen so many of those clouds up here too, and I think our summer, what little we had, is DONE. Temps in the mornings are in the 40's.
I read my post over, and that paragraph about the mushroom ID book was misleading. I do have the book, I just couldn't find that particular mushroom in the book. Anyway it's The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. A great reference book.
Hope you're having a great week.
B.
Looks like a great year. I enjoy hearing what other people are using.
Post a Comment