I haven’t done this often in the past, but I thought I’d share our plans for how we’re going to tackle this year. Today we’ll do Sandra’s year and next we’ll talk about Matthias’ year.
Math is Pre-Calculus with Teaching Textbooks. Man, we continue to love that program with a fierce and fiery gratitude.
Science: Sandra is taking Physics 90 and Chemistry 90 at the university here in town. This will take up a fair chunk of our time with 11 hours of class and lab time per week, plus homework and reading.
We wanted to figure out a way to cover all of the things we wanted to hit in this, our last chance year. Which is a funny thing in and of itself because she’s going to do her undergrad studies while living at home, thereby giving us years more together to talk about any gaps that come up.
Units
Our solution was to brainstorm a list of things we wanted/needed to cover. A whole buffet of ideas, subjects, and possibilities. Then we narrowed it down to a manageable list and are designing one or two-month units for them. We plan: (with assignments in brackets)
One Month Units:
Norse Myths (mini screenplay of one story)
Non-fiction (PowerPoint recap of “Guns, Germs, and Steel”)
Sustainability (10 most important changes our family could make, with reasoning)
History of Islam (5 page report on some topic)
Two Month Units:
Canadian History (two 5 page papers)
Biology*
She is also doing:
German (Rosetta Stone, reading novels, a grammar course, and watching German television)
Spanish (Duolingo) (just a bit, about 10 minutes a day)
Dance
Phys Ed
Comparative Religious Studies (with her brother and grandfather, using a Great Courses lecture series)
And, to top it all off, she wants to be more widely read. However, while the vision therapy has worked marvels, she still finds reading ‘work’ and with this slate of classes, we’ve chosen to use audiobooks. Each month we have an audiobook to listen to. Some are classics, some are non-fiction. Right now we’re both listening to “Jane Eyre”. We are confirmed fans of Audible.com and have had a monthly subscription there for years. This year we’re upping that by a credit so that we can still have fun books when they strike our fancy, too.
*Note – as far as I can tell American and Canadian high schools approach this differently. Rather than one science subject per year, we do general science in gr 9 and 10, then separate them into Bio, Chem, & Physics and let students choose how many of those 3 they’ll take in the last two years of high school.
Handmade Homeschool 