Friend: "Are you ready for the school year yet? Have you found everything you need?"

Me: "Uh…"

 

There's one problem with year-round homeschooling. I forget to plan until the time to switch grades is upon us! Yes, even after 14 years I forget to plan for our September grade switch until August.

This year was no different.

For the fourteenth time, August arrived and I realized with urgency that I needed to plan. Can you guess what I did this weekend? Yep, I planned out our studies for this school year– mostly.
 

I have quite the list here. I'll be sharing my plans for my 12th, 11th, and 9th graders, as well as plans for my 5th grader and kindergartner. Maybe it will give someone else some ideas– or maybe you can share some ideas with me. {grin}

 

 

High School

Since Judah is still finishing up his last several high school credits, I will have three high school students this year. Wow! That sounds scary, but also exciting.

I also have some exciting new things to share on the blog related to homeschooling high school. Keep reading to find out about a couple of them. I hope you find them helpful!

During August, we will be doing school work a little differently than normal. First off, we will be finishing up our Electro-Mechanical Reverse Engineering Kits. When we started them, I didn't realize how much learning is packed into the booklet (5 chapters!), and I didn't give them enough time out of our schedule to finish the whole project. They have asked me about it, so we'll take a couple of days to work on the last 2 chapters.

We are also going to do a couple of "intensives." We really didn't get to any Geography this past year, so we are going to take a full week and do nothing but geography and map work. Doesn't that sound fun?! Our other intensive course will be Speech. All three will take it together. We are using Secrets of Great Communicators by Jeff Myers. (A Sonlight resource, of course.) This curriculum is a DVD course with a text/ workbook for students and a CD-Rom full of teacher helps for mom. We started our "speech intensive" today, and so far I am very impressed with this course! We are going to spend 2 weeks on this intensive. The children are loving it so far!

When September arrives, we will start our regular routine, co-op on Fridays included.

Biology

Right now, I am most excited about doing biology with my oldest three. This is one of the credits that Judah has to finish, so he will likely go at his own (faster) pace. We will be using Apologia Biology. Our Friday co-op is doing the labs together as a class. We did this a couple of years ago and will now be doing it again with the next set of teens ready for biology. This means we can share lab expenses– and microscopes! {Yay!}

I have found lots of good resources to add to our biology studies, as well. I will be sharing those resources with you throughout the year, as well as sharing how we incorporated them into our Apologia Science curriculum.

AND I'll be sharing some of our lab times at co-op. . . through video! It should be really fun and informative.  {I may even turn it into a weekly link-up for others to share what they are doing for high school science– I'd love to hear what you think about that. I'm thinking of calling it "The Biology Lab." Would you leave me a comment telling me if that is something you'd like to participate in or visit? Pretty please?}

Spanish

We will be continuing our Spanish studies with Switched-On Schoolhouse Spanish. We are loving this curriculum so far. And I am learning right along with them.

Math

Judah, Colleen, and Sean have been using Khan Academy for math for almost a year now. They all love it! We found some holes in their math skills, which have now been filled, and they are easily making progress in high school math using the video teaching and Khan Academy's artificial intelligence software.

If you haven't seen Khan Academy, you should check it out. It's free, but there is a lot of benefit to registering for an account– lots of tools for tracking your student and their work. And did I mention that it's free?

History

Sonlight Curriculum, of course! Judah and Colleen will be going through Core 300, 20th Century World History at their own pace. Sean will be going through Core H, World History, year 2.

Language Arts

We will be doing lots and lots of writing! Sonlight is packed with good literature, and the high school cores include literature analysis and writing assignments.

Electives

Co-op will also include art for all three teens. We have a fabulous art teacher who will be teaching us for the second year.

There will also be lots of guitar, ukulele, keyboard, and voice happening on an almost daily basis. Colleen will be doing more photography and possibly an online course to advance her skills. Judah has been building cajons (wood box drums), and will be starting a business custom making and selling them. I'm sure they will add to this list as the year progresses.

{I'm also thinking of starting another link-up specifically for sharing what we are doing with our homeschooled high school students (not just science). I think it would be a great resource for finding ideas for homeschooling high school. I'm thinking of calling it "High School Check-Up." Would you also let me know if you'd be interested in participating or visiting this kind of link-up?}

 

 

Elementary

It's been a while since I didn't have all levels of traditional school in my little one-room schoolhouse. I am so used to saying that I have "two high schoolers, a middle schooler, one in elementary, and a preschooler" that I am sure I will still be saying it for a while until I get used to only having high school and elementary levels at my house!

History/ Geography/ Bible

Sonlight, of course! Last year, we dropped our history studies. I think we just got too busy. So Zarah and I will be picking up where we left off in Core D, Intro to American History. When we finish it, we will move straight into Core E, Intro to American History, year 2. Teeny will be listening in as she is interested. I love these two cores, and I can't wait to get back to reading these exciting books with my two little girls!

Math

Zarah wants to try out Khan Academy. If it doesn't work well for her, we'll jump back into our trusty Singapore Math.

Teeny will start some simple math workbooks. I play it very loose and free with kindergartners, so I won't really start a curriculum until late in the year or when she starts first grade. I'll likely pick up a math workbook from Target or WalMart and see how she does with it.

Science

I realized during my planning spree last week that I never did read through Sonlight Science 2– the old one: how things are made, geology, and biology- plants, animals, habitats with Zarah. ( Sort of like Science B and C, combined.) We'll read through it together, with Teeny tagging along. I think I'll have Zarah do the worksheets as well. I normally have just done them orally with the children, but I think the writing practice will be good for her.

I also realized during my planning spree that Zarah and Teeny did not watch tons of our nature and animal videos like the older three children did. They just don't know as much animal information as the olders did at their ages. So I decided to plan out a video time for them. I'm going to pull out all our VHS tapes that have "Nature" recorded off of PBS (Sean loved to watch them over and over), and that will be their science video time. I'm also hoping to squeeze in a trip to the zoo before the summer is over.

Both Science 2, which focuses a lot on the animal kingdom, and our Nature videos will go very well with my teens' biology studies. I am really excited about all the science that will be happening at our house this year!

Language Arts

Teeny is simple. She'll be beginning handwriting with Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Book A and maybe some simple copywork before the year is over. She will also start learning how to sound out simple three letter words. When she's ready, I'll pull out the Bob books. No real curriculum. We just read together.

Zarah will be doing lots of writing practice– which still makes her hyperventilate. (An exaggeration, but not by much.) I'm working on getting her comfortable writing down what she tells me about a topic. She'll also be doing lots of copywork, either from her Core D books or her Scripture memory verses. She'll also be doing lots of notebooking with our American History studies.

Spanish

Since the olders will be continuing their Spanish studies, I thought we would try to go through La Classe Divertida (The Fun Class) with Zarah and Teeny. I think they will love learning Spanish along with the rest of the family, and these videos are so fun!

Art

Zarah is very upset that our co-op is not having an art class for the elementary students this year. There have been lots of tears over it. She loves art, and she loves our art teacher. (She taught an elementary aged class last year.) So I have purposed to have art class with Zarah every week. We'll work on some skill building with See the Light's Art Class and lots of projects. Teeny loves the See the Light videos, so I'm sure she'll join in. At least, that's the plan right now. Zarah may have some other ideas in mind.

 

 

I linked up to the Not Back-To-School Blog Hop. This is curriculum week. Go link up your post about your curriculum for the 2012-13 school year or browse the list of links to see what others are doing this year. There are some great ideas in there!

 

 

Disclosure: Some of these links are affiliate links. They do not change your price at all, but they do help my family a tiny bit… so thank you for shopping through them.

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