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With all the craziness of our summer, I’ve had very little time to get our upcoming school year organized. The good news? This will be our 13th year of homeschooling. (Whoa.) I hardly had to order any books at all. (Praise God for money we didn’t have to spend this year!) Once I could finally block out several hours of time, I buried myself in our school room, unpacked all the books, and found everything I needed for the year. (Along with way too much dust.)
We have been digging deep in World History and the Eastern Hemisphere the past few years, as well as learning about missionaries who have served all over the world. So this year? We’ll be hitting American History pretty hard. I’m super excited. But let me just pause right here to say:
This year, we will have two boys in high school. Two. And Asa, our oldest? He’s going to be a senior. A senior. I don’t know how we got here so quickly. But I do know that it has been one very enjoyable ride. Never let anyone tell you that it’s too difficult to homeschool all the way through high school. (You should see all the resources available now.) These years learning, growing, and memory making with our boys have been invaluable and precious.
So Asa, our high school senior (if I keep saying it, will reality set in?) has worked hard and all but completed all of his high school requirements for graduation. He already began taking some college classes last year. This year he will be taking one more class per semester at our local college and several online classes through a community college. This will get many of his gen-eds out of the way, while saving lots of money, and racking up quite a few college credits. He’ll also be taking Spanish 4 at home with Rosetta Stone software, doing some ACT prep, and continuing to develop his skills with videography and movie creation.
Justus will be a freshman. He’ll be finishing the last few CDs in Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1, then start Algebra 2. He’ll study Physical Science with Apologia and continue with his Spanish lessons (Rosetta Stone rocks). He’ll work through several English/Grammar/Analogies books, do lots of reading, study American History, and do a smattering of electives like music, P.E., and creative arts. He’s going to start taking guitar lessons in the fall, which he is very excited about!
Elias will be a 7th grader. Along with American history studies, he’s doing Pre-Algebra with Teaching Textbooks, Spanish with Rosetta Stone, Wordly Wise, grammar, reading and writing assignments, and a variety of science books from our big stash. He is interested in taking drum lessons – if we can find him a teacher. And some drums.
Malachi will be a 4th grader. He’s really taking off with chapter books now, so his shelf (along with his brothers’ shelves) are full of great reading material that enhances our study of American History. We’ll be going through Grammar Ace with him, as well as having him work through MCP Phonics at his level. He’ll be journal writing, learning cursive with Getty-Dubay, working through a stack of science books, and doing Teaching Textbooks 4 for math. He’s also going to work through my Learn to Cook book so that he can learn more basic cooking skills. We’ve got him all set up to start piano lessons this fall too. He can’t wait!
Sonlight has been our main curriculum of choice through the years – and I continue to use many of the books they recommend. Learning through literature is awesome! Instead of pulling all the books they recommend at every single grade level, I’ve found that it is simple to use their book recommendations and combine grade levels while we study history, geography, and science. This saves my sanity, and gives us wonderful times of learning all together. All the subjects will be revisited through the years anyway, so what the younger kids don’t catch the first time around, they’ll catch it when we study it in later grades. This works great for us.
So there you have it. The books are finally organized, and I can head out of town again knowing school will be ready for us to start when I get back. Two weeks until we kick off our school year! I praise God for this wonderful opportunity to study and learn with my kids.
