High school? Really? But I just taught him how to walk!


High school- so many choices what shall I do?
Do you find yourself floundering in all the many choices today in high school learning?
There are many free sources if you search for high school resources you will find yourself swamped in web addresses but what do you choose? 
For Math Help I know that Purple math is awesome. But I needed courses! 
Math U See worked for my daughter so we gave it a try last year for Algebra1. John had very little difficulty in answering the questions correctly but had to learn how to show his work. Sounds like a 'normal' class to me! 
I looked around and found BJU, and Abeka, and Sonlight as well was a bit pricey and a lot more work for the home school mom. If you love planning things out and setting up your days lessons for one student, and have the money go with either of these! Pandia has some great options for Science classes but they need to get moving with the next level before I get there! 
Simple Schooling online was pretty cool we used their Physics for last year but our Science was already here for this year, so no changing that one just yet! 
When it came down to what we had and what to add the options were endless!
  
Today's home-schooler has so many options that we just did not have back when we started schooling Daniel in Kindergarten! He is now a third year College Student so I guess he survived our wacky way of teaching! 
It is so different now! 
We have choices like AOP’s Monarch – sort of a correspondence school at home type of thing with more of a lean on home schooling than the public school’s version “K-12”.
Monarch appealed to me a little bit because it is so full of color and excitement. I would still be home schooling but someone else would be doing the grading, assessing etc right?
Nope. The main difference I could see in my searching is that it is actually connected to teacher help, right? Wrong! It isn’t connected anymore than SOS and it really is pretty much the same with the lack of games, and the inserting of the fact it is web based instead of being loaded to the one computer. This means you have access anywhere you have access to the internet. So if this is important then go ahead and choose Monarch.
We stuck with our SOS for Science this year, and Secondary Spanish and Civics as well.
John has been working in Algebra already so we have advanced him to Math U See’s Geometry for that subject and plan to enjoy it as much as we did when Miresa took this course four years ago. Wow, where does the time go?
We have added to these subjects Life Paks, (the paper version of SOS) in History and Geography- this will focus on Civics and that part of history as well as geography related to these times in history. I found such a deal at CBD.com and purchased a $5 dvd from Drive Thru History that happened to cover the same area. We will use this sampling to see if it is as good as it looks on YouTube! Also added to the mix will be that Civics SOS version. I think we will have him covered in the political sense!
Bible Life Paks for 9th grade focuses on a survey of the Bible and we recalled using it in the past with the other two Bible scholars in our home.
We are also using Language Arts Life Paks. They have a good variety of lessons but surprisingly lack a bit in spelling department for High School levels. I am using the vocabulary words that they so nicely have in each unit as spelling lists for this year. After having struggled with spelling errors most of my life I am bound and determined to make sure I have good spellers!
We are adding to this Fall Ball and Bowling as well, for PE credits. These will add up to enough hours and credits for one Semester of PE to add to his new High School Transcript!
Our Band course is on hold for the moment but once we get our Trumpet purchased then we will be getting back on that wagon!
Next I searched for some sort of schedule; High School 8 courses!

"Mom, you just get it all figured out and I will do what you tell me to do." WOW! (Do you see the tears of joy falling on my screen?) 
So--- I am trying to decide if I want to block schedule him, rotate his lessons or whatwe have the following as our classes" Bible9- LP
Math- Geometry 1 
Science 9th 
SOS Spanish -Secondary first semester 
History and Geography LIfe Pak 9 Civics SOS + Drive Thru History sample dvd
Language Arts LP9 - plus literature that I am putting together and Spelling via vocabulary lists in LPs. 
PE- Bowling twice a week and Fall Baseball league ( practice 1-2 hr a day plus games) 
Band- No class at the moment but will be inserted and mess up any semblance of order eventually.
This is the list, and by next week we will have lift off and Agape Academy High will commence classes!
So the question is Self Paced courses or Scheduled time increments?

If you have an opinion or idea that worked for you feel free to comment!
This is just the beginning of a series in High School year one.
Come back Next week when we share some photos and the official schedule design!
Until then ~ Be blessed not stress!