Hello Fellow Home Schooling families,
Look out because here comes 2012! I can't believe we are already nearly half way through the 9th grade!
John has been plugging along really well, aside from a few problems with schedules and stress over too much work, we have done a great job with our first half of the year thus far.
We started our year with both Constitution and History and Geography that deals with the same time period.
After the first quarter we added more practices with drama and less baseball so the memorizing of facts and time periods became a bit much for us to keep up with. We took a look at the Constitution course and realized that it is a 1 Semester class. Thank God! So we cut that class from this quarter and will add it in either third or fourth quarter to finish up the rest of it when we are not learning the same things.In other words; when we get to the geography we will finish the constitution which I have found out is actually a Senior course level, and so not really needed yet this year. My Freshman is holding his own in Geometry with MUS being a great way to learn for my son. He listens to the lessons and does the first practice lesson in each course on Mondays, then if he gets and A he can take the test either Tuesday or Wednesday then on good weeks we continue to the next lesson, if he gets a few wrong we continue with our lesson on the rest of the week until he 'gets it' and the next practice sheet shows us when that really happens. The test I allow him three retakes to pass; thus far we have not had to use it except on the Middle Unit Test which he took twice.
With all of the driving I have had to do this year to get people to work and to classes on time my hands on time has often been rushed. So this January I will begin letting people take public transportation more often and focusing more on the English papers ds is missing and to a little more hands on with his Science as well.
SOS has been a blessing for Science, the projects so far we have watched on videos or discussed what happened when older brother or sister did this project years ago.
I would really like to get my hands dirty with some more real experiments this month though!
Do you have a favorite Science experiment? If so feel free to post a comment!
We get an early spring in February and so I like to do planting and such then, but with some of the early years it seemed like planting projects fell in the beginning of the science books.
I am enjoying the way SOS has it set up this year. John started with a dab of Chemistry pretty much but has since moved on to his more enjoyable Ecology and dirt rocks and other elements of the earth we live in. I believe this year, 9th grade, will end up with a dab of biology getting him ready for the three years of Science ahead of him; Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Can't wait for Physics but we must follow our plan to get the right lessons down.
I like that we have had some studies with our local home school group on Biology already because we can refer to some of that information when we get there.
My choices for next year have begun! I am looking at Simple Schooling Biology, and possibly their US History as well, I am confident that it will be what we need, my only concern if if we have internet access where we will do our schooling.
Plans are in place, but things have to be set in motion.
Just like any Home School we plan way ahead, change up a few hundred times then make the set plan to do what is best for our students.
So until then we will continue with; Bible Life Pak 9th Grade ( Survey of the Word -this is very intense! John has done a lot of digging in the Word to find answers to questions and to understand the written lessons).
English Life Pak with reading on the side - The City of Ember and the rest of the Books of Ember series is what we are in right now. I plan to have him do some projects on the power point to go with his book reports.
History- Life Pak 9 is becoming easy to do without the Constitution Course bogging us down.
SOS Spanish-- going right along with this on course, he is learning to speak a few things and catches words when we are out and about that he knows.
SOS Science 9 - see above.
And MUS Geometry- also see above.
We will add in PE with Baseball in February even though it seems we get way more hours a week than needed in this sport we are doing training on our own as a filler of PE time until then.
electives will be computer graphics and communication
This is it for now!
Be blessed until next time!
