Weekly Wrap up 8/3/18--9th grade Curriculum choices selected

We are entering our 9th year of homeschooling!  This year Firedrake has returned to High school for 5 classes.  She will only be working on her Music and Japanese at home for credit.  Even though she is in Public High School she will still be earning a Homeschool diploma due to the rules of our school district.  I am not at all worried about that hurting her chances of getting into college should she decide to go that route.

MarioFan will continue to be homeschool, although we did consider having him try a single class at the local High School but due to our coop schedule decided not to enroll him in any public school classes at this time.  We may consider it in the future.

Firedrake (11th grade) 7 credits

Attending public high school for the the following classes

Geometry

AP Literature

Chemistry

Economics/US government

Drama

At home she will be working with private tutors for 

Japanese

Piano and music theory

MarioFan (9th grade) 7.5 credits

Algebra 1 -- using Teaching textbooks

MarioFan did well with this program last year so we are using it again.  My only complaint is there are not additional practice problems when we do hit a snag in a lesson.  I did have to look around for additional resources for a few lessons when we did pre algebra.  That is something I wish the company would address!

English -- Some is done at coop with another family and some we do at home

Lightening Literature we do this with another family concentrating on literature and various writing techniques  

MarioFan and I will be working on this on our own at home, book two of Fix It grammar from IEW.  I bought this book a couple of years ago and I have heard the program has since changed but I will use the old program since it is on my book shelf:)

We will do Vocabulary at home

ART/Art appreciation -- we do this with another family at coop.  We include art history, information on the artist and then complete one or two art projects that emphasis the particular style of the artist.  Our goal is to complete 16 different artist this year spending a minimum of 2 weeks on each artist.

Spanish 1 --  Coop class not sure what book they will be using for this class.  He will also continue with a private tutor with outschooling weekly.  We are doing this to get in more practice!

World History -- I will be incorporating Crash Course World History online course as well as having him read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.  I am creating my own lesson plan for this topic and we will be pulling from a lot of resources as needed.  Testing will not occur in this class as I prefer papers and projects completed to understand the who, what and whys of history.  Dates can always be looked up in my opinion and see no need to memorize them.

Geoscience -- My husband put together an excellent science program last year for daughter that we will repeat with our son using the Glencoe book.  We supplemented with lots videos and documentaries as needed.  Testing will occur in this class 

I know there is a lot of concern about doing this science for high school, however I think understanding the earth is very important

Health -- I am using this book and will be supplementing with videos as needed.  

I am creating my own lesson plans using this book as a spine.

Music -- Continuing with private piano tutor who also works on music theory.

Computer -- We will be trying Outschool this year and using several of their online classes.  

Outschool is a new to me online school with private tutor or small classes that can be done at home.  We took private Spanish tutoring course this summer and enjoyed it so we are going to try one of their classes.  Pricing is not to bad for the classes which is a plus for us.

For Firedrake Public school begins in less than 2 weeks and for MarioFan coop begins in less than 4 weeks!