Home Schooling Plans....

NOTE: Blogger is being a pain today, refusing to upload photos or bold/italic anything or provide links. I've been trying to make this post work ALL DAY, and I'm just going to post it as-is and edit it later to add photos, italics, links, etc.

This week has been incredibly busy, hence my lack of posting. I have a teetering stack of final MLA research essays to grade and return by Thursday, plus final grades for my Intermediate Writing students to post by then. I am also holding rough draft conferences for my Advanced (Honors) Writing students who are submitting their final essays on Thursday; I'll grade them and return by mail as Thursday is our final meeting.

The Shakespeare Family Workshop that I'm teaching at Brave Writer should have been finished yesterday, but several families have been ill or have had issues with keeping up, so I extended the class through next Friday, June 10. I have posted all the work but will need to continue responding to their assignments. It's been a wonderful class; I'm so glad that I reworked it this spring even though it was a HUGE time investment, but now it's done and can be retaught in future years with ease.

Next week is our final week of homeschooling as well. The boys are in fairly good shape to finish on time; J may need to do extra algebra over the summer with our tutor, depending on how well he does this week with his final lessons. I thank God for Johanna, my college friend (roommate of my roommate once I married) who teaches the kids algebra and etc.--anything past sixth grade math is beyond me!

And with the used curriculum sales going on last week and this week, I am of course planning our next year of home education. I'll be teaching the same courses at Class Day thus far: Intermediate Writing (college prep expository writing for grades 10-12) and Advanced Writing (honors level expository for grades 11-12); if I don't have enough students for the latter, I may just do Intermediate although we're technically supposed to teach two classes, but as I teach it without a team (most classes are taught by teams of 2-3 moms) and invest so many hours into grading, I think they'll let it pass. Or, if nothing else, I could cobble together a poetry or a Shakespeare course, I suppose. We'll see....

I found the boys' literature books at the curriculum sale on Thursday, and I just made arrangements on Facebook (of all places!) for T's chemistry book, so all I need are a reading and a math workbook for B, and we should be set for next year. Here's my plan for the boys:

Timothy (11th grade)
Bible (family prayers and lectionary from the BCP 2011)
Chemistry (Apologia Lab at Class Day)
American History (ABeka)
American Literature (ABeka; plus Merchant of Venice class with me at Brave Writer in May)
Intermediate Writing (I'll teach him my usual class at home)
Algebra II (Saxon with Johanna Vignol)
Computer Programming (online--have to research)
PE (at Class Day: volleyball and basketball)

Jonathan (9th grade)
Bible (as above)
Geography (Mapping the World by Heart at Class Day)
Health (ABeka)
Introduction to Literature (Bob Jones or SMARR; Merchant of Venice in May)
Not sure what we'll be doing for writing...
Algebra I (Saxon with Johanna Vignol)
Physical Science (ABeka, no lab)
PE (at Class Day: volleyball and basketball)

Benjamin (6th grade)
Bible (as above)
World History (Sonlight 6 with Story of the World)
Literature (Spectrum Reading workbooks, some Bob Jones Lit 6 and some Sonlight readers)
Daily Grams 6
Spelling Power/Spectrum Spelling
Brave Writer freewriting prompts
Math (ABeka 6)
Usborne Science Encyclopedia (selected units)
German in 10 Minutes/Day

At Brave Writer this next year I'm picking up two new classes: six-week literary analysis classes for books I adore: Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. I'll also be teaching the MLA Research Essay course in the fall, the Groovy Grammar and Playing with Poetry family workshops in the winter, and the Merchant of Venice high school Shakespeare class along with possibly the Shakespeare family workshop again. I'll miss teaching the Just So Stories class in the fall: a story writing class based on Kipling's animal stories. It's so fun, but I think with my new courses, it will be too much. I also hope to finish writing a book for Brave Writer for high school students writing the MLA research essay.

So as this year winds down, I feel fairly confident about our plans for Year 15 of home education.

And now I have no excuse to keep me from starting to grade that teetering stack of research papers, so off I go. I probably won't have time to post much until we're done with the school year, unless I raid my archives.... ;)

Schooling-ly yours,
Susanne