Curriculum choices for 2019-2020 school year

It’s that time again, I finally have all the materials I need to start the school year! And since we got our last package less than a week before we are planning to start, I may have cut it a bit close this year. But huzzah, the carts are all loaded up and we are ready!

Now I am sure you are all very curious about our plans for the year.  Here is a basic break down of each girls class load:

Merry will be in eighth grade and has three classes which will give her highschool credit.  

Math, Life of Fred Advanced Algebra 

Latin, Latin Alive Book 2

Science, Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Physical Science (this year I bought lab kits to insure we are able to do all the labs)

Her other three subjects will be at grade level

History, Oregon History (most area school teach state history in elementary but I think waiting gives a chance for her to understand some of the political aspects of our history, and the only text book I could find was for middle school so I waited to use that.)

English, which will include both Lightning Literature grade 8 as well as Life of Fred’s Language Arts series. 

Health, this is our first year doing a formal health class and Merry’s will be a hodgepodge. We will start with “Girling Up” then go through Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology, and finish using the FDA’s “my plate” unit from online.

Charry’s curriculum is a mix of old favorites and new adventures.

Three of her classes will just be the next level up from last year.

Math, Life of Fred Trigonometry 

Science, Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Physics

History, Notgrass’ Exploring America 

The other four will be new although I’m familiar with most of the publishers.

Health, Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Health and Nutrition 

Literature, Lightning Literature American Literature Early-Mid 19th Century and Lightning Literature American Literature Mid-Late 19th Century

Writing, the One Year Adventure Novel (both girls have done the one year magazine and Charry picked this as one of her two electives this year)

Economics, (Charry’s second elective) this class will be a bit of a hodgepodge. We will start with Money Matters for Teen which should give basics life writing checks and balancing a budget, then Economic Comics, finishing the year with Life of Fred Financial Choices.

Besides their individual classes we will be doing morning time again this year. I really enjoyed daily picture books last year so those will be back, although this year the girls will be reading out loud as well. Morning time will also be including math vocabulary, work roots, maps, sentence diagraming, and flash cards, but not all on the same day.

So there you have it a quick look at our plans for next year. I’m excited!

“Insta”-replay; summer time fun

I’ve felt rather lazy this summer so in an effort to remind myself of how busy we have actually been, here is a look back at our summer... so far.

We went camping with the Woodburn Church family. It was a great time spent with friends!

Afterwards we stumbled on a kite festival! The kites were huge! And some of them did stunts, although not the big ones.

We went to see Toy Story 4.

And we went to see Spiderman Far from Home.

We got our free slurpees during 7/11.

Monday’s lunch with Aunt Coral was a fun summer schedule change.

We had family time, putting together a puzzle one weekend.

Charry got her hair cut, although that she did on her own.  I didn’t even walk to the hair cutting shop with her. 

So I haven’t been completely lazy, I’ve just been very relaxed despite keeping myself somewhat busy. I’m sure things will get even busier as we try to cram as much vacationing as possible into the final weeks before school starts (completely).

Who starts school in August?

Homeschooling moms on Facebook: We are starting school August 1st, so we can take more breaks during the school year.

Me: That’s nuts it is way too early to start school!

Also Me: Hey Merry I forgot to schedule you days off for your trip with your aunts so you need to start early.

So I realized I had forgotten to schedule merry’s vacation and as a result she is doing one lesson a day (of just one subject). She gets to ease into school.

As you can see she is thrilled to be starting a little early. Some teenagers would roll their eyes and glare but not Merry. Although she may have felt a little betrayed since I brought up the idea by saying, “Hey, want to do a fun experiment”. And then after we started setting up told her we would need to read the lesson and answer a few questions first.

The experiment itself was fun, so I didn’t lie. And it involved playing with electricity.

Merry surprised me with her intense observations.

She was less enthusiastic about writing the lab report but she didn’t complain.

A single lesson isn’t really starting, right?