Magic and Mayhem

Victoria and I have been working on the plan for her 9th grade year.

We’ve always been very informal homeschoolers but she’s set her sights on Harvard at the moment (she found out that with our income level it would be free for her to attend).  Who knows if she will feel the same in a couple of years, if she’ll get in or any of that, but it showed us that she should work on putting together a good plan for high school.

Here’s the tentative plan.

Science: We plan to use Friendly Chemistry and a fair share of these free science books and textbooks for the Kindle, such as the CK-12 Chemistry one, Nature Cure and the psychology books.  She’ll continue to do her own interest-led reading and viewing of great science materials too, via programs like NOVA, online videos, library books and so on.

American Literature: I recently shared the reading list we came up with here.  She’ll also read additional books for enjoyment and keep track of those titles, as well.

World History: She’s already started reading a great world history book (I’ll post the title when I find it).  I’m doing A Little History of the World as a read-aloud again with all of the kids, so she’ll listen in on that.  She’ll also read H.G. Wells’ A Short History of the World (which is among the list of free Kindle history books I posted recently).  She is already very good at keeping up with world news and events (she’s the only teen I know who downloads news apps!), and she’ll continue to read National Geographic and relevant articles online.

Math: She’ll be doing algebra this year.  Math has always been the one subject Victoria loathes, so I don’t push it but I try to keep introducing it in different ways.  She’s actually good at it, but she freezes up when faced with sit-down math and we need to help her move past that this year.  We’ll be using Hands On Equations to get her up to speed on algebra.  I really like how simply it explains everything.  Then we’ll be using books and sites like Algebra I (Cliffs Study Solver), Khan Academy, CK-12 Flexbooks for Algebra and other resources.

Foreign Language: She’d like to take German again, but she would love to do a one-month immersion camp at Concordia Language Villages in Northern Minnesota.  One month counts as an entire year of foreign language credit and Concordia is world renowned for its wonderful programs.  That said, it’s $4k and scholarships only lower that to between $2k and $3k.  We’re really going to have to work to figure out a way to make that work for her, but it would be great if she could do it.

Electives: Victoria is still a prolific artist and photographer, so she’ll keep busy with those.  She’ll also keep attending the horse program she attends, plus take part in conferences and workshops that are available in the area.  For PE, she likes solitary activity like running, hiking and doing Wii exercise programs.  She’ll keep doing archery for fun and may take further classes or join an archery league.  She may spend a month in Oregon this fall, where she’ll be taking part in lots of field trips and opportunities.  Our family will probably travel together, too.  She just finished her 8th year acting in the Wilder Pageant and she may take part in other acting projects that come up.

I’m going to use one of these templates for compiling her high school transcripts.  I like the fact that some are very unschool-friendly and that so many colleges gave examples of alternative formats for transcripts for homeschoolers.

I have some high school resources and ideas pinned on my High School Homeschooling board on Pinterest, too.  There’s some really great ideas by other HS moms there, plus some neat sites (and some of the articles I’ve written of high school resources).  I love how easy the web has made homeschooling!

It’s exciting, planning for the high school years with Victoria.  In a way, it reminds me of when we first started this journey.  There’s a sense of newness and adventure.  I’ll let you know how it goes!