(A few of these might be affiliate links, where I might get back a tiny (tiny!) piece of anything you spend. Most are simply links to the resources themselves.)
This year, my kids range from 1st grade to 11th grade. And as usual, they are all based at home. I started typing them out and goodness, but the post got long! So here is where I’ll be posting the individual plans for my oldest two children, and I already covered some of the things we’ll do together (good for a homeschool with multiple ages). Then, over the next few days, I’ll add my elementary school plans into the mix.
***If you aren’t interested in homeschooling, please just skip through these few posts. This is a hot topic in my neck of the world (and internet) right now!***
That’s one of the best things about homeschooling – each kid gets a specifically tailored experience!
Here are our plans:
11th/12th grade (Age based, should be in 11th, but he’s been working ahead and should graduate this year!):
The choice of how to go about homeschooling a high schooler is one that a lot of people write about, but I don’t consider myself an expert on this. I highly recommend you do some research and see what will work for you and your child. What are they looking to do? If college is in the cards, what do the ones they would want to apply to look for? If a GED is sufficient, would that be a better way to go? Or do dual credit and start taking community college courses while still in high school? There are many ways to do it.
Our high schooler is doing an online accredited program so he’ll get an accredited diploma. He’s done EdOptions Academy for the past nearly two years and we are trying out Acellus this summer. Both have strengths and weaknesses in their different styles, but we’ll let him make the decision to finish out his high school career. (Yikes – did I really just write that?!)
8th-9th grade (This child is in 8th grade by age, but 9th in many subjects. He wants to start high school work, so we’ll see how that goes.)
- Math: Teaching Textbooks Algebra (or perhaps Acellus Algebra)
- Language Arts: Open Tent Academy class, copywork, TTRS Typing, Writeshop book, and Spelling City, and more spelling with a physical workbook (This child really struggles with spelling, and both writing and typing the words help him get them down!)
- Science: Nature studies (in theory, supposed to be a co-op, but it’s going to just be us) and Acellus science
- History / social studies: following the election (C-Span does some good classroom materials on this, and in 2016 sent out a great map, but there are a lot of options!), Story of the World 4 (The Modern Age) – we have the books, the activity books, the CDs (I haven’t seen audiobooks, but please let me know if you have!), and the tests and answer keys. If you want to start at the beginning, you can do volume 1 (Ancient Times), volume 2 (the Middle Ages), and volume 3 (Early Modern Times).
- Art: Talya’s Art Studio (live classes for the whole family), Shalom coloring (Amazon link – this is what we use to keep hands busy for read-alongs), A Year in My Life,
- Music: Hebrew in Harmony
- Physical Education / Gym: Tae kwon do practice (luckily we have a black belt in the house!) and running on the treadmill
- Health: First Aid course
- Judaics: Gemara, Parsha, Hebrew, etc. with a local cohort. At this point, it looks like it will be online, and we are looking at other options to switch – Jewish Online School has fans in this area.
