Thursday, August 7, 2008

It's a New Year! Happy Homeschooling!

For as long as I can remember my life has revolved around the school year! So mid-August is really my January...the beginning a new year of school and all the promise it holds! I love summer and all the fun things we do and having Dave home but by the beginning of August I find myself getting antsy for the new school year to begin...to get back to a routine...to have things feel a little bit normal. One of my favorite things to do to get ready for the new school year is ordering new curriculum! This year both Caleb and Josh will be at RHS and so it will be only Micah and I at home. I am looking forward to the time I will have with him and I think he is excited to be the only one home as well. He has been pouring through our Rainbow Resource catalog circling all kinds of things he thinks would be cool to do this year. Who needs the Sears catalog when you have your Rainbow Resource catalog handy?!! We finally narrowed down our school list and put in the order last week. Now we are pins and needles waiting for our big box of new books to arrive in the mail....Christmas in August! There are a few things I have used in the past that we are sticking with this year:

Math: Finish Transition Math (Pre-Alg) that he started last year and then start Jacob's Alg. 1. Caleb used Jacobs in 7th-8th grade as well and it really helped prepare him for the math he has had at the high school. In fact it almost prepared him too well as he has been a little bored in math and his teachers have decided to have him skip Pre-Calc this year and take AP Calc as a junior.

Science: Apologia General Science Caleb did both the General Science and Biology through Apologia and really enjoyed both courses and learned a lot. He is a science guy and Apologia really fed his thirst for Science and made him want more.

For everything else with Micah, we are trying new materials. I am excited about this becaue I like to try out new things.

Bible: For Bible last year Josh and Micah and I did "It All Begins in Genesis" from Answers in Genesis. We all loved this curriculum and learned SO much. This year Micah and I are going to try Discovering our Amazing God which studies the character of God from the OT and teaches the kids how to do Bible study Precept style!

History: We are going to do History Odyssey: Level 2 - Ancients. Micah helped choose this...he is wanting to get into the ancient civilizations. We did the Ancients with all 3 of the boys a few years ago through Learning Adventures which I really loved and we will probably pull some material out of that again. Micah was pretty young at that time so it will be good to go through it again.

Reading/Spelling/Vocab: Total Language Plus. I am looking foward to trying these out. I have not used them before but I have perused them at Curriculum Fairs. We are going to read Call of the Wild...Micah's choice. and The Bronze Bow...my choice since it will coincide with Acient Rome and we will probably do the Christmas short stories around Christmas time as well.

Writing: Jump In from Apologia.....I am excited about this as well. Micah wants to be a writer and loves to write stories so I think this will really give him some good tools to use.

Foreign Language: Elementary Greek Koine ....this is totally Micah's choice. I was thinking Spanish but he thought it would be cool to learn Greek and be able to read the NT in its origianal language. Maybe our pastor was onto something we he said he thought Micah would grow up to be a preacher.

Grammar: Analytical Grammar....I can't honestly say I am excited about this because I just don't get real excited about anything Grammar but from all I have read I think it will be very good for him and really help him improve his grammar.

That is our main stuff. We now just need the big brown box to arrive so we can get everything out and ready to go! I am looking forward to a great school year. I will let you know what we think of all the new stuff once we have been in it for a while!!

Happy New Year!!

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

well i made it through all of your posts! i hope homeschooling is off to a good start and you guys are enjoying all of your great books. sending school year blessings...

 
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