Miss Green Starts High School. Ack!

I have been worrying about high school for years, but now that its here, I'm not worried. I had planned a more challenging year, a la Well Trained Mind, but she needs a different pace and that's fine.

Math: She has been asking for Teaching Textbooks Algebra for quite a while, and I finally found it for the right price on Homeschool Classifieds.  I'm so happy we did. She is loving it! This is working so well, I hate to say anything to jinx it.

Language Arts: I decided to give Rod and Staff another try for her and purchased Preparing for Usefulness. I was a mean mom when it came in the mail and teased her about how much she was going to love what was in the package. When she opened it, she literally cried. I felt horrible, but she's starting to come around a little. She has asked to start doing the tests, so I plan on starting them this week. She really learns more if she knows there's a test coming. I also need to get the next level of Vocabulary from Classical Roots, but I've dropped the ball. She also asked to get a spelling curriculum to review, but I don't know what to get yet. I had her do the Sequential Spelling placement test, and she only missed one in the uppermost level. I'd love suggestions!

History: She asked to use Mystery of History 1 instead of Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Ancient World. I've decided to roll with it, since she's planning to beef it up and write weekly papers. We'll see how that goes.

Science: I had planned on using Apologia's Biology, and when I found out our local homeschool group was having a science co-op using the same, it was a lock. Miss Green wasn't so sure about it, but she is loving it! Well, she loved it up to the Chemistry module. Hopefully it will go back to loving it now that we're done with that module. I bought her the audio as well, and it helps tremendously to get it done in the car.

Latin: She is doing First Form Latin with Mr. Blue and Miss Pink.

Logic: Together, we settled on Fallacy Detective combined with the Art of Argument. She really likes Fallacy Detective, but she doesn't think she's retaining what she learned. She liked the look of Art of Argument, so we'll try adding that in.

Rhetoric: This past year she discovered Public Speaking and fell in love. She won the county 4-H competition and went to state where she got the highest honors possible at her level. She wants to start a speech and debate club and really wants to develop her public speaking skills. She likes the look of Argument Builder, and we both think it will help develop her speech writing.

Art: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in our little co-op.

Electives: She has asked if she can independently study Soil & Water Conservation. I'm excited to see what she comes up with!

Mr. Blue and His 7th Grade Year

Mr. Blue is probably my most challenging child academically. He's incredibly bright, but also lacks concentration skills. I've discovered that I can't leave him to do his work independently. I used to think parents who said that had a lack of discipline in their homes. I'm learning differently. Isn't it great what homeschooling teaches us as parents? I'm hoping that if I can stay on top of him, he will gradually develop a slightly longer attention span. We'll see.

Math: We have done 2 things this year. I started with the Art of Problem Solving Pre-Algebra. I really like this curriculum. I like that its challenging, but the challenge is more in thinking about the math than actually doing a difficult problem. This is the kind of curriculum that would have been perfect for me as a kid and will probably be perfect for Mr. Yellow when he gets to that stage. However, it didn't quite cut it for Mr. Blue, so we switched to Teaching Textbooks Prealgebra. This is working perfectly for him. He especially loves getting graded on every lesson, go figure. He has quite the competitive streak and likes to find out how he did versus his sisters scores for the day.

Language Arts: He's doing Following the Plan with Miss Pink. It's going really, really well. Rod and Staff is quite challenging, so even though its 2 years behind where he is grade-wise, I don't feel too bad about it. The important thing to me is that he's learning new things. For spelling, I have him now doing Sequential Spelling on dvd. He really didn't learn anything the years he did Spelling Workout, and Sequential Spelling seems to be helping. I'm going to look at their apps next and see if they'll be a good match for him.

History: Story of the World Ancients as a spine, with added reading.

Science: This is my first time using Apologia's General Science. I have found that the audio CD is worth its weight in gold for Mr. Blue. Oddly enough, he's resisting doing the experiments. Since his retention seems fine, I'm not going to force the issue. I see they have a new notebook, which looks intriguing, but not for the $33 price tag. I have him taking the tests at our science co-op with another family doing the same curriculum. It helps him tremendously to have that accountability.

Latin: First Form Latin with Miss Pink and Miss Green

Art: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in our art co-op.

Latin, Latin, and more Latin!

I've had quite a few questions lately about our Latin studies, so I thought I'd take a moment to review the many books we've used. First though, why study Latin? I decided to teach my children Latin after reading this article from Memoria Press and this article in the same issue of The Classical Teacher, which I thoroughly enjoy reading. To put it in a nutshell for our family, Latin is teaching us to use the English language and it will help the kids learn other languages in the future. We started out with Prima Latina, which we loved. It sounds insane, but my kids really enjoyed memorizing the prayers. The vocabulary was gentle and words they enjoyed using. We only got into trouble when we started conjugating verbs and declining nouns, but we pressed through. I thought we'd use the dvds extensively, but after watching once, my kids begged me not to put it in again. We did use the cd though, every time we got in the car. From there we went on to Latina Christiana. Although its from Memoria Press, we didn't like it nearly as well as PL. We got about 8 lessons in before it was too much for Mr. Blue and we stopped. Once again, we hated the dvd and loved the cd. It didn't have the prayer memorization, which we missed. Along with LC, we also used Lingua Angelica, also from Memoria Press. This is just a beautiful cd and even though we haven't gotten around to translating yet, we enjoy listening to it frequently. Then we tried Latin for Children. These dvds were much friendlier than the Latina Christiana set, but my kids still didn't click with them. What I love about Latin for Children are the extras! They've got the History Reader, the Activity Book, the dvd, etc. to go along with the basic text. I'm hoping to use these down the road, but we gave up again after a few lessons. In the meantime I started Song School Latin with Miss Pink. Wow! I love this program! It's so simple and fun. Miss Pink thinks its okay, but Miss Purple? She love, love, loves it! She knows all the songs and sings them for fun frequently. She asks to hear the cd whenever we get in the car. Mr. Blue today asked if he could do Song School Latin for his Latin now, so I guess its a winner with him too. This month we've started Lively Latin after reading lots of positive reviews for it. Miss Green says she really, really likes this one. She's been exclaiming every day during Latin, "Mommy, I really like this Latin!" Mr. Blue has started LL as well, though he's a few weeks behind Miss Green. I think this is going to be a great fit, although I've read recently that LL 2 is not as good as LL 1, so we'll have to see when we get around to that point. I've seen so many different Latin curricula tempting me, but I'm trying to be strong and save my school budget for math. There's just too much fun stuff out there calling my name. I've got to stop researching. Every month there's something new out there that promises to be all I've been looking for for a certain child/subject. It's a siren call that I try to avoid when possible, but its a necessary evil. I'm scheduled to go to a homeschool fair this weekend, and I'm debating the wisdom of that. Will it help or hinder or efforts for this year? Well, either way, I'm getting my list together!