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Grade nine. We’ve finally made it. Over the years, I never thought my kids would grow so quickly. Now, my oldest is starting high school and I’m realizing more and more just how precious my short time with them really is.
High school is a scary territory. Where we’ve spent the last several years enjoying a relaxed homeschool approach, we now need to buckle down. We will need to log hours and keep that pesky transcript in mind. These next four years will mold my child in ways that my mind can’t even fathom. The freshmen year will be the foundation of a high school career. The classes she takes and books she reads will mark her life in ways we don’t yet know. That’s why picking out the perfect freshmen homeschool curriculum is so important to me.
I’ve been roughly sketching out these years in my mind for years. I knew exactly which curriculum I loved and which I wanted to avoid. I had the perfect plan almost complete. It was relaxed and yet rigorous enough to challenge Ms. Bookworm. I had done my research and chosen almost all of our curriculum.
Our freshmen homeschool choices looked like this:
English:
The plan was to continue with Easy Grammar. It’s quick and easy and super affordable! The repetition is just what mu kids need to help them remember all of the grammar rules.
Literature:
Since Ms. Bookworm loves to read so much, I didn’t worry much about literature. The plan was books picked out together using a recommended reading list She’s been reading high school level novels for a few years now simply because she enjoys them. Her high school years will be spent introducing her to new genres.
Math:
We’ve been die-hard Teaching Textbooks fans for our entire homeschool career, but there’s just something I really love about CTC math. I know Ms. Bookworm will enjoy it just as much as I do. (If we do decide we don’t like it, we’ll head back to Teaching Textbooks, though.)
World History:
Since she loves these books so much, we were planning on letting her use the World History as her curriculum She would use the QR codes to dig deeper and learn even more on each topic. She’s read through most of the books in the series and loves to spend her free time reading them. Why not just let her learn world history in a way she actually enjoys?
Science:
Ms. Bookworm is a pretty big nerd. She loves all things science and can spend an entire evening talking with her dad about the things that make me fall asleep, like molecules and DNA. For her freshmen year, we found an amazing Integrated Physics and Chemistry curriculum from Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum. Y’all, it’s SO. GOOD. Once it arrived, she started doing it, just for fun. It even looks super interesting to me.
So, our freshmen homeschool curriculum was starting to fall into place.
But then…
I saw that The Good and The Beautiful has a high school option coming soon.
And now I’m second-guessing everything I’ve ever planned.
Because, we have started using The Good and The Beautiful with my 4th grader and I am IN LOVE with it. It brings a sense of peace to our homeschool day and makes learning enjoyable again. It’s like a wave of calm has just taken over with her studies and I would LOVE to use it as our freshmen homeschool curriculum.
The literature includes some very promising classics:
The Story of John Greenleaf Whittier
Into the Unknown
The high school curriculum includes literature, writing, grammar, punctuation, spelling, vocab, geography and art. She would join us for our science studies (beginning with Meteorology) and history, both from The Good and The Beautiful. She will still be using CTC for math and she would work through her Integrated Physics and Chemistry in her “free time.” Because she’s weird like that. 😉
The Good and The Beautiful will be releasing their high school courses in the summer of 2018, so I’ll have just enough time to decide if I want to use it when we start back to school in the fall. If not, we will go with the plan above, but I’m really praying The Good and The Beautiful works out for Ms. Bookworm!
Either way, I’m excited to really make the most of these last few years with my baby girl. My goal is to create memories, laugh a whole lot more and ensure she has the skills she needs to be successful in life.
What does your freshmen homeschool curriculum look like?
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