Homeschooling High School…

We began homeschooling when Keilee was 7.  Then  everything was shiny and new and I hadn’t a clue what I was doing.  High School?? I didn’t think about high school at all.  She was 7!  Well now she is 14 and starting high school.  How did that even happen??? 

There will be no more learning History with her Webkinz.

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Or having a 1700’s day where she wears a costume, uses candles or writes with a quill.  

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Or making a jello cell:

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Or learning about Ancient Greeks by dressing up in a toga.

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 This year looks more ‘bookish, more ‘schoolish’ despite my efforts to talk her out of it.  She wanted to do it this way.  She found her own curriculum except for History.  She wanted Ancient History and couldn’t find a high school level class.  She also knew she wanted Southern Lit so we sat down together to plan it.  She has her daily plan all worked out.  Not every subject every day but it does all flow. 

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Disclaimer: Keilee is like me, great at planning but occasionally lacking follow through. These are her plans but as a Homeschool Mom I know how often plans can change. These will I am sure. 🙂

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Keilee’s 9th Grade 2014-2015

HISTORY:

The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome We LOVE Susan Wise Bauer’s SOTW series. We used them all and loved them so I was so excited to find this. There is also an audio version!

I actually found the book but wondered how much work it would take to make lesson plans when I discovered this:
Study and Teaching Guide: The History of the Ancient World: It is like a grown up “Activities” guide for high school. It looks amazing! We are going to supplement this with movies that I found from the time periods she is studying.

SCIENCE:

Understanding Psychology: Keilee has always loved anything to do with the brain and people’s reasons for behaving a certain way. She found this used on Amazon so I ordered it. I found lesson plans and resources to go along with it here.

SOUTHERN LITERATURE

I couldn’t find a Southern Literature curriculum so we are making our own. Every book list I have found has “To Kill A Mockingbird” on it but Keilee has not only read the book and watched the movie but she played Scout in the play. My brother was very helpful because he was an English major. He gave us several suggestions. I ordered this book; “Growing Up in The South: An Anthology of Modern Southern Literature. I am going to pick a few of the books listed here. We are also reading short stories and poems including:

William Faulkner – Barn Burning and A Rose for Emily or The Bear
Flannery O’Connor – A Good Man is Hard to Find
Truman Capote – A Christmas Memory
Eudora Welty – Why I live at the PO and The Worn Path
Tennessee Williams – The Glass Menagerie or A Streetcar Named Desire (Plays and Movies)
Fannie Flagg – Fried Green Tomatoes
James Dickey – poems (I love Animal Heaven)
Alice Walker – The Flowers; The Color Purple (Flowers is very short but makes you think)
Because of what they wrote about Twain, Poe and Ambrose Bierce are called southern writers by some. Read The Open Window or An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Bierce. Both of those are great!

 CREATIVE WRITING
Keilee has written 24 chapters of her book and will continue to work on this. She will also take a Creative Writing class with Jessica and her girls.

AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE
We are trying to find a local class for this. Someone suggested contacting our Deaf Association and seeing if someone would be willing to teach Keilee. It would help them and her. I am waiting to hear back. In the meantime I found several websites. Lifeprint is one that I found a couple of months ago. Keilee knows the alphabet and so many words from a television show she has watched for a few years. I also found one from Start American Sign Language that looks interesting. Like most things she will have to dive in to know if it’s something she will benefit from.

AFRICA
I have so many Africa resources that Keilee will use for this study. She wants to one day live in Africa so she decided she needed to learn more about the people, the government and the country.
Some of the resources she is using are:
Africa Hands of a Child
African Lap Notes
African Countries
African Maps
Animals of The Savannah Plain
Southern Africa: Tribal Huts and Homes; Tribal Life and Nations
Water and Landforms of Africa
The A to Z of African Countries

ALGEBRA 1 SAXON  {Edited]

Sandra pointed out that I didn’t put her Math on here!  Good grief, we can’t forget our favorite subject! NOT.  We started Algebra I last year and will finish in December and start Geometry 2nd semester.  Well, that’s the plan! 🙂

BIBLE

We are still looking for a good Bible Study.  All the ones I have seen for Teen Girls are full of dealing with things that, thankfully, isn’t something Keilee has to deal with.

We are also watching some YouTube Channels.   One is ET The HipHop Preacher that Bene’, one of our lead pastors, recommended.  I also found a audio version of The New Testament that we are going to listen to.  $2 at a yard sale! 🙂

 We plan on watching tons of movies using the Teach With Movies website. I actually found this site years ago when you had to pay a small yearly fee to join but now it is FREE!! It has so many movies and teaching resources to go along with it. Check it out, I think you will really like it!

2-4 WEEK STUDIES
World Government
Major World Religion
United States Presidents [ongoing] She is making Notebook Pages on each President with information on each one. It will be put in a notebook. I won a lifetime Membership to Notebooking Pages which we LOVE!!
Mythological Creatures
Medicinal Plants

YOUTUBE CHANNELS [She watches these continuously when she is doing anything creative]  I can not tell you how much Keilee has learned from watching YouTube videos all her life.  Her knowledge of all things Science and History amazes me!!
Please watch before you let your children watch. They may not all be appropriate for all ages.

Khan Academy
Animalist News
Animal Planet
Sic Show
Smarter Every Day   We know Dustin. He lives where we live and Keilee has done plays with his brother. 🙂
Crash Course
The Brain Scoop
V Sauce
Horrible History
National Geographic

CURRENT EVENTS:
CNN Student News
BBC Worldnews

PHILOSOPHY

After reading  Sparklee’s post about what she is doing with her kids, the idea of a Philosophy course intrigued me.  So I did some searching and found “Philosophy for Teens” on Amazon.  I got the Kindle version.  I have never taken a Philosophy course but it looks really good.  It also talks about Socrates, Aristotle and Plato so it will go along with our Ancient History.

ARTS:

Of course she will continue with her creative endeavors. She plans on taking her Crafts to our downtown Market on Tuesdays and restocking her Etsy store in time for Christmas.

JOB SHADOWING

She has written down all the ‘job shadowing’ opportunities she wants to explore. I have found that people are very willing to share their love of what they do with kids. All you have to do is ask. The worse they can say is “No”. These will be, hopefully, a couple of days to see if it is something she would like to pursue. Some of the places she has written down are:

Newspaper
Court House
Law Office
Lab
Animal Shelter
Wildlife Refuge

She has another idea for a wonderful volunteer opportunity but we will have to see how it unfolds.

So there you have it. Keilee’s 9th Grade Year. I told her she didn’t even need me but she assures me she will.  She said, “I still need you for Algebra Mom”.  Great!  The thing I HATE most. 🙂  I will still do History and Southern Lit with her because I want to learn too!  I have learned so much since we started homeschooling.

I hope this is an amazing year for us all!!!

Homeschooling Rocks
Karen

My quote this post is from a Paul Simon song.  I hope this is the antithesis of how Keilee feels after her 4 years of learning at home!
“When I look back at all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all”  ~Paul Simon

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Linking with:
Sylvia at “Friendship Friday

19 thoughts on “Homeschooling High School…”

  1. I forgot to ask if Kei has read Kisses from Katie? AHH…I wanted to leave for Africa the day I read it.

    We have experienced the same thing with a Bible study for the girls and I’ve found a book called Courageous Christians that we are going to try…not a Bible study necessarily, but I hope it’s an encouragement and inspiration to them. I’ll let you know:)

  2. I finally got to read through this without interruption;)
    I love seeing your plans and have gotten so many ideas and seen quite a few resources that I know I will want to check in to. I love your plans and that you stress that they are just plans…we won’t accomplish everything we have planned, I’m sure. But we will always be learning as we follow our interests and little rabbit trails here and there:) High School :O
    This is so exciting yet I wish I could slow things down just a bit.

  3. Thank you so much for sharing about the activity guide for The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome! We have loved SOTW and I’ve been thinking of using Susan Wise Bauer’s books for high school history. It didn’t even occur to me to look for an activity guide. Looking forward to seeing your year.

  4. Very cool plans. I can’t wait to hear how you like the Susan Wise Bauer book–that was my original plan, but then we were in the city and saw my grandmother’s apartment from when she first came to NY from Italy and the girls started talking and expressed an interest in learning more about the city of NY and the experience of immigrants in the 1900s.

    I also can’t wait to hear more about the Psychology and the Southern Literature.

    We may use LifePrint for ASL, too. There are two options, one you pay for and you get a certificate of completion and one where you don’t. I am not sure which to do, if a certificate would be necessary or not.

    I still can’t believe our girls are starting high school!

  5. I am not surprised that Keilee’s year will be full of fun and learning. 🙂 Love the photos of her learning as a small one.

    The biggest benefit for me from homeschooling my children was the realization that I could learn about anything I wanted to.

    It seems to take a little longer for some parents to realize that the world is an open book for them, too. Took me ages.
    Then, one year I found myself listing my educational goals next to the ones my kids had.

    And now, I recognize that *I* am learning all the time, too.

    Happy 9th Grade to you both!!

  6. Oh, and forgot to mention, the pictures from previous years are so cute! I remember doing history, etc. with Webkins, too! And Lego creations, and plastic dinosaurs, and other critters! 🙂

  7. What a FANTASTIC plan for 9th grade! I’m so impressed with her organizing skills, too! (And even if it doesn’t go exactly as planned and there isn’t 100% follow-through, she has had a great experience putting together her goals.) We’re doing Saxon Algebra I as well, but we won’t get to it until we finish up our current math unit.

    Sounds like a really fun year of learning, with lots of interesting topics and activities! Have a great year!

  8. Wow! I love all of the ideas you all came up with. Your daughter is amazing and you have done the most wonderful job with her. I am looking forward to following along this year.
    Blessings, Dawn

  9. @ Sandra:
    Thank you for pointing out I forgot MATH. How could I do that? 🙂 I would love the pdf! You can email me at kakeiatbellsouthdotnet I will put this on your blog too in case you don’t see it. 🙂

  10. I love how Keilee has managed to organise a great looking, and very personalised 9th grade year . Southern Literature – how perfect is that! The psychology made me smile. Years ago, when Miss 19 was 14 or 15 she vowed that she hated science and didn’t want to do it ever again. Dh felt science was very important and she would be limiting herself too much if she gave it away so she had to do some science. I was caught in the middle wondering how I could keep keep them both happy when I stumbled across a free pdf study guide for the very book Keilee will be using. We obtained the book and Miss 19 was smitten with the subject, announcing that she was going to study psychology at university . She graduates at the end of this year – and along the way has done a lot more math and science than I (or her younger self) would ever have believed. By the way I still have the pdf and would be happy to email it to you if you think it would be useful – it may just be a pdf version of what is on the support site and/or it may only work with an older edition of the book though.

    I laughed at Keilee needing you for Algebra – I didn’t see it listed and thought maybe you’d decided to skip it this year. I’m with you. I’d rather be joining in with the literature and history.

  11. So many great things to learn this year! Keilee is such an avid learner. She makes a wonderful representative for homeschooled children.

    Thanks for the YouTube links. I was still looking for more video ideas to use on Amber’s sick / exhaustion days. I love the past pictures too. Such fun times you all have had these past years!

  12. I am always amazed at what Keilee is doing and all the wonderful things you two have done together. I am sure this year will be as wonderful as all that have preceded it.

    Thanks to you I have just spend the last half an hour reacquainting myself with music of Paul Simon. There are so many songs from my youth that I have forgotten the title and or artist for. It is wonderful when I come across one again.

  13. Keilee is going to be one busy girl! I love her ideas and am going to check out a few of your resources for Jeremiah! Up north we don’t go back to school until September, so we still have a little bit of summer left to enjoy!

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