David’s 9th grade Plan

As a homeschooler, my goals for high school go beyond college prep.  I’m not looking to duplicate what my child could do in a brick-and-mortar school.  I want him to be able to take advantage of the unique opportunities he can have simply by virtue of the fact that his education is of his own making.

I want his high school years to both prepare him for college and be uniquely his.

I think we’ve found a good balance between what he wants to learn and what he needs to work on to be college ready in a few years.  Here’s a look at his coursework for the year.

English Literature & Composition

The Lively Art of Writing plus this workbook

Windows to the World + Jill Pike’s syllabus that combines it with Teaching the Classics (works of literature are scheduled)

This overall Language Arts plan is influx at the moment (9/27)---it looks like I am going to modify Lively Art and probably not use Jill Pike’s Syllabus, but add some novels David wants to study…we’ll see.

Math (Algebra 1)

Discovering Algebra:  An Investigative Approach We both ended up hating this text.  Instead we are using an older edition of Dolciani’s Algebra 1.

plus Life of Fred Beginning Algebra (expanded edition)

Science

Conceptual Physics (high school edition by Paul Hewitt)

Take-Home Physics:  65 High-Impact, Low-Cost Labs still using, but cutting back on the number of labs---sometimes less is more.

A Brief History of Time:  from the Big Bang to Black Holes

Social Studies

Runkle’s World Physical Geography and activity book

plus the syllabus found here (scroll down) My son and I both agree that this set is not high school level, though the publisher insists that it’s appropriate for middle school to high school.

Instead we are using Makers of Science and Philosophy Adventure.

research project?

Where on Earth Am I?

Spanish 1

Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish Even though this is a solid text, it does not fit my son’s learning style.

Duolingo (website) initially, once he becomes more comfortable with the language, we may add Destinos, or we may save that for Spanish 2.

The Arts

Master Drawing

9th Grade Music and Art Appreciation from Harmony Fine Arts

PE and Health

Family Time Fitness with the rest of the family

Total Health:  Choices for a Winning Lifestyle

Elective

TeenCoder: C# Windows Programming and Game Programming

Note:  Our state’s homeschool law requires me to provide instruction in PE, art, music, and health every year, even though brick-and-mortar high schoolers will typically only take each of those courses for 1 semester or year during their high school career, finishing with:

• 1/2 credit PE
• 1 credit fine arts (music, art, drama)
• 1/2 credit health

Additionally, David’s working towards Eagle Scout, is currently Assistant Patrol Leader, and will be assisting with our local homeschool group’s STEM club for boys.  It’s my hope that this course load will leave plenty of free time to pursue other interests, so I’m purposely not going to overload him with assigned reading.

That’s his mug over there…he really is excited about this year…he just hates getting his picture taken.

Update 9/27/14:  After working at it for a few weeks, we decided we really needed to change things.  Things are going much more smoothly now.

Have you got a 9th grader this year?  What are your learning plans?