Thursday, February 6, 2014

Retooling Junior Year

As you can probably guess,  given my previous post, the semester got off to a late start. We ended up dropping the outside Algebra 2 class Rocket Boy was enrolled in. He was having some trouble keeping up and the curriculum wasn't the greatest match, then when you throw in missing three weeks of class due to his illness, it just made sense to go another route. We chose to use Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2 for the remainder of the course. In order to determine the starting point for the course, Rocket Boy is taking the tests and when he hits a wall, ideally we will have our starting point. Hopefully this will keep him from having to repeat material he has mastered.

The close of fall semester also brought the close of the required high school history courses to our homeschool. Both American History and World History are on the books! This semester Rocket Boy is studying American Government for 1/2 credit. I selected Power Basics American Government from Walch Education. It contains all of the needed information, tests and the activity workbook requires research, critical thinking, writing and some project management. Combined with the fast-paced Standard Deviants American Government DVD's, it makes for a complete American Government course.

We picked up Windows to the World again and I love, love, love this program! Rocket Boy is writing his first literary analysis paper (on how the author creates suspense in the short story A Most Dangerous Game) and it has opened up a new way of thinking for him. I think we may be able to complete this program by the end of the summer. For the remainder of his English credit he is continuing with Easy Grammar's 180 Daily Teaching Lessons and Vocabulary Power Plus for the New SAT, Volume 2. 

Rocket Boy is continuing with his outside chemistry course, using Spectrum Chemistry. Although he missed some classes due to his illness, he was able to do the labs here at home with his dad, so he was able to keep up. He has also picked up a one semester career exploration course through our co-op.

I'm hoping things will smooth out some soon - this week is actually our first un-interrupted school week of the semester - no hospital, no doctors, no medical tests! I'm not sure how much we will have to go into the month of June to get finished, but honestly, finishing by a certain date isn't that important to me anymore - it's just a privilege to be able to finish!

8 comments:

Sarah at SmallWorld said...

I love reading what others use for English. So happy to hear that he enjoyed writing a literary analysis paper!

Carol said...

I'm impressed that you're actually doing anything at all after reading about your start to the year!! All the best for the rest of the year.

Linda said...

Came to your blog by way of the Let's Homeschool High School Blog Hop.
Isn't it great that you can adapt school how you need to? Someone I know once said, "It is not winning the race, it is being in the race." I wish you all the best as you work your way through medical issues and homeschooling.

TechWife said...

Sarah - Thanks for stopping by! He used to like writing a lot more than he does now, so it's been very encouraging to see some progress this year!

TechWife said...

Carol - Thanks so much for the encouragement!

TechWife said...

Linda - Thanks for the encouragement - I'm glad you stopped by!

Trish Corlew said...

I've never heard of that Civics course... will be checking it out! We homeschool year round for this very reason. We don't worry about when we finish, as long as we eventually do!

TechWife said...

Trish - I wish I could stop worrying about the finish, but he's dead set on graduating May 2015. We'll see how it goes.