On the one hand, I am so behind where I would normally be at this point in planning for the young man's school year. On the other hand, plans are starting to shape up, so I'm not going to sweat it. I should start by saying we wrapped up the past year nicely. He did a science project on whether dogs can see color with mixed results. One of our dogs was more cooperative than the other. He played a season of baseball and was selected for the all stars team. That was rough on the schedule, to say the least. He has had a whirlwind summer. His hockey coaches had selected him for a scholarship to attend a three week sports camp where he majored in hockey, and minored in several other sports. It was pretty intense. He is now heading in to a training camp for his new Bantam team and looking forward to starting another season of hockey.
We'll take one more week off after the training camp before we dive back in to another year of studies. The plans are not changed all that much from the last post. I am still having him use The Thinking Tree journals for growing in independent study. But instead of the 10-Subject Portfolio, I have decided to continue using the regular journals, similar to those we used the second half of last year. I will list with links to the ones I plan to use. I don't have them yet, but will order the first one this week. He will record his sports science and ancient history studies in those journals, along with some home economics, health, and literature. However, he will start the day with Dyslexia Games, series C, for some brain exercise before embarking on the rest of the studies.
For Language Arts, he will continue to work through the Apples and Pears spelling books and read from the McGuffey's Fifth Reader, and other selections. He'll continue word study using a teacher-created book called Get to the Root of It. I found this on the Teachers Pay Teachers website. I have decided to set aside the Writing Skills, Book 2, for now, and try out a unit from Brave Writer to go along with the first book we'll be reading for literature: A Christmas Carol. It combines some grammar along with literature study and writing. We will see how that goes.
For math, I only plan to have him work through Mastering Essential Math Skills, book 1. If he wants to also continue reading where we left off with Life of Fred, I will leave that to his discretion. He will also be taking a Personal Finance class through our co-op, so I don't feel the need to add anything to our math work at home. His other co-op classes include Judo, and a Career Exploration class. It should be a fun year at co-op.
Extra subjects, like geography and social studies, will come up naturally in the journals, rather than assigning specific days for them. That seemed a bit overwhelming when we did it that way before. It flowed much more naturally with the mixed subject journals. In addition, we still plan for him to work in the Dad Time journal with Dad once or twice/week. And he'll also have opportunity to work on some hobby projects on diy.org. He is currently interested in film making and photography. All of this along with chores, hockey practice, youth group, drum lessons, and so on will make for some pretty full days.
Now, here are the Thinking Tree journals I plan to use:
Fun-Schooling with Minecraft (available soon)
Fun-Schooling for Boys - Winter Homeschooling Handbook
Homeschooling Boys - Library Based Journal
