The History of the Renaissance World

I was so fortunate to be one of the lucky winners of an ARC of Susan Wise Bauer's next book in her world history series - The History of the Renaissance World. I am so excited to have the opportunity to read it before it is released. We use this series for our high school students and I have been waiting not-so-patiently to add this book to our curriculum. By the time our upcoming freshman needs it, it will be published. I am currently reading the book and will post a review once I'm finished.

Trying something new. . .

Now that the oldest has been accepted to his preferred college and is finishing up the remainders of his senior year of high school at home, I have been looking back and pondering what I want to do differently with the younger two students. Each student is different and I must work with each one to fit their curriculum to their needs and interests. But generally, I like to be somewhat consistent in how we school.

I use The Well Trained Mind as my template for our homeschool. I find it to be the best in explaining the method and in giving examples of curriculum to fulfill the needed coursework. I also believe that it is the most complete and ambitious vision of what homeschooling can be.

My kids don't seem to enjoy math very much and we tried various math curriculum with the oldest and Saxon Math seemed to work as well as any other. With my upcoming freshman, I am considering switching to Jacob's Elementary Algebra. If this doesn't seem to work, we will probably fall back on Saxon Algebra 1.

This summer we are trying something we haven't done in quite awhile. My kids are all good readers and prefer to read books on their own.  However, I will be reading Sophie's World out loud and then we will discuss together. That is the plan, anyway.

We will continue to school year-round and take short breaks throughout the year.
Their music study will continue with private lessons.
I think the biggest change will be that I am going to try to add much more literature that we all read and discuss together, not just one student and parent.

I am still trying to figure out the best way to tackle Latin study. Nothing we have tried has really clicked with all of us. I am considering Wheelock's Latin this year - but we will see how that goes.

Something Old is New - SchoolHouseTeachers.com

When I started homeschooling way back when, there was The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. It was a staple for many homeschooling families. I thought we were past the need for this particular resource. Well, I think I may have been wrong. The Old Schoolhouse Magazine now has a wonderful membership required website called SchoolHouseTeachers.com. I just recently joined and have been really pleasantly surprised by just how many resources there are available.

The Schoolhouse Planners are pretty amazing and if you like a paper planner, they include pretty much everything you could hope for - including high school planning, many reference sheets and several different versions of calendar pages that should suit pretty much everyone.

I am excited to start using the French and Spanish lessons and worksheets as supplements to our current book-based curriculum.

I think the resource I am most excited about is the Classics-Based Writing Course for Middle and High School Students by Janice Campbell. I have used some of her curriculum from Excellence in Literature and have been quite impressed.

I have barely scratched the surface of what is available at SchoolHouseTeachers.com, but I am looking forward to exploring and implementing some of what I find in our homeschool. Stay tuned for more updates soon.

~AGeeky Mom
http://schoolhouseteachers.com/dap/a/?a=20601

Where have I been, you ask?

If anyone is out there who cares or is curious, yes, we are still here and we are still homeschooling. This school year has been crazy busy. My son is a senior and we have been focused on all the many things needed to get ready for college admissions.

Over the summer he finished up his testing and did very well. His SAT scores were pretty impressive - I was even a bit surprised at how well he did. I have been working on compiling course descriptions, reading lists, and transcripts.

Now that he has been accepted to the college he wanted, he is finishing up applications to a couple of other colleges - just in case and just because. Now the focus is on maintaining his grades and finishing up all his coursework.

Oh, the things I have learned in the last several months! I will begin working on suggestions and maybe even a couple of templates that may be useful in college preparation.

~AGeekyMom