Sunday, August 7, 2011

Back to School Part 1: the plan

Public schools start tomorrow, and although as homeschoolers we do not have to follow any particular school schedule, with the girls' neighborhood and school friends resuming their school schedules we usually try to get started also.  With 2 already graduated and grown, I have quite an accumulation of materials and resources for the remaining two, but I still have to spend some time over the summer planning out what we are doing, gathering the resources from the various corners of our house and looking for new resources to update our collection or meet our new needs.

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the ElementsThe Joy of Chemistry: The Amazing Science of Familiar ThingsThis is Hannah's last year of high school and she has all the credits she needs to graduate except one English credit, however she has to do 4 "classes" according to the umbrella school we use.  She will be prepping for one last go at the ACT, in hopes of inching up just a couple of points which would put her in a higher scholarship category.  Aside from that she will be doing readings in Shakespeare and British Literature through the year, Chemistry using an eclectic set of books, including The ElementsThe Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the ElementsThe Joy of Chemistry: The Amazing Science of Familiar Things; and Exploring the World of Chemistry: From Ancient Metals to High-Speed Computers. She does not really need any additional science, so my goal is just some familiarity with the area and keeping interest piqued, not scientific "rigor" necessarily.

Exploring the World of Chemistry: From Ancient Metals to High-Speed Computers
Hannah also expressed a desire to learn about Philosophy, so she will be reading Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy (FSG Classics), along with Philosophy Made Simple and 50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need To Know

She will also continue making art and jewelry, as well as training and competing in epee and foil (fencing) and learning saber technique.  This weekend she participated in a fashion show event as a model at Macy's and will likely be doing some more modeling.  Back to School Part 2 will feature the educational plan for my 8th grader this year.

2 comments:

Sweet Bee Cottage said...

Wow! I thought we started early - but I don't have students until the 18th. My daughter starts on the 16th. When do you get out for the summer?

Happy Back to School Day!

Unknown said...

Yes - the schools around here start waaay earlier than they did when I was a kid! The public schools get out for the summer the Friday before Memorial Day, unless they have had to do make up days for snow or other weather, then sometimes it will go a day or two past Memorial Day. Our family, however, likes to finish up "structured" school some time in April or early May at the latest so we can go to the beach before the rates go up.