Our Plan for 9th Grade
This is a post for those of you either entering the high school homeschool realm or preparing ahead. In our case, I have realized that planning for high school homeschool and planning for high school homeschool with a serious athlete can be two different bears! I am hoping this post will be helpful for both. While we are all looking for the best curriculum, the NCAA seems to have certain requirements that others may not need to worry about. For instance, word on the street is that online classes are something to be cautious about and that having a text as a spine for the curriculum is recommended. These were a few things that we considered in our choices for 9th grade. A few things that I did learn through the hours of research on developing our choices and that I would recommend are: 1 - joining the NCAA Homeschool Facebook page is great for getting ideas and running questions by others that have already been there. 2 - https://www.cmasas.org seems to be an excellent choice for an online program that works well with NCAA guidelines, as well as allows for a flexible traditional homeschool and online schooling mix if needed.
So let's get to it, what did we finally decide.
The first big change we are making is the use of Homeschool Planet. They offer a nice setup for students to check off their assignments throughout the week and I believe this will allow for a bit more independence.
CHEMISTRY - We enjoyed using Apologia Biology. As a biology major myself, I felt it covered topics in a way that will prepare them well for college. Therefore, we will continue with Apologia Chemistry and we will, again, add on labs with College Prep Science.
WORLD HISTORY - While I did love the Critical Thinking US History program, I felt we needed to try something new. We went an entirely different direction than normal and ordered the Glencoe World History Text and Teacher wraparound. This will be a heavy subject this year, but I am hoping we will enjoy learning about some very interesting world history topics!
ALGEBRA 2 - I considered many different math programs for this upcoming year. In the end, my daughter does well in Saxon math and simply understands the program and how it works. Therefore, we decided to stick with Saxon again and will plan to complete Algebra 2 this year.
LANGUAGE ARTS - Oh, this is such a big topic for me. I am a science girl and this subject is just not my game! With that being said, we have to choose something. We are jumping into the world of Bravewriter! We are beginning with the Boomerang Program for Literature and will be using the online version of this program as well (although it is not required). I feel the online class will allow my daughter a little time to interact with others in an academic forum. We will also be using the Easy Grammar Ultimate Series for daily grammar lessons. We will be bringing writing in through her World History book. Throughout the history book are "Writing about History" prompts that cover varied types of writing skills. Depending on how things progress, we may bring in some other writing classes through Bravewriter and Outschool. I believe it will fulfill the requirements of NCAA by having multiple literature texts, a grammar text and the World History text (for writing assignments) as the spine of the course, with additional writing assignments possibly sprinkled in.
ADDITIONAL TOPICS COVERED - We will continue to use Khan Academy for SAT Prep and CNN 10 to stay up to date on current events!