It's that time again! Researching and planning has been done, and the new school year is just around the corner. This week we made our final choices, and the upcoming homeschool year is all mapped out. Some changes, but a lot of the same. The biggest change is HIGH SCHOOL! Yes, our four are entering 9th grade this fall (insert fear and trepidation here).
We will start our fourth year of using Monarch (by Alpha Omega Publications - AOP) for our teens. Our fifth (!!) year of homeschooling. Monarch has worked for our family so well. We love the freedom and flexibility of being able to homeschool and roadschool, only needing an internet connection.
This fall we will be attending our local homeschool co-op, as well. The classes haven't posted yet, but as soon as they do, we hope to pick a mix of fun and educational classes to supplement our home curricula.
Our core subjects will be ninth grade New Testament, English, Algebra, World Geography, Physics and Integrated Chemistry.
We are planning to work on Finnish as our foreign language this year. Mr. T has his Finnish books from last year, and Missy is hoping to go to Finland at some point to take language classes there. And we found a free foreign language resource Mango through our library for online foreign language lessons (they offer other languages as well).
We also have three electives for the year: AOP Monarch Small Business Entrepreneurship, An Introduction to Policy Debate (and workbook) by Christy Shipe (from HSLDA), and Dave Ramsey's Foundations in Personal Finance.
Throughout the summer, and continuing into fall three of our students will be working on finishing their 8th grade language arts curriculum One Year Adventure Novel. It has been a good exercise in writing, but we weren't able to get through the entire material before summer.
So a full year coming up, for sure.
We are super excited about Little Miss' new second grade curriculum. Have you heard of the brand new online curriculum Dew Learning? That is what we'll be using. Little Miss can't wait! Stay tuned for more updates as we get started, and for a discount code through Our Mothership Adventures!
Little Miss will also attend our homeschool co-op in Florida this September. First time for her! Even though she'll be working on second grade at home, at co-op she'll be attending the first grade class. This past year we worked on K-1st material, and I think it will be a good fit for her to work on 1st and 2nd grade classes this fall.
But before we start another year, we need a few more weeks of summer fun!!!
All opinions expressed in this blog are purely our own. Occasionally sponsors and advertisers will provide products at no charge so they can be reviewed on this site. We only agree to feature a product that the Our Mothership Adventures crew wants to use personally and that we feel would benefit our readers. No exceptions!
At this time we would like to especially thank Alpha Omega Publications, Dew Learning and WebFones for their sponsorship of this website.
Looks & sounds exciting! I love that Dave Ramsey is an elective! ;)
ReplyDeleteWe might start the Dave Ramsey curr next month as a family study, we'll see... :)
ReplyDeleteHey! Have you ever used Math U See or heard anything about it?
ReplyDelete"We love the freedom and flexibility of being able to homeschool and roadschool, only needing an internet connection." Even though we have only been on the road about a year, we have come to find that we agree :') Being able to bring our tablet with us is a lot easier then a bunch of books and work sheets.
ReplyDeleteOur daughter will be going into 9th grade this year. So, we are planning on trying out Time4Learning's new High School courses.
( http://www.time4learning.com/curriculum/high-school.html )
Have you heard anything about them? We are also planning on adding a foreign language this year. I have been considering Rosetta Stone.
I wish we could be part of a co-op, but I don't think we could, as we do not stay in one place very long. How many days a year do you Roadschool?
Anna, so sorry about the delay in responding!! I've been offline mostly for the past 2+ weeks. Personally I have no experience with Math U See, but I've heard great things about it, and my sister used it last year with her little boys.
ReplyDeleteStacie, very exciting about your road school! And 9th grade, too! Did you look into Monarch? We did the T4L demo a couple of years ago, but my older kids didn't like it. They might like the high school version, but we are all set for this coming year with Monarch.
I have heard good things about Rosetta, but a close friend using it last year for French has had all kinds of difficulties with it. Technical, mainly.
Our time on road varies greatly.. Almost always less than three months in one place. But that three months is sometimes enough for a co-op.
Hello! I am trying to get some more reactions now that Dew is online. I am using their fourth grade math, but the course is very incomplete and and most of the lessons are not even online yet. I've had to email them several times today alone with problems I found in the first 5 lessons. It's really a disaster. Have you had a chance to look over yours yet? I'd really like to know if it is just my bad luck to pick the one neglected lesson. Thanks for your help.
ReplyDeleteHi Carla, I' sorry you had a rough time at it! We did only two lessons, and also had some technical difficulties. It is possible though, one of them was my hardware, as folks at Dew Learning were not able to reproduce the problem.. We decided to try again either tomorrow or next week (we haven't officially started yet).
ReplyDeleteI do like what I see, though, so I'm going to try to be patient while they get going. We've been with AOP Monarch from day 1, too, and there were some bugs in the beginning that were frustrating. AOP folks were able to fix the bugs fairly quickly, and I'm sure Dew will, also. They were very responsive today.
It can be frustrating, though, and it is possible the first year will be rough.. I hope not, though! I'd hang in there a bit longer. Good luck!
I'm hoping to do a few more lessons, and maybe do a blog post next week.