THANK YOU, everyone, for talking me down off the ledge. ;) I guess because I have such good memories of the social part of my high school years, I was feeling guilty that my boys wouldn't experience the same thing. (Cathmom -- our pep rallies WERE kind of like assemblies, but fun -- we got to skip the last class on a Friday afternoon, sit next to our friends in the auditorium, listen to some songs from the marching band, and cheer for our football team with cheers/songs like Queen's "We Will Rock You." I'm sure some of my fellow classmates probably didn't like the pep rallies, but it was a great way to end a school week.) And, as for prom, I, of course, was thinking wistfully of my 1980s-style prom, not the prom of today that costs mega-bucks. Anyway, as many of you pointed out (and my brain knows to be true anyway), going to public or private school does not mean you will participate in many of these activities even if they are available, or enjoy them even if you do participate. I really appreciate all the great suggestions on how to recreate similar experiences (with a homeschool slant) for my new high schooler. Thank you, again!

I think it totally depends on your child and the kinds of projects she's asked to do. I would think a lot of kids like some kind of project once in a while as a break from the typical reading/writing assignments. (And I'm sure some kids don't like doing any projects, no matter what they are.) But I would tailor the age-appropriate projects to what your child likes to do -- create a photo collage, cook, build a model, illustrate, invent, sew, make a map, design, make a movie, create a game, make a scrapbook, write a song/poem, etc. I know high school assignments are more serious & involved than in earlier grades, but I still think some high school assignments can be fun -- in whatever way fun means to your particular child.

I went to my nephew's (private school) graduation over the weekend and REALLY started second-guessing my decision to homeschool thru high school. My brain tells me it's the right decision, so that my boys will have an excellent, customized education with tremendous flexibility free from public school rules/policies and a more balanced life. My heart remembers how much I LOVED high school (Friday night football games, car wash fundraisers with fellow classmates, pep rallies, prom, clubs, friends...and the awesome feeling of walking across the stage on graduation day, surrounded by teens you spent the last 4 years with thru all those good & bad high school moments). Can anyone reassure me that I am not totally depriving my kids of the experience (both good and bad) that the majority of people all of the world go thru? As my nephew once said, school is more than just education (although that's the most important part). Please help me kick my panic attack.

There was recently a similar thread that you might find helpful: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279708 . Plus, if you do a search of "9th grade plans" you'll find lots of threads on specific curriculum others have used for 9th grade. I'd start with Julie's advice, tho, and figure out what subjects you plan to teach in 9th grade, what your goals are for your teen and then choose your specific curriculum (based on your teen's learning style, level of independence, your budget, etc.).

Have you considered the language arts curriculum by Michael Clay Thompson? It was originally designed for use in gifted classrooms, but many homeschooler use it now, also. The secondary series is aimed at grades 6-12. You can read details about it here: http://www.rfwp.com/series78.htm. The main components are: Vocabulary: Word Within the Word Writing: Advanced Academic Writing Grammar: Magic Lens We used the grammar & vocab programs for 8th grade this year, and both were challenging. DS enjoyed Magic Lens and has a very good grasp of grammar. The vocab program was not a big hit with DS, so we are switching to Vocab. From Classical Roots next year. We haven't used the writing program yet, so I can't comment.

OK, first, just breathe. Really. I'm not too far behind you on your path to "never thought I'd homeschool thru high school." Yet here I am, too. (And I'm sure many others, too.) Actually, I never planned to homeschool in the first place. But I did thru most of elementary school. My oldest went back to school for 6th & 7th grade, but we realized after 6th that public school really wasn't working. Wasted another year in ps before deciding to bring him home. And now here we are, facing 9th grade. Where everything REALLY counts. The way I look at it, we've got four whole years to do the best job we can. If your child was a senior, then I'd panic. But if your kid is in 8th, 9th or even 10th grade, I think you've got time to do your best, fill in the gaps and give your kid a fantastic, customized education. We've been fairly eclectic, following WTM fairly closely for history, math and language arts, but not so much for science, art, music, etc. And even then, we'd supplement with other things or not do narration or copywork or whatever. I would be more than happy to share my plans for courses and curriculum for 9th grade if that would help. But I can't give you any been-there-done-that level of comfort. I'm right there with you, facing high school and wondering what the heck I've just signed up for. Great Books? AP classes? Physics w/ labs? HELP! But seriously, I'm feeling like more of an "education coordinator" at this point. I'm only teaching English, World History & Logic for 9th grade. Math, science & Latin will be online courses. Art & music will be thru the public high school. And my husband is teaching a half-credit entrepreneur course. My point is that you do not HAVE to teach everything. Do what you can and find other outlets to cover what you can't -- online, other family members, self-teaching books, local high school, etc. Does any of this help?

I've got two boys -- a 9th grader and a 6th grader. Both are relatively disorganized. I've been slowly trying to instill the habit of using a paper organizer over this past year by printing out weekly assignment sheets for them, having them refer to the sheets each day to know what they should do and when, and checking them off. They've become fairly good at this, but it still requires some prodding from me. They both love the computer, so I've been working with them to put things on their Outlook calendar (such as soccer practice, band camp, or an upcoming oral exam with the teacher for their online course). They actually enjoy putting things on the calendar ... they're just not yet in the habit of CHECKING their calendar on a regular basis to see what's coming up. I think this will take a lot of encouragement on my part over the next year or so for it to become automatic. Realistically, most kids just don't care about this stuff. I think it's part personality (where some kids simply like to be more organized) and part maturity. Eventually, as schedules get busier, consequences get bigger and commitments begin to mount, students will find what works for them, either via paper or technology. I think you can lay the groundwork by teaching and modeling good time/resource management habits. But, ultimately, the kids need to take ownership of it themselves when they're ready.

My DS will be in 9th grade next year, and we'll be using all the resources you listed, plus others. Here's how I plan to spread it out over the next two years: Summer: The Lively Art of Writing 9th grade: The Elegant Essay & Writing Strands 6 Summer: The Elements of Style (and finish WS 6 or start WS 7) 10th grade: Writing Strands 7 & Writing Strands Expository 11th & 12 grade will be either AP English Language/Lit courses or dual enrollment My DS enjoys writing and is good at it, but he hasn't had much practice in essay writing.

Here's how I understand it. Each state has its own education standards for grades K-12 of what the students should learn and when they should learn it. If you're comparing textbooks from 2 or more states, for example, sometimes the content overlaps and sometimes there are gaps of what's covered. Not every state covers the exact same content in the same way at the same grade. For example, all states teach mulitiplication, but they might teach it at different grades and/or cover various sub-topics within mulitiplication that might or might not be taught at other schools. I can understand state-specific content for things like history or geography pertinent to that part of the country, but I don't understand why every U.S. student doesn't learn the same content during the same grade, at least at the elementary level. But even at the middle school/high school level, I don't understand why there are different state standards for something like algebra. You would think that if you studied algebra anywhere, you'd cover the same concepts. The teaching methods could be (and should be) different, but the content should be the same across the board, don't you think?

I haven't heard of any such change either. My DS will be in 9th grade next year, so I plan to follow whatever FL requires for public school high school students. Regarding PE, students should earn 1 credit of PE, which should include .5 credit of PE and .5 credit of Personal Fitness. I'm not quite sure what the difference is between PE and Personal Fitness, so I plan to research this on the FLDOE website.

Well, since the MCT secondary level is for a broad range (middle-high school), I thought I'd try this board first. But I will cross-post on the high school board, too. Yes, I did look at the sample on the website. But the Teacher's Manual only shows the table of contents and pages that contain teaching instructions. It doesn't show how the student pages are reproduced in the Teacher's Manual. I was just hoping someone on this board might have used the curriculum and could shed some light on if it was worth the $25 for the Student Book.

I'm going to be using MCT Advanced Academic Writing with my 9th grader next year. Do you need the student text if you purchase the Teacher Manual? On the Royal Fireworks Press website, the description says: "The Teacher Manual consists of a book and a CD. The book contains the student manual pages with supplementary material throughout, implementation advice and punctuation quizzes." This leads me to believe that the Teacher Manual contains everything in the Student Book, plus some extra things that look very helpful (like the CD). Is it worth it to buy the Student Book for $25?

I'm going to be using MCT Advanced Academic Writing with my 9th grader next year. Do you need the student text if you purchase the Teacher Manual? On the Royal Fireworks Press website, the description says: "The Teacher Manual consists of a book and a CD. The book contains the student manual pages with supplementary material throughout, implementation advice and punctuation quizzes." This leads me to believe that the Teacher Manual contains everything in the Student Book, plus some extra things that look very helpful (like the CD). Is it worth it to buy the Student Book for $25?

I tried to search for a recent thread about someone studying the History of Science and looking for great science biographies, but I couldn't find it. Anyway, I came across this great Teaching Co. Course that seems to highlight just what you'll be studying, called "History of Science: Antiquity to 1700." Here's a link to the course description: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=1200 . Thought you might find it helpful. And, if you search today's threads on this board, you'll see that ALL Teaching Co. courses are 70% off for a limited time. (Don't know the details, sorry.) Best of luck!

I'm taking a similar approach with my 9th grade DS, using MCT for grammar. But I'm doing Writing Strands 6/7 and having him read Strunk & White’s Elements of Style during 9th grade. This summer, I'm also having DS read/work through The Lively Art of Writing (Lucile Vaughan Payne), which focuses on essay writing. We tried MCT's WWWI for vocab, and it was not a hit with DS, so we're switching to Vocab. From Classical Roots. For lit. analysis, we're also doing WttW with a year-long approach, weaving in some of the Great Books from the ancient-medieval period.

Thank you, all, for your insights. I just envisioned myself trying to read every book and thinking it would either eat up every single spare moment I have or we would get so bogged down because I couldn't keep up the pace. Go in-depth with some, others just be generally familiar with. Read what I can, listen to some audio versions, watch Teaching Co. lectures and get to what I get to. I realize the bulk of the responsibility lies on my DS to read it and learn from it, whether I'm reading along with him or not. Thanks for helping me gain perspective. I was feeling overwhelmed before I even started.

My 14yo DS used WWWI this year and hates it. I was surprised because he is a voracious reader, has an extensive vocabulary and loves learning obscure/difficult words. However, there were SO many uncommon words that the activities took the joy out of word study for him. For example, each lesson includes analogies, and in order to figure out which pair of words is the right analogy, you'd have to look up many of the words in the dictionary before you could compare one answer to another. (I'm a writer with a good vocabulary, and I didn't know many of the words, either.) But the part that didn't sit well with my DS was the sheer volume of words stems to learn for each lesson (25 per lesson), with each lesson's test based on the stems learned in the current lesson and previous lessons. We did one lesson every week or two, and the retention rate of previously learned word stems was mediocre. I can't comment on WWWII, but if it's a similar structure to WWWI, I don't think we'll be continuing with this sereis.

How do you moms find the time to keep pace w/ the reading you assign to your kids, esp. as you read thru the Great Books together? Do you read ahead (such as in the summer or maybe a few chapters ahead) or do you watch Teaching Co. DVDs or read Cliff's Notes or listen to audiobooks? Do you stay on pace together by reading out loud together? Do you assign only some of the Great Books to read together and discuss together, while other books you assign as individual reading assignments? And if you don't read all the books together, how can you evaluate any writing assignments that come out of the reading? I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to have the time to do all this reading myself, on top of grading and teaching other subjects and another younger DS.

:bigear:

I actually view this as a positive about FLVS courses. If a student doesn't understand a concept and gets a less-than-desired grade on an assignment, he can read the feedback from the teacher to see what he got wrong. Then he can go back to the lesson, review it, and/or seek info from additional resources to better understand the concept. Finally, the student attempts the assignment again to see if he's mastered the concept. To me, that's the way education is supposed to work. You don't move on until you *get* the concept. When my son went to public school and handed in his homework, he usually just got a grade (rarely with any feedback) on his paper. Sometimes he never even received the paper back -- the teacher just graded it, recorded the grade and either tossed the homework or filed it. How can a student correct his mistake and learn how to do it right if he doesn't get feedback? Also, with the FLVS courses my sons have taken, there isn't a lot of repetitive lessons or daily homework, like there is in public school. So sometimes kids do need a bit more practice in a concept, and a resubmission accomplishes that without bogging them down with unnecessary busy-work. The resubmits are their homework/reinforcement if and when they need it.

Never knew about this site. Thanks for sharing! It looks interesting. Off to check it out in detail....

Lori, thanks so much for the details of how you condensed history/lit into 2 years. I like the idea of getting more buy-in from DS on particular periods to study more in-depth. I hadn't thought of that. (Duh!) Both my boys (soon-to-be 6th & 9th graders) really love history, so I'm sure they've got some "favorite" historical periods where they'd like to get lost on some bunny trails exploring, for instance, medieval weaponry and battles. Violet, thanks for the website suggestion. I'll check it out to see if I can glean some good info from their course outline.

Anyone? Anyone? (Feeling like Ferris Bueller here.):confused1:

Here's another site that you might find helpful for reviewing the WWW stems: http://www.dukeofdefinition.com/W-W-W_vocab.htm . FWIW, my DS does not like this program after using it all year. I plan to switch to Vocabulary From Classical Roots next year for 9th grade.

We plan to do a condensed Great Books approach for the next two years, as follows. 9th grade: Ancient-Medieval World History/Lit 10th grade: Renaissance-Modern World History/Lit 11th grade will be U.S. History (perhaps an AP course) 12 grade will be U.S. Govt. & Economics We'll be using Spielvogel's Western Civilization for history. It's hard to determine what to cover and what to leave out, since we're covering such a large span of time. I'm feeling overwhelmed trying to cram it all in. Has anyone ever combined the 4-year history/lit cycle into 2 years? Any suggestions on curriculum, approach, topics/books to focus on/skip, etc.?