Always Thinkng...Part 2

As I said yesterday, today I will sort through some of what is going on in my head about Caylie's subjects for next year...hers seem much more complicated, because there are many options that we are considering. If you aren't unusually interested in high school homeschool stuff, you will probably want to make a quick exit, and check out a more interesting blog!

Don't say I didn't warn you!

First of all, these ideas are only relevant if we decide that Caylie will homeschool again next year. We still play with the option of her returning to the wonderful Christian school that she had attended from kindergarten through 9th grade. Both that school, as well as homeschooling have been very good experiences, so we remain undecided.

So...here is how Caylie's subjects are being tackled this year...

*Geometry- Teaching Textbooks at home
*American History- Sonlight at home (with some tweaking)
*Health- ABeka Health in Christian Perspective at home
*Biology- Apologia at home (Her labs are done at CoOp...love that!)
*Spanish 1- CoOp
*Christian World View- CoOp
*American Lit.- CoOp
*Art- CoOp
*Speech- CoOp

Many of Caylie's classes are taken during the 2 days a week that she attends our high school CoOp with about 100 other homeschooled high schoolers. Although Caylie enjoys CoOp, and being with her friends, she also says that she gets more of her work done on the days that she is at home, and that she would like to take more of her classes at home if she homeschools next year.

Here are the classes that she is scheduled to take next year, regardless of how or where...

*Algebra 2
*Chemistry
*Spanish 2
*English
*World History
*Christian World View (we would like her to have some form of this each year)

So what could next year look like...potentially?

For Caylie, we will not do Teaching Textbooks again I don't THINK. While it has worked for Christian, I would opt for her to be in a classroom setting for math...I THINK.

One option that we would be looking into next year, would be having Caylie take College Algebra at the local community college. In order to do this, students have to have a 23 on the math section of the ACT, or pass an entrance test, but if they meet one of these requirements, then they can take the class, and receive a college math credit, as well as a high school math credit. Students are allowed to take the entrance test more than once, if necessary, in order to pass. We (and SHE!) would love to have a college math credit or two knocked out before she even heads off to college! Many of our local homeschoolers do this. In fact, a friend of Caylie's that has just finished the Algebra class, said that the majority of her class was made up of homeschool students!

We would probably do Apologia Chemistry, at home.

We know that we would want her to take Spanish 2 at CoOp, because the teacher is great.

For her English credit next year (if we did not choose CoOp), I have looked into pottersschool.com. It is an online school for homeschoolers that a friend is currently using, and it looks pretty challenging...which is what we would want. It offers a real teacher, meeting with a group of real students, in real time, online. I really like the idea of Caylie having someone (other than me) grade her writing. She is a very good writer, and I just think that she needs someone else's objective input to develop that skill to it's full potential. One of my worries about this, is missing a class if we are having computer issues.

World History would probably be a modified version of Sonlight...much like I described doing for Christian in yesterday's post.

Christian World View- I wanted her to take this in a classroom setting this year, so that it would be very discussion oriented, and she has enjoyed it. I think that we would probably do it at home next year though.

So...these are a few of the thoughts that are bouncing around in my mind about Caylie's plan for next year.

Bet I lost all two of my readers somewhere around the second or third sentence! Sorry!

If anyone stuck it out to the end, and you have some suggestions...I'm all ears!

Writing the Waves,
Christi