In the past I have done one big wrap up post for all three of my kids.  I may go back to that but for now I wanted to do a post for each grade level, since I have more to share about each of my children this year. 

Here is the post about the curriculum choices we made for him. 

9th grade has brought many changes for our oldest son!  He is no longer doing “group subjects” with his younger siblings, and is working on his own for everything!  I am more involved with him this year and really enjoying my time with him.

We use Lessontrek for weekly planning. Here’s a peek at one of his recent lesson plans. I type them up each weekend to prepare for Monday. He uses this to guide him through his week. At the end of the week I record all of his grades from the paper into Lessontrek online since we use their Gradebook feature.

WRITING

One of our big changes is with writing. This is our first year using IEW and so far so good! He is using Student Writing intensive Level C and I am watching the DVD classes with him and then he works on his own.

Honestly, it was a bit strange at first, so different than what we used previously. We are in the middle of unit 4 now and I am certain we made the right decision! This is a better fit for us and the whole subject of writing is flowing better now.

 

SPANISH

I am in LOVE with Homeschool Spanish Academy!  They offered to give us free classes to see if we liked it and I am blown away! DEFINITELY a good fit for us! He takes two classes a week with a private teacher via Skype! The teachers are located in Guatemala and are fluent in Spanish and English. He has learned so much already and I just love that I don’t have to do ANYthing. I was dreading high school foreign language credit and now I am not.

HISTORY

Notgrass World History is another new curriculum for us and I am in love with this one too! We began with plans to earn the History and Bible credit {this course offers 3 credits if you do it entirely – English, History, Bible}. After about a week, we decided to drop the Bible portion and just earn the history credit. He is eliminating the Bible memory work, extra Bible reading and Bible projects. We never planned on him using this as an English credit, so there’s some eliminated by dropping that.  The history credit alone is enough work and we feel it is a great fit.

 

He works a lot on his own, but comes to me for quizzes and tests.  Below he was taking a history quiz at my desk. 

FINANCE

We LOVE Foundations in Personal Finance! Originally I planned on him doing this independently but I have enjoyed the videos, and we have great discussion a few times a week! This is a great course!!!

SCIENCE

Ahhh, science. Daddy is in charge of science. BUT I am getting a tad bit more interested. Apologia Biology is great but hasn’t been the easiest for him. After module 2 we decided to purchase the DVD to see if it would help. We LOVE the DVD!!!  It is definitely an investment, but one we decided was worth it. The video lessons are so well done and even my son admitted they were really helpful. His score on the module 3 test was significantly better than his scores on test 1 and 2!

GEOGRAPHY

We both love Northstar Geography. He does this almost 100% on his own, I love the layout, organization of the lessons, and all that he is learning.

MATH

Teaching Textbooks Geometry is definitely not easy, but I can’t imagine doing this without Teaching Textbooks! He does this on his own and is doing well, but he has learned that studying well for the tests is very important now. Math has come easily for him, but this is a bit more challenging as he learns all new concepts and ideas with a lot of memorization required.

ALL THE REST

Although not an official school subject, his computer-love is going strong!  He has been building his own computer for almost a year now and recently he get some of the final parts. He showed an interest and we had 3 old CPUs sitting in storage and we told him he could take them apart and do whatever he wanted to learn! He mostly learned through dissecting those and using working parts to build one and then buying parts he needed. I had no idea he would be able to do what he can do, I thought he would just mess around with our old broken computers for awhile. Turns out he was able to teach himself a LOT! I’ve lost the ability to comprehend it all. So proud of his ability to learn, save $, and work through tough issues to reach success!! Here’s a video on Instagram showing the moment he started it up!

 

Other fun news, he decided to join a year round swim team! We are looking forward to the new adventure as a swim family as we support him! That’s him in one of those lanes swimming!

A Recap of his curriculum…

Science ~ Apologia Biology with DVD

Math ~ Teaching Textbooks Geometry

Writing ~ IEW SIW C and The Elegant Essay

World History ~ Notgrass

Geography ~ Northstar

Spanish ~ Homeschool Spanish Academy

Finance ~ Foundations in Personal Finance

Reading  ~ See book list here {which will most likely grow}

Follow along with us on Instagram to get peeks at our homeschool life {and our life in general!}. Stay tuned for a wrap-up all about 5th grade and one about 2nd grade!

Linking up with Weekly Homeschool Wrap-Up