Our Plan For High School: Tapestry of Grace ala Charlotte Mason

So as I was pondering Cindy's list of things that she wanted to hear about for the Charlotte Mason Back to School Carnival Bash, I had to go back in time a bit since we started school five weeks ago already. We are planning on a big break in October for some travel and field trips so we wanted to get an early start on school this year.

I usually think about an upcoming year as we work through our current year so this year's curriculum choices were made last winter. Really, there were no big changes for us except maybe in our math selections so it was an easy year as far as planning. Also, my youngest is capable of working up at his older brother's level so we are combining virtually everything this year, I've been working towards that goal for a long time. This is so much more fun for both the boys to work together and then be able to share thoughts and experiences.

I believe in starting at the end and working backwards to get where you want to be at the end. For my middle son, he is working towards a profession in aviation so we are heavy on science and math in his four year plan. My youngest son is thinking about a career in the medical field and so he will be taking lots of science as well. I want both boys to be able to run their own businesses if they need to so we will be providing them with experience with our small businesses as well as taking an accounting course or two to understand how the mechanics of profit and loss works. My husband has made a list of life skills he wants each boy to accomplish before graduation and he keeps those things in mind as we go about our daily lives.


Life skills must include starting a fire and watching for bears as you hike, don't they?

After I have a rough idea of where we are headed, I start researching particulars online either on the different forums I belong to or on the particular homeschooling websites themselves. I love it when I can print out a sample of a lesson to try out in my mind. I also try to squeeze in a homeschooling convention each year to get my juices flowing and to check out the vendor hall. I tried very hard to have all the big decisions made before last year when we imparted on the high school adventure.

Here are our school plans for the 08-09 school year.

We make every subject a Charlotte Mason approved subject by including slow reading of great literature, lots of oral and written narration, many subjects in short increments each day, afternoons free for outdoor play, projects, hobbies, free reading, library visits, and just hanging out with each other. I require notebooks for each subject and they are turned in as part of their term exams. (Yes, my boys still play outside in the afternoons...skateboards on their homemade ramp, scooters, basketball, swimming, frisbee, bike riding, and hanging out in the garden or with the cats.)

Together:

• Teaching Textbooks Geometry and Saxon Algebra 2-Alternating one chapter from geometry and then one chapter in Algebra 2. We are planning on taking two years to complete the combination of the books.
• The Easy Spanish Level 1 and Rosetta Stone Spanish 1-see my review of this product here.
• Tapestry of Grace year 2 for history, geography, and literature. We also watch selected Teaching Company DVDs to support our study of the classics. This year we are following TOG's very loose plan for art and music appreciation, heavily supplemented with my Harmony Fine Arts plan for grade ten. Literature this year includes lots of Shakespeare and poetry already mixed in so we don't have those as separate subjects anymore.
• Exploring Creation with Marine Biology-lots of supplements for this along with a nature journal and field trips
• Medieval History-Based Writing Lessons (to supplement our daily writing) along with Daily Grams for Jr./Sr. High to round out our English credit for the year.
  
• Musical instruments-one plays the trumpet and the other the violin
• Robotics-I made up my own plan using the NXT Lego Mindstorms Robot and a book from Amazon.com. We are working on this course one afternoon a week.
  
• Bible study-We made our own family's plan for reading and personal study. This is done outside of school hours when they are at their best. One works early in the morning and one likes the afternoon.
  
• PE-we use the President's Physical Fitness standards as well as add in a weekly activity like bike riding or hiking or lifting weights and then a big monthly field trip that is physical in nature like a longer hike or bike ride or snowboarding
  

I have entered all their lessons using Homeschool Tracker Plus. I print out each week's plans for the boys and they work quite independently using the daily lists. They check things off as they go and I enter in the completed assignments on the computer by the week's end. We have a Monday and a Friday meeting to go over particulars for the week. These are my favorite parts of the week, especially the Friday morning meetings where we go over all their history and literature. I am pretty much reading everything they do at this point so we can really have those rhetoric stage discussions that they are ready for in their schooling. I have felt the switch from the logic stage this year and we are having wonderful talks around the table each week. This is what we have been working towards all the years of fact finding and connecting of the dots. Now we talk about the meaty parts of history and make judgments according to our family's beliefs.

(You didn't think I could get through a post without adding a pretty picture did you?)

A note about Tapestry of Grace: We don't always agree with their thinking but it is far better for our family to have a Christian based curriculum and discuss differences in beliefs than it is to come from a purely secular view. It works for us just fine, in fact, I think it helps that we are not just being spoon-fed a particular worldview. We actually have to take the material and then use our Bible-based touchstone to decide it if is to be accepted or rejected.

That about covers it. I am sure I forgot something important but I can always come back and add to this post. :)

If you are interested in what we did last year for ninth grade, study of ancients, you can read my Squidoo page.
Ninth Grade Using a Classical and Charlotte Mason Approach

Barb-Harmony Art Mom