Thought I’d let my fingers fly as I sit and ponder our first week of homeschooling High School, Freshman Year with my 14 year old son.  It was a seriously quiet wee, as all his pals are back at school and there are not any extra kids here learning this year like last year.

We’ve been learning throughout the summer with our Schoolhouse Review Crew items, but there is just something fresh  about September. Changing colors, morning steam on the lake, foggy starts. Steam off the mug of coffee. New supplies. Yellow busses rolling around town. Local Town Football team excitement.

After a really great week of learning, Jon asks –“Mom, what subjects am I taking? Everyone is asking me.” I kind of smile. Learning is life. An extension of ourselves, and pursuit of our goals. I thought it would be a little more obvious this year since we are using a lot of curriculum, but I wrote the list on the whiteboard Friday so he could share.

I am still really loving the Homeschool Co-op Homeschool Planet software! I was able to plan out our whole school year in about 2 hours. Super easy to put in classes, assignments, resources, websites – look at holidays, weekends, align with my google calendar.

Each day I print off his assignments, but he still likes it written out with little check mark boxes on the white board.

He has been doing Fascinating Science, Fascinating Biology – but we are going to switch to Biology 101 next week as the review period is almost up.

Algebra 1 has had a great start with Math U See. Lots of review this week on lesson 1.

English is a bit weird – lots of micro topics. We are back to Spelling Zoo from IEW. On the upper level C. I think this will foremost help with vocabulary and quick attention span – you have to really grab what the cd is saying quickly. It will also brush up on phonics and spelling rules. He has a money back guarantee on this product – and I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

We are back to Fix it! with IEW for grammar, book 2. It was a super easy jump start, an extension from book 1, and it started out this week super basic.

We did not start the Structured Writing Intensive (IEW) this week. I hope to incorporate it next week. We are on lesson 6, so I don’t feel the urgency to get it going. I read through the lesson and have plans to incorporate the lessons into our history homework.

US History – with Notgrass this year. I didn’t realize America the Beautiful was technically 8th grade level. We’re going to pair it up with Critical Thinking’s US History and focus on Jon working independently through it, one lesson every day.  So far, he’s done outstandingly well with it. This is one of my goals, to be here to support, mentor, direct – but not to be side by side for every single assignment.

US History also incorporates A LOT of geography with map work every day – and it looks like the Critical Thinking book will also.

Back to Middlebury with Spanish. My Junior really enjoyed it last year, and Jon sat alongside and did the course with him. This year Jon is motivated to learn Spanish – and is working on a year course on his own. He can log in, do the work, and take the assessments all without my help. Amazing program, another review will be written soon!

Work Study? Well, the lad wanted more income in the winter as his lawn business edges off. So he picked up a bussing job at a local restaurant. He loves it!

No sports, other than preparing for surf competitions til Wrestling.

I’ll keep this sort of short, and chat about how it works out in the day, schedules etc.

I am still using our high school version of the homeschool workbox. I put his items in the the crate and it makes it easy to pull out and put away.

SUPER weird only having one student. No interruptions. No noise. I like it, and don’t like it. I imagine the next four years will fly by, so I’m just trying to enjoy every single day.