Oceanography and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

So,  I have made an executive decision.  That is one of the things I love about homeschooling:  I am the boss, and it something is not working well I can change it.  It seems like I am re-evaluating weekly with this child.

Caitlin completed 10 out of 16 lessons of her Physical Science lessons.  She absolutely hates this course, and it is more of a fight than anything else to get her to do it.  She passed, and will receive 1/2 credit for that class.  But, that leaves a 1/2 credit left, so I am moving her on to Oceanography on Easy Peasy Homeschool High School.  She will most likely go through the Summer and get it finished getting a whole credit, and leaving her with a 1/2 credit extra for grade 9.  This can come in handy later.  She should be able to move pretty easily through this course, as it is everything she enjoys. 

For American History she started learning about Alexander Graham Bell on Friday, and will finish up that video today.  Tomorrow we will move on to the Wright Brothers.  

American History: War of 1812 and Reconstruction

OK, we got a little bit out of order on our timeline.  I forgot about the War of 1812, which obviously came before the Civil War.  We finished the video on Reconstruction, and discussion, last week.  So, now we have to back track to the War of 1812.  Of note, next year, for grade 10, we will be doing Civics and American Government.  I intend to do as I did with DJ, and follow all the 2020 elections.  There is already some movement on this topic, so I might squeeze in some of the important debates that go on over the spring and summer months.

My Feelings About Aleks for High School Math

DJ used Aleks last year for Math for College Readiness, through FLVS.  He loved it, and said for the first time in his life he kind of liked Math.  That was a huge success for him, and he did quite well.  He is now in college, so this isn't really about him.

It is about my other child.  She is not a fan of Math either.  She did awesome on Pre-Algebra on Edx, and the setup is similar to Aleks, but it was free.  I then moved her on to Algebra 1 with Saxon, because I like Saxon, I understand Saxon.  It is the same textbook I used in high school.  Anyway it was not working for her.  She seemed to not even remember the most basic of Math rules that she had already learned.  Needless to say it was frustrating for both of us.  Since she is not registered with FLVS, and I did not want to take the time to wait until she was, I turned to Aleks the paid version. While it is 20 dollars a month, kind of expensive, right away she was able to master more than half of the required assignments for the first module.  That is huge considering using the textbook she just had brain fart after brain fart.  I don't understand completely why she couldn't do it in a textbook, and at this point I don't care.  I need her to know Math.  She doesn't need to be a Math major but she needs to know Math.  So for now we are sticking with Aleks.  If it continues to work for her, I will use it right until she graduates.  I am hopeful this will be the case.  They have tons of options too, probably more than I needed to think about, but for some people they like that. 

This is not a paid post, I don't really do those too much anymore.  This is my opinion on a product I like.  

FDR, Antitrust Laws,and the Gilded Age

We start our 3rd quarter tomorrow.  Can you believe it?  It always goes by so fast.  We are moving our way through American History, and we are up to The Gilded Age, Antitrust Laws and FDR.  This will take us probably 2 or 3 weeks to work through.  I found the 3 videos below.  The Gilded Age is a series of videos.  There is also 2 documentaries on Netflix covering FDR.

Language Arts is changing for the second half of the year, with the focus being more on Grammar and Writing, rather than Reading Comprehension.  I think each month I will give her a topic, and she will have 3 weeks to research and take down notes.  Then in the final week she will have to put it all together.  We are still focusing on the 5 paragraph essay.  I think I will add a mandatory word limit.  She tends to leave a lot of info out, so a word limit will help.  For January the topic is New Years.  I expect that she will research the history of New Years, why we celebrate it, how January got its name.  If you don't know how January got its name, it is really interesting.

If  you would like to homeschool your children, or maybe you need help homeschooling your children, check out my new Health Coaching blog.  I have included homeschooling as an option as I know how stress can effect ones health, and homeschooling can be stressful.