Right now I'm immersed in Biology. I'm planning a 10th grade honors course for my daughter. I wanted to take a moment and share a resource that has been an amazing help in the planning of my course, CK-12.

No matter how well something is working, the time comes when a change is needed. Brent is ready to move on to something new. Probably inspired by his sister's planning for High School. We spent a few productive hours at the coffee shop today and came up with a new plan.

I'm exhausted.  We took a little extra time off this winter because I just couldn't teach with all the paint around, we did three rooms in three weeks.  Pictures should be up soon on What I'm Learning Now.  I spent this weekend putting together our 2nd semester.

First, Callie will no longer be taking art classes from the local middle school.  This is her choice, but I'm so glad she made it.  It was a learning experience for her and as is the case with most learning experiences, there was good and bad.  She had some wonderful experiences with her teachers, whom I have nothing but praise for, and some good experiences with her classmates.  She also had some bad experiences with the several members of the administration and most of her classmates.  Her final statement on the whole thing, "If this is what the middle school is like, I don't want to see the high school."  Me either.

Now on to the fun stuff.  I guess years of practice are starting to pay off.  I'm getting pretty good at this home school thing.  I'm doing both the kids almost completely different, excluding PE and Spanish.

Callie, who is my liberal arts, unstructured learner, will be embracing the Charlotte Mason Method.  To help improve her writing skills, which are in need of some attention, most of her narrations will be written.  I love this method.  Nothing is better than a good book.  She will be reading some great books this semester, including The Jungle, Macbeth, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Animal Farm and Narrative of Sojourner Truth.  She will also be participating in a local Science Fair.  We will be continuing our math using Math U See.

Brent, who hasn't met a checklist he didn't immediately fall in love with, will be doing thematic studies using three books from Teacher Created Resources.  We have used these before and he loves them.  He will be studying from Our Country, Electricity and Oceans.  These are literature based thematic units.  He will also be using Math U See as well.

Both kids will be learning Spanish using Rosetta Stone.  For PE we are going to participate in the President's Challenge.  I'm super excited about this.

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr Day on Monday, we will be spending the day learning about the man and his movement.  Here are some great links:  The Learning Network MLK Resources, The King Center, King Institute, Text and Video of the speech, and History.com.

I feel a little silly.  Trying to save money and get the cheapest edition of James and the Giant Peach that Barnes and Noble offers I accidentally ordered James and the Giant Peach: A Play.  I then had to order the book too, lessoned learned.  Other than that, everything for school came promptly and I'm getting a little excited for school to start.  Next Friday our home school group is having a Curriculum Show and Tell.  I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else is doing.  I'll have to bring my laptop though, I have two ebooks to share.

I went to Coas Book Store yesterday and traded in some books for some Earth Science books for Callie.  We already owned the Children's Night Sky Atlas, published by DK.  I picked up "The Visual Dictionary of the Universe", "Discovering the Universe" & "Understanding Earth".  I was pleasantly surprised to find the CD's still with the used textbooks.  Nice.

So how does doing school at home differ in what Callie and I are doing?  Well most importantly I am not telling Callie she has to do anything, she doesn't.  She wants to do what she is doing, everything that she is doing.  She has even decided there are a few things she would rather skip, but the benefits for working through the tough things for her is worth it.  I asked myself if I would be OK if she decided to do something else tomorrow and when I said yes and meant it, I knew this was more about her than me; as it should be.  

Callie and I spent quite some time discussing college and career plans today.  She has come to the conclusion that she is not sure what she wants to do, but is pretty sure college is involved.Of course this brought up what it takes to get into college;  so we looked at college websites about admission requirements and discussed what she was doing to meet the requirements.  This is a big step for her.  She told me that she didn't realize there were requirements.  I said that even if she didn't do "college prep"  college was an option, but she strongly felt she wanted to spend her time getting as ready as possible.  There is a lot of information out there about general college admission requirements and we were able to come up with a decent list of things that we thought she should complete as part of her high school program.  We had already decided to spread high school out over 5 to 6 years instead of cramming it in to 4.  

After our first full week, we seem to be back to normal.  The kids are getting used to the routine again.  This week will be the real test, there are a few assignments from last week that need to be redone and Callie has a quiz today that I'm hoping she studied for.  Vacations are great, but hard on school.  

After much searching and frustration I finally found a math curriculum. I dare say I have high hopes for this one. It teaches a level of understanding that I don't have and I really hadn't thought about my kids having. I love the idea of it being visual and tactical. It is Math-U-See. I am starting both the kids on the Alpha, Callie will go through it really fast, but I think she needs to understand math this way before she works on the higher levels. Brent needs this curriculum anyway, and the review will be good for Callie. I can't tell you what a relief this is. I have an outline finished for this year.