DVD lectures from The Teaching Company. A wonderful "layman's" explanation of calculus. If you understand basic y=nx type functions, you can learn from this. One of the best.

I was recently asked to recommend good courses or books to study world history from a Christian and biblical perspective. What I've read/studied and can recommend without reservation are...

Lectures on CD or DVD from The Teaching Company. Understand and appreciate music history and fundamentals.

DVD lectures from The Teaching Company. Layman's explanation of modern science discoveries.

In 11th grade, we shift our focus from ancient/world history studied in 10th grade, back to more recent history (1700-present) and focus predominately on the United States and its role worldwide.

We continue with Saxon Advanced Math, pausing for a couple months here and there to focus on Physics. Classical physics is heavy on math so fulfills both math and science for the year. Studying real world physical phenomenon such as gravity, friction, velocity, etc. helps the maturing student begin to see the usefulness of higher math. Technically minded students will then be encouraged to go further in math, to calculus and beyond.

Knowing God by J.I Packer is a wonderful guide to theology for the secondary student and maturing young adult. We'll finish out the poetry study of Roar on the Other Side begun last year. Finally, art history is again a focus for the year.

Here are all the books for the year:

Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk

History of The American People by Paul Johnson

Modern Times by Paul Johnson

Knowing God by J.I. Packer

Roar on the Other Side

Saxon Advanced Mathematics

Physics The Easy Way

History of Art for Young People

and rounding the education out with choir, piano, and a couple hours a day taking care of young baby brother.

Everyone should understand music. Not that everyone is called to be a musician, but understanding the basic structure of music and its place in history and society is crucial. By age 14-16, your students should understand enough history and culture to be able to appreciate the importance of music throughout the ages. Or, if you're a middle-aged adult like me, and were not exposed to historical music and shown its significance in your earlier years - it's never too late to learn!

Recently, I've discovered a wonderful author and lecturer on music - Jeremy Begbie. Dr. Begbie is a pastor, musician, scholar, and composer. He's written several helpful books and personally presents many of his ideas....[More]

Physics seems formidable to many, but this book does truly make it much easier to understand. "Easy" is relative, but this is the best book I've found for high school homeschoolers. It has plenty of real math problems so it's not a dumbed down "story" of physics. Rather, it takes you slowly from easy concepts to more advanced... [More]

Much is said, written, and blogged concerning the founding of the United States. To understand the basis of American government and laws, the best course is to simply ignore all the present banter and read. Read the basic documents, read accounts of how these were established, and stories of the people and events that actually happened from about 1400 to 1860. Here are good, balanced books that ignore or precede the 24/7 left-right shouting match that rots a dozen cable channels and a thousand blogs.

The documents themselves - the U.S. Constitution, the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers describing the actual debates at the Constitutional Convention.

Accounts of the convention -Miracle at Philadelphia- and de Tocqueville's report on Democracy in America as he observed the republic 50 years after the Constitution was adopted.

Historical perspectives on ideas of liberty and law from Ancient times through Colonial in Roots of American Order. Accounts of people and events in the very readable and delightful History of the American People, by Paul Johnson. And a timeless and elegant defense of personal liberty and a caution against powerful government in The Law by Bastiat.

We used the Geography course from Bob Jones in 9th and 10th grade. Each chapter is divided into several sections. There are "Section Review" questions that reinforce the section material. I like the "Geographer's Corner" feature in most chapters. This is an additional exercise in reading maps with charts, so essential these days with so much media being visual and graphic...

This program of video classroom lessons combined with the student textbook and answer key is complete introduction to "formal" logic study.  It is essential that students are introduced to the formal principles of reasoning in the middle or early-high school years.  Though Logic is not created but is discovered, and is therefore intuitive in some sense, it is critical that students learn that the truth and validity of statements can be determined analytically.