9th Grade Homeschool Plan

Ongoing journal of thoughts and decisions “real time” as our 9th grade homeschool plan is developed and implemented. More Booklists for reading and history

August 2008 – 9th grade wrap-up
Our daughter finished the major sections of Democracy in America in May. Summer has been a light dose of Saxon Algebra 2 – only about a lesson a week. She has less than 10 lessons left to finish it and then on the Saxon Advanced to start 10th grade. She’s continuing working through Bob Jones Geography. We’ll keep that up into 10th grade, rotating with other subjects as we did in 9th.
This summer our girls we’re involved in Austin Christian Theatre’s production of “Circle of Heaven”. They loved it immensely. That’s wrapped up now and they’re spending time on sewing projects and will attend a week long choir camp later in August. They also did several longer term projects before the production rehearsals got busy – scrapbooks, photo albums, and other sewing.
A well-rounded summer for the whole family.

April 11, 2008 – Essays and Poetry
Following The Wealth of Nations, Our daughter read The Law. This was during the Presidential primary campaign here in Texas so very relevant to all the promises being made by the statists running for office. Here’s one of the essays.
She’s now in the middle of Democracy in America and has written several essays on her weekly readings. Here’s the first essay.

April 9, 2008 – Consumer Math
Our daughter is at lesson 105 in Saxon Algebra 2. We’ll switch back to Abeka Consumer Math for 2 or 3 weeks. This is simple math compared to the algebra she’s been doing. So she’s covering 2 sections a day and working 25% of the exercises in the 2 sections. Picking up Consumer Math at Unit 6 and expect to complete Units 6, 7, and 8 in about 3 weeks.

January 25, 2008 – Wealth of Nations; Time Travel
Having finished the Jonathan Edwards biography and assorted Edwards’ writings near the holidays, we took a break until early January. Our daughter is reading excerpts from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as further primary sources impacting America’s founding and early governance. The reading is rather technical so she’s outlining it rather than doing a weekly essay. For writing, last week she’s worked through chapter 6 in Roar on the Other Side, a fine poetry study.

I recently permitted her to read any of C.S. Lewis’ books, having waited until she was ready as many deal with more mature subjects of sexuality, death, etc. She quickly read Lewis’ Space Trilogy, finishing Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra in just a day each and taking about 3 days for That Hideous Strength. I recall these books taking me a few weeks to read and I toiled at That Hideous Strength off and on for 6 months. I still do not care for fiction – even “good” fiction. I’ll be interested to see how quickly she can read, understand, and enjoy his non-fiction works such as Surprised by Joy and Abolition of Man. If she can read these in a day, I have work to do. These are far too weighty and enjoyable to be rushed through. The proper pace is no more than 1 chapter in a sitting, not to exceed 3 chapters a day under any circumstance.

Anyhow, the space travel in the Space Trilogy generated dinner table discussions about physics in general and relativity in particular. I then was immediately able to assign her to read George Gamow’s The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein. This book was already on our list and the space tie in made this the perfect time for it. A great science and math lesson showing the impact of great ideas on our culture. Once again, the perfect example of why homeschooling works so well. Even in a private school, you cannot immediately switch lesson plans as the opportunity arises.

November 20, 2007 – Latest Essay
Here’s our daughter’s most recent essay

November 7, 2007 – Symposium adjustment
We’ve been busy with Alan who is now 3 weeks old. Getting some school done this week and last. One change I’ve made is to change how the “Symposium” discussions work. Instead of a week of reviewing their work and a week of studying current events and church creeds, I’m now mixing these same topics day by day. It was too long between their studies/writing and our discussion of them. We now discuss what they read/wrote from the last couple days and use the remaining time for the Baptist 1689 Confession and current events. It’s working out to about 20 minutes study discussion, 20 minutes 1689 Confession, 20 minutes current events for an hour total. Ideally 3 times a week, but twice a week will work.

October 8, 2007 – Sample Essay
We’re a few weeks into the year and our daughter has completed several short essays, as she is assigned one each week. Here’s a recent one.

She’s also spent time with the Rosetta Stone Spanish language program the last couple weeks. This wasn’t part of our original plan but Emily was interested so we got it out. They spent about an hour a day on it for a couple weeks.

September 19, 2007 – Booklist and Skill subjects
As mentioned, 9th grade covers American History. The method is to read larger works and study them more deeply, as well as reading books and articles from the time period being studied. A week’s study includes approximately 3 hours of reading and 3 hours writing essays and outlines about the readings.
Here’s the sketch of what I’m thinking of covering this year:

week 1-2 A Basic History of the United States by C. Carson – vol1, Intro.,chapters 1 & 2
– recall these were skipped in the 7th grade study of Carson’s book
week 3-12 Jonathan Edwards biography by George Marsden
– also read several Edwards sermons, discourses, treatises
week 13-17 Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
week 18-19 The Law by Frederic Bastiat
week 20-29 Democracy in America by Alexis deTocqueville, volume 1 (all), volume 2 (parts 1 & 2)
week 30-35 A Basic History of the United States by Clarence Carson – volume 4, chapters 3 & 4

For the rotating “skill” subject, we’re finishing up Thinking Toolbox (5 more lessons) and will study poetry, geography, vocabulary

Poetry – Roar on the Other Side by Suzanne Clark
Geography – Geography for Christian Schools by Bob Jones Press
Vocabulary – Vocabulary from Classical Roots

She’s finished weeks 1 and 2 work in the Carson book, including an essay on John Locke. Started the Edwards book this week.

September 12, 2007 – Symposium progress report
The idea of having an hour discussion in the mornings is working well. These first 2 weeks, the Symposium’s hour is about 30 minutes Creed/Confession/Catechism talk and the other half hour is the current events discussion. We are using the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is the Confession statement to which our church most closely adheres. We’ve had 4 or 5 Symposium sessions so far. We’ve covered the first 2 articles of the Confession. The issues we’ve discussed are: Iraq war, the 2008 presidential campaigns, sub-prime mortgage delinquency threat (which included background on loans and the stock market), North Korea, and global warming. Most of these take the whole half hour, as much groundwork is being formed regarding US political system, economic issues, history of 20th century U.S. military actions, and liberalism/socialism. I’m currently using “The Buzz” section of the World Magazine for ideas on what to discuss, and taking suggestions from the girls. Next week we’ll use the Symposium hour for them to present and discuss outlines and essays on the history reading they’ve been doing these 2 weeks.

September 11, 2007 – What to expect from a teenager
A lengthy discussion of setting proper expectations for a 14 year old and beyond in High School, moved to another page: What A Teenager Can Do

September 5, 2007 – Symposium
Had our first morning discussion today. Talked through the format with the girls and we think this will work. We’re calling the discussion hour our “Symposium”. We start with the whole family in a 20 minute devotional, then the high school/middle schoolers stay for Symposium (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays), then about 30-45 minutes discussing math, science, etc. from prior day and planning the new days assignments in these areas. The Symposium in the first week consists of discussing church catechism/creeds first 30 minutes followed by 30 minute discussion of current events in the news. The second week’s Symposium consists of outline/essays of current history/literature reading assignments they have completed in the previous week. Third week will repeat the first week, and so on. So it will look something like this – (this is of course an ideal schedule – your start/end time would vary, there’d be interruptions, etc., but the general flow is shown. This averages less than 5 hours of formal school each day):

*Skill subject examples are Geography, Logic, Language Arts, Economics, etc. One subject would be studied all week. For example, Geography each afternoon in week1, Logic in week2, Economics in week3, then back to Geography in week4 and so on.

Week2 is the same format except the Symposium is the Outline/Essay discussion:

August 29,2007 – History planning
Context is important – meaning the year’s plan should flow from what was done previously and what is planned for the future. If you have multiple children near the same grades, it is helpful to keep the students within the same framework. In our case, Emily is beginning 7th grade. Recall 7th grade history focused on the United States. Also, recall that 8th grade focused on world history and broader historical/philosophical ideas. So I will focus on United States history again in 9th grade…