Hi friends! We’re nearing the half-way mark for our homeschool year, and so today I’m sharing our 9th grade mid-year curriculum review, and letting you know what’s working and what’s not!
Since we’re doing mostly online work for my 9th grader this year, I knew it would be a bit intense and take more time than in years past. I think overall we’re happy with our choice, and I’m not ready to toss anything out at this point. But I will say that doing history, math, science, and Spanish, all online, has been a challenge.
Each of our online subjects take about an hour, and then of course she has English, Writing, and Literature on top of that. So she is definitely putting in some work this year! I think looking back I would probably choose the same curriculum, mainly because I want to keep her on track for graduation. However, I might have used something like Story of the World or Abeka (text book based) for history, or possibly skipped a formal writing curriculum for the year. I feel fairly confident in her writing skills, and since many of her subjects already require her to do writing assignments, we could have probably skipped it this year. As a matter of fact, as some of you may know, she’s already an author!
But in the spirit of not quitting, we have decided to go ahead and finish out the year! That said, I have eased up on some of the BJU assignments that are given out. If you’ve used BJU Press before you’ll know that they have several quizzes, reports, tests, essays, and projects due for each subject. As we go through our week we decide which of those we want to do and which we want to skip. I’ve also allowed her a little leeway on tests, so for example, she has had times where there were a few major tests scheduled all on the same day. If that happens I will usually allow her to spread them out and take one a day instead.
All in all she’s doing well with her schedule, and while I am giving her some leeway as I mentioned before, I also think it’s an good time to start teaching those important time management skills. When she gets to college she will be dealing with managing her classes, and most likely will have multiple tests per day. Especially around mid-terms and finals, so we’re working through that and making sure she has the necessary skills to manage her time without getting too stressed.
Our 2020-2021 9th Grade Curriculum:
- Bible: Word of Life Challenger Quiet Time for Teens
- Literature: Introduction to Literature: English 1 by Janice Campbell
- English: IEW Fix It! Grammar Book 6
- History: BJU 9th Grade online Cultural Geography 9
- Math: Algebra 1 with Geometry by Shormann Math
- Science: BJU Press Physical Science 9 Distance Online Science
- Writing: Institute for Excellence in Writing
- World Language: BJU Press Online Spanish 1
- Choir: Eric Whitacre Virtual Choir 6
