Our Homeschooled High Schooler

We’re a month into official Homeschool High School. It has been a busy month, but I plan to blog on that later. Sam and I are still trying to find our rhythm and I think we are almost there.

Currently he is doing Language Arts/Literature a la the Bravewriter system.

Introduction to Catholicism from the Diadache series

American History preparing for the CLEP test.

Algebra 1 Saxon Math with a math tutor.

Science from Jay Wile.

Additionally he has piano lessons, choir practice with the adult choir at church, and soccer.

When my mom was able to come over to homeschool Sam, she gave him his assignment and then sat around waiting for him to complete them. I can’t give Sam that kind of time because I have four other children but I am trying to prepare him to work independently just as he will have to do more or less in college and in the real world. I give him a sheet at the beginning of the week with his subjects and the days of the week on it. He records how much time he spends on each subject and then I enter them into the HomeSchool minder. On Friday’s I review all of the work that he has done, and write out the assignments for the upcomin week. I don’t care if he does all his math on Monday, Religion Tuesday etc, or if he does bit every day on all of his subjects, as long as he gets all of the assignments done and so far that seems to be working well.

I love the math tutor that comes over twice a week. He “talks” math and even knows “algebra jokes” which makes him a real joy for Sam to meet with. He checks Sam’s work, and brings supplemental problems. Additionally he had Sam omit all of the Geometry problems in the Saxon book because he feels they can just do Geometry as a separate subject next year. He also had him skip all of the English system of measuring to metric system problems too telling me that unless he’s going into engineering, he won’t need them and they aren’t on the SAT or ACT tests. That was good to know!

Our piano teacher has taken his lessons to the next level and I am starting to hear familiar easy classics coming from Sam as he practices.

The adult choir has been a real treat. The median age of our choir was probably aroung 55. When 14 year old Sam joined that dropped considerably! The ladies gush over him, the men tease him and they all seem to watch out for him and make sure he has the right music and is in the right spot. In other words they have welcomed him warmly and made him feel like part of the group (albeit the baby of the group) and I think Sam is enjoying. I know this because he was determined to walk through the rain last week to get to practice without my saying a word!

Probably the best thing so far has been his homeschool, high school soccer team. I was so fortunate to find this group where Sam can meet other homeschooled kids his age who love soccer! I hope that he can make some good friends there over the years.

So far so good… now into month 2!