High school: I think I can... I think I can...

***Mid-year assessment notes added January 2014***

*Edited in August to reflect what we actually started with.*

  Transcripts. Different types of grading. Credits. What is a credit. Homemade courses equaling a fair credit. Balancing Justice's interests with graduation requirements. State graduation requirements versus incoming college freshman requirements. Testing. Grades that really mean something. Boy without an easily apparent direction. AAAAAaaaaaaaa!!

   This is not a complete list of the curricula Justice will use for fall. I can't post that yet. The decisions are still being researched and made. Clearly those how to homeschool highschool books should come with a chocolate bar and coffee beans. For awhile it looked like he certainly wouldn't be staying home, and I stopped researching his books. Now I feel behind. Gah.

   English 1: Literature - Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings for the literature, beta testing a LOTR guide made by a homeschool mom, lecture series from Peter Kreeft, and another from Joseph Pearce
                    Composition - Sentence Composing for High School by Killgallon, Stewart English 3 (when he finishes 2), Elements of Style, and weekly writing projects

   Math: Jacob's Elementary Algebra, but I'm keeping my eye on Math-U-See for him

   Science: Exploring Creation with Biology as the main course, using the notebook journal pages from Knowledge Box Central (NOT the "lapbook" pages) extra reading: Scientists of Faith, Reasonable Faith: The Scientific Case for Christianity

    History: Homemade. Allegedly. Working on it. Here's the current plan. Very subject to change.

• Human Odyssey by Spielvogel, just the ancient section
• Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Plato's Republic, Plutarch's Lives, Beowulf (medieval, but gets covered in the Lord of the Rings based literature), Genesis, Exodus,  I/II Samuel, I/II Kings
• a couple Hinges of History books: The Gift of the Jews, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, and Why the Greeks Matter
• writing assignments, research projects
• a couple lecture series from Great Courses (leaning toward The Odyssey and Classical Mythology)
• portions of Omnibus I

   Bible: Up. in. the. air. We were going to tie it to his ancient history, but he already knows those stories so well.  I think instead we'll be going with books like The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, Chosen by God (Sproul), and... a Kreeft book maybe? Reading small bites daily, with constant conversation along the way. Definitely Kreeft's You Can Understand the Bible for personal reading.

   Latin: Nope. He dropped it.

   Greek: Greek Code Cracker (lasted less than two weeks), a vintage text, then An Introduction to Attic Greek

   Logic/Rhetoric: A Rulebook for Arguments, Everything's an Argument, and...

   Extra: scouts, doo-wop/WWII era dance

***Mid-year assessment notes***

• English 1 - Literature has been great. No complaints. Composition crashed and burned. He hasn't meshed well with a writing curriculum in a couple/few years. He is constantly writing stories in his free time though. I made a deal with him. If he'll pick just one of those stories for us to use as a writing exercise, taking it piece by piece and improving it wherever possible. Or I'll make yet another attempt at selecting a writing curriculum for him.
• Jacobs Elementary Algebra - Justice has been plodding through this at his own pace, and feels fairly good about it. I am not convinced he's learning it deeply enough for it to stick. He will most likely switch to Math-U-See's older combined algebra 1/geometry set.
• Exploring Creation with Biology - Total flop. Half a school year of trudging is enough. I'll use the table of contents to try putting enough biology together to save his biology credit and make sure he actually learns something.
• Homemade history course - We're still making it up as we go along, using various resources. Justice has enjoyed it immensely.
• Bible turned into more reading to flesh out what our pastor was working on at church.
• Greek - Ouch. He loves the idea of Greek and the derivatives, but he simply didn't put in the work required to really get this off the ground. If he'll work at it for the rest of the year it can be a half credit elective. Either way, he needs to pick a language he can haul through for 10th grade.
• Argument books - We never got to them. Summer time.
• Mythology elective - He's loved this. The boy is a walking mythology encyclopedia and I can't keep up with him.