Our 6th, 9th, and 11th Grade Homeschool Curriculum

There are a lot of changes going on at the Five J's home. For starters, my husband is retiring from full-time music ministry in a few weeks and will be working from home with me at Five J's Design (and helping me develop a curriculum we hope to have out by the beginning of 2014!).

As far as homeschooling goes, since he'll be available during the day to help with the homeschooling (and because our income will be substantially less than it has been) we won't be doing any online classes this next year. Consequently, our curriculum plan is quite a bit different from previous years.

Here's our planned curriculum for the upcoming school year. As always, it's subject to (a lot of) change.

6th Grade Girl

• Language Arts: Cover Story (for composition and grammar—we are SO excited about this!), Wordly Wise Book 6 (vocabulary) and additional independent reading. If you're wondering why Joely doesn't have spelling, it's because she's never done formal spelling and doesn't seem to need it. I've periodically 'tested' her, and she spells beyond her 'grade level' probably because she's a pretty big reader and a visual learner. As a result, we don't use a formal spelling curriculum.
• Math: Finish the rest of Singapore Math 6B, Challenging Word Problems 6, and Key to Percents, and then move on to Chalk Dust Basic Math
• Science: God’s Design for Chemistry & Ecology (a set of 3 books) She's almost done with the Properties of Matter book this year, so she'll only have two of the three books to work through next year.
• Social Studies: Read Student News Daily every day (which we've done for a couple years now), finish book 2 of Uncle Sam and You, then move on to Uncle Eric books (at least What Ever Happened to Penny Candy?, Whatever Happened to Justice?, Are You Liberal? Conservative? or Confused?)
• Foreign Language: Español Para Chicos y Grandes (Level 2) She'll be tutored by Mary, a friend of ours who is a college student majoring in Spanish. Mary went through Level 1 with Joely this year and we are very pleased with the curriculum.
• Music: Drums, using Alfred’s Beginning Drumset Method and theory using Practica Musica software.
• Physical Education: local judo classes 2 times a week.

9th Grade Girl

• Language Arts: Excellence in Literature: Literature and Composition (we purchased the ebook edition so that doing the web research will be a little easier), Wordly Wise 9, and additional independent reading.
  
• Math: Chalk Dust Algebra 1
• Science: Exploring Creation with Biology
• Social Studies: Exploring Government
• Foreign Language: BJU Spanish 2. Jerah took Spanish 1 this year through The Potters School, but next year she'll be tutored by Mary, our Spanish major friend.
• Journalism: Since Jerah is possibly interested in pursuing a career in journalism, I've put together a curriculum using Journalistic Writing, The Associated Press Stylebook, videos from Annenberg, and self-study courses from Poynter News University.
• (Elective) Entrepreneurism: Venture Academy Online, plus additional reading including, but not limited to, Business by the Book, Small Time Operator, and EntreLeadership
• Music: Bass guitar, using Hal Leonard Bass Method, and theory using Practica Musica software.
• Physical Education: local judo classes 2 times a week.

11th Grade Boy

• Language Arts: Lightning Literature: World Lit 1 & 2
• Social Studies: World Geography using BJU Cultural Geography in combination with the World Literature course above.
• Math & Computer Science: ACT-SAT Math Review by Chalk Dust and Computer Science (Computer Science is replacing one of Jaden's math credits) using TeenCoder Java & Android Programming
  
• Science: We're making our own course in electrionics & audio engineering technology. We're not doing a typical 'science' curriculum like Marine Biology or Astronomy since we want to make it more applicable to what Jaden is interested in and will likely be using in his future line of work. For his senior year, he'll do Physics, but for his junior year we're breaking out on our own. We'll be using a free textbook called Lessons in Electric Circuits written by Tony Kuphaldt. It's a great free curriculum that can be redistributed by the general public, so I put all the volumes together into one downloadable file so you can download it if you'd like to use it yourself. Download Lessons in Electric Circuits here.
  
• Economics: Exploring Economics (finishing up the last few lessons)
  
• Foreign Language: BJU Spanish 2. Like his sister, Jaden took Spanish 1 this year through The Potters School, but next year he'll also be tutored by Mary, our Spanish major friend.
  
• Music: Guitar, using A Modern Method for Guitar, Reading Studies for Guitar, Melodic Rhythms for Guitar, Coursera.com courses, and theory using Practica Musica software.
  
• (Elective) Entrepreneurism: Venture Academy Online, plus additional reading including, but not limited to, Business by the Book, Small Time Operator, and EntreLeadership
• ACT Prep: using Cracking the ACT