Looking Back at Our Year

Emily is finishing up the 10th grade. That’s so hard to believe! Where does the time go?

It’s been a pretty good year all in all. 8th and 9th grades were a bit rough with dawdling and lack of focus. This past year, Emily has been more on track. (Well, until April at least, when she went back to procrastinating—she still is not quite finished with her work for the year. So much for summer break!)

In Algebra 2, she completed Life of Fred’s Advanced Algebra and loved it. Math seems to have clicked for her and she has done very well. She finished up the year by reviewing with LearnBop.

We used The Spectrum Chemistry, which I thought was a very thorough program. There were labs every week that were easy to get done, since the program includes a complete lab kit with all the needed supplies, equipment, and chemicals. We had a lab group of four students that met every week. Emily did well with chemistry, especially with the math component, but didn’t enjoy it. I think she’s more of a biology girl.

We completed the first of two years of U.S. history using Sonlight 100 and Dave Raymond American History. The two programs complemented each other well, since Dave Raymond History includes videos, primary source readings and essay questions, while Sonlight is primarily reading, discussion, and mapwork. (We skipped the portfolio aspect of Dave Raymond.)

Emily completed a semester of Middlebury Spanish 2, then used the Destinos video series and text for the second semester. Although the content was mostly review, watching the videos, which are a soap-opera type continuing story were good for improving her (and my) comprehension.

For English, Emily used Sharon Watson’s Illuminating Literature and Power in Your Hands and loved both. She also studied The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass and The Scarlet Letter using Lightning Literature.

In the fall, Emily completed her Health credit using materials from Standard Deviants Accelerate and the health program from Homeschool Family Fitness.

PE and Art did not happen on a consistent basis, so finishing up those two subjects is our summer goal. She’s doing the running programs for Homeschool Family Fitness as well some other varied exercise for PE. She’s doing the ArtAchieve program (which she loves—review coming soon!)and continuing to work in Artistic Pursuits for her art.