10th Grade Curriculum (2021)

You’ll remember, perhaps, the review we did for My Father’s World 9th grade curriculum. I like the curriculum but it is packed. It doesn’t leave much space for personal choice, courses working toward a life goal, or electives. The coursework is interesting, though the Bible leaves a lot of information out there that must be discussed with a Bible open in front of you. This adds a lot of time to the curriculum. I treasure these discussions but you have to acknowledge that time addition. There are no electives in the curriculum so when you add those in, you are again adding in time commitments. All of this impacted the fact that Miss L did not complete the MFW 9th grade curriculum, though she worked a minimum or 4 hours on book work each school day last year. That time did not include dance, violin, or time spent in other situations working on electives such as a Bible study titled Pearls that she did through the church or debate. When you count in these other things, she would spend about 6-8 hours per day on her education. She generally worked on art work and dance on Saturday and had Bible class, worship, dance, and other church activities on Sundays. So, she worked hard. Yet, there was still a lot to be done in the MFW curriculum.

The other bit you need to know about Miss L is that her long-term goal is to dance with a professional ballet company and to teach dance. This drives our education choices for her and impacted some of our choices last year. She dealt with a long-term injury last year that required about 1 to 1 1/2 hours of therapy work daily. This again impacts the amount of time she was spending on her school work. Her recovery needed to take some priority as it impacted her health, her ability to dance, and, most importantly, her attitude. If you have ever worked through pain, you understand how it impacts a lot of your life. So, we prioritized her recovery, sometimes letting the therapy work push the book work to the side. She is much better this fall and so she is driving on with all of this.

That all being said, My Father’s World is the curriculum that she is using for history, Bible, and literature. They utilize a number of different programs within this curriculum so she has the Notgrass World History, some Bible resource books, and a good number of supplemental books for history and literature.

For math, she really struggled to understand concepts last year in Algebra 1. She could not comfortably move on with Algebra II, even though her score from last year using CTCMath showed an 88% pass rate. Yet, she couldn’t use the information. (I believe CTC is a good program; it just didn’t work for her.) We have pulled out No-Nonsense Algebra and are starting from the beginning on it to really solidify some of the basic information and get her comfortable to move on into the Algebra I and II information included in this program. It won’t take her all the way through Algebra II material but it will bring her a long way into it.

She is continuing on with the Apologia Physical Science that was included in the MFW package we reviewed last year. It isn’t a favorite but she is learning the information pretty well. She is working through it at a good pace. We will likely move her into Friendly Chemistry or Friendly Biology when she finishes this program.

She is working as a student assistant at the dance studio again this year. Her is putting in about 5 hours a week for this. She is also taking ballet, pointe, tap, jazz, hip hop, contemporary, private ballet, and is part of the company group. Her personal classes are about 11 hours at the studio per week.

She has decided that she misses violin so she is adding that back to her schedule. We will be looking for a retirement center for her to perform at in a couple of months. I don’t know yet if we are going to get her an instructor (where would we fit it in?) but she would definitely benefit from that.

Not to be forgotten is debate. She will tackle the Lads to Leaders debate topic this year. The debate topic is as follows: Resolved: Because the Bible is God’s authoritative and complete instruction to mankind, no latter-day revelations beyond the first century are valid. It will take, as always, a lot of dedicated Bible reading, study, and preparation. She’ll work on this until Easter weekend 2022. She will also include a number of other L2L events.

She has a plate that is so full but she doesn’t want to let go of any of it. We do modify some of the lesson plans and activities in the MFW curriculum. Some of it is just busy work or something to put a grade on; there is no real synthesis of information occurring. We skip those things.

This is the student that we are really seeing the benefits of home education with. We can tailor her schedule to her needs and allow her education to support her goals, not the other way around. Too often, education comes first and the goals are decided after. Her goals were definitely there first and I constantly remind her that education will help her fulfill those goals. Perfection in physical science is not as important as her time perfecting ballet. It is a joy to be able to help her reach for the stars without the stumbling block of a traditional education.

Blessings,
Lori, At Home.

Tagged: curriculum, high school