Back to School!

Going back to school is a little different for us this year since Phoebe wanted to try homeschooling, and we decided to give a go. In addition to what the school district requires, there were things she wanted to study, so she has quite the diverse schedule.

• US History: 8th grade around here focuses on Reconstruction to the present. She ended with Reconstruction last year, so that is pretty much where we picked up. We started this in early August, so, currently, she is right around the turn of the century.
• Physical Science: Last year was Life Science, so this year we shift!
• Math: She was in 8th-grade math last year, Pre-Algebra, so this year we are trying Algebra I.
• French: She took French 1 last year, so, this year, we're moving on to the second year. Right now she is working on a calendar of French and US holidays.
• Literature: The first thing she's reading is Beowulf, then she will move on to Frankenstein--mainly because she wants to see the play starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller at the end of October, and she has to read the book first!
• World Religions: Since she really didn't learn anything in her religion class last year, we have decided to rectify that. This Fall, she will focus on non-Western religions, and in January we will move to Western.

Those are her six "core" classes. Once a week, she has either a clarinet or a piano lesson, so that takes care of music, and dance starts this week, which will fulfill most of her PE requirement. She also wants to learn some Chinese, so we are working on that once a week. Crafting and similar things will take care of art.

This week she also starts a couple of online classes that will "meet" once a week and run until sometime in November: "The Race to the Presidency" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," which is a literature and writing class based on the Harry Potter book/movie of the same name.

We gave the unschooling approach a try--where kids just sort of follow their bliss and learning happens when it happens--but that didn't work. At all. So we chatted and agreed that a schedule would be a good thing--History, Math, and Literature are MWF, and Science, Religion, and French are TTh. "Class time" happens in the morning with the afternoons left for music practice/lessons and finishing up stuff that didn't get done in the morning. So far, it seems to be working. It is early days yet, so we shall see how it goes. We get to watch TV at lunchtime, so that is the highlight of the day!