Freshman Year in the Bag! (part 1)

So, as we come to the end of Phoebe's first year of high school, let me share what she has done. This is copied from the homeschool report I wrote, so that is why it sounds official. Technically, I don't have to do this in Virginia, but it is a good way to keep track of what we are doing.

Ancient/World History (Honors Level):

For Ancient History, we started by using Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. The book begins with the establishment of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, and, so far, has also included the early histories of Egypt, China, and India. The text covers political and military history, of course, but it also includes literature, art, and technological advances.

For each chapter, there is a section of terms to identify, discussion questions, and occasional critical thinking assignments. She takes a quiz about every two-three chapters that is a combination of objective and short answer questions. The chapters are short, so she typically covers two or three a week.

In March of 2018, we decided to make a switch and begin AP World History. We are using three textbooks: World Civilizations: The Global Experience, 6^th ed. (AP Edition; Stearns, et al), Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, 4^th ed., Vol. 1 (Bentley and Ziegler), and Ways of the World: A Global History with Sources, 3^rd ed. (AP edition; Strayer and Nelson). We also have a workbook that accompanies the Strayer text. We will work on this course through May 2019 with the goal of taking the AP exam next May.

We have incorporated documentaries and historical fiction into our class as well. For documentaries, we have watched

·      The Tomb of the Scythian Prince

·      Africa’s Great Civilizations (ep 1)

We also watch TV series like Timeless and Legends of Tomorrow, which are about time travel, so various historical periods are visited, and historical persons often appear, which allows for discussion of the real history as well.

In the Spring semester (2018), Phoebe started a World History through Film class from Online G3 (https://www.onlineg3.com/). Each week a film is assigned; Phoebe watches the film, discusses it with us, then discusses it in class. The films for the class were

·      Looking for Richard

·      Henry V (Branagh)

·      Julius Caesar (1953)

·      Spartacus (1960)

·      Belle

·      Gandhi

·      Lawrence of Arabia

·      All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

·      The King’s Speech

·      Casablanca

·      The Imitation Game

·      Grave of the Fireflies

·      Tora! Tora! Tora!

To keep up on current events, we watch CNN 10, formerly CNN Student News, daily, and Phoebe watches local, national, and cable (CNN, MSNBC) news on a fairly regular basis.

Also in the Spring semester, Phoebe took an Introduction to Anthropology course through Gifted Homeschoolers Forum. Since she currently wants to major in Anthropology in college, this was a great class for her.

Lastly, over the summer (2017) Phoebe took a class on Historic Crimes, studying Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, and the Lindbergh Kidnapping Case. In the class, they studied the crimes, the evidence, and who may have committed the crimes: the Ripper murders are still unsolved and many people believe the other crimes were not handled correctly at the time, and perhaps the wrong people were arrested or convicted. So the class was both historic and scientific.

To begin her study of Virginia history, we have been visiting sites of local importance. We have learned a bit about the founding of Newport News, the history of CNU, and we have visited Richmond, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Yorktown, Fort Monroe, the Mariners’ Museum, and we took a quick trip to Colonial Williamsburg.

Literature and Writing (Honors):

Over the Summer of 2017, she read

·      The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien

·      Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne

·      The Secret Garden, by Francis Hodgson Burnett

·      The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells

·      A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare

·      Ink and Bone, by Rachel Caine

·      The Book Jumper, by Mechthild Gläser

·      The Jedera Adventure, by Lloyd Alexander

·      Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

·      Click’d, by Tamara Ireland Stone

She wrote book reports on several of these for our NY credit union’s Summer Reading Challenge.

Once school officially began, we started with mythology. She prepared for and took the National Mythology Exam at the beginning of March. She received a 98, which was one wrong, and she qualified for a Silver Medal.

We started with Creation, Flood, Afterlife, and Apocalypse myths—categories that appear in the myths of most cultures. She read several myths for each category, then we discussed their similarities and differences. We then dove into Greek and Roman mythology, using Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and The Myths of Greece and Rome, by H. A. Guerber.

Her first major literary work was The Epic of Gilgamesh, which we started when we got to the same point in history—the epic is discussed in her history text as well. She also read the play Medea, by Euripides, The Iliad, by Homer, Oedipus Rex and Antigone, by Sophocles, and Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare. Homer’s The Odyssey, was the final assigned text of the school year. She wrote argument-based essays for Gilgamesh and Julius Caesar, and answered discussion questions and took quizzes for the other texts.

In the Fall, Phoebe took an online class about Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series through Online G3. They read and discussed the full trilogy over the semester. She read The Fellowship of the Ring over the summer, and The Two Towers and The Return of the King during the class. We watched the corresponding movie for The Fellowship of the Ring as well.

On her own, she is reading/has read:

·      We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (for the Secular, Eclectic, and Academic [SEA] Teen Book Club)

·      Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

·      The Trials of Apollo: The Dark Prophecy, by Rick Riordan

·      Fate of Flames, by Sarah Raughley

·      Ophelia, by Lisa M. Klein

·      The Audition, by Maddie Ziegler and Julia DeVillers

·      The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, by Ann Brashares

·      Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson

·      The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas (for the SEA Teen Book Club)

·      Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien

·      The Cursed Child, by J. K. Rowling

·      Martians Abroad, by Carrie Vaughn

·      Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (book club)

·      The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle (book club)

·      Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo (book club)

·      Turtles all the Way Down, by John Green (book club)

·      Black Widow: Red Vengeance, by Margaret Stohl

·      Magnus Chase and the Ship of the Dead, by Rick Riordan

·      One of Us is Lying, by Karen McManus (book club)

·      Dreamland Burning, by Jennifer Latham (book club)

·      Just One Damned Thing After Another, by Jodi Taylor

·      Alanna, by Tamora Pierce

·      The Magician’s Nephew, by C.S. Lewis

·      Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wien (book club)

·      All the Bright Places, by Jennifer Niven (currently reading/book club)

·      The Cat Who’ll Live Forever: The Final Adventures of Norton, the Perfect Cat, and His Imperfect Human, by Peter Gethers (currently reading)

For many of the books she reads, Phoebe writes reviews for a blog we have for this purpose. She also often answers discussion questions and/or takes quizzes. These allow her to work on her writing skills and plot retention.

When we lived in New York, Phoebe was part of a teen book club. Having no luck finding one down here, we contacted the members of our NY group and we have now resumed the group online. We meet every other week, on average. During the meetings, the book is discussed and critically analyzed.

In February and March, Phoebe wrote another round of book reports for our NY credit union’s Winter Reading Challenge. She plans to do several Summer Reading Challenges as well.

Geometry (Honors—since she is a year ahead):

Phoebe took the Geometry class through mathhelp.com. The course is divided into ten sections. She completed the class in May.

  

Science (College Level):

In the Fall, Phoebe studied Meteorology. We used The Atmosphere: An Introduction to Meteorology, 12^th ed., by Frederick K. Lutgens and Edward J. Tarbuck as our text. The book covered the composition of the atmosphere, how weather patterns form and happen, pollution and climate change, and various types of storms. She covered about a chapter a week and completed the book in the semester. For assignments, she took periodic quizzes, studied the local weather, and watched some documentaries about past storms.

Toward the end of the course, Phoebe also did projects on Hurricane Katrina and the “Perfect Storm” of 1991. For the latter, she looked at videos online of weather reports from the time, she read sections of Sebastian Junger’s book, The Perfect Storm, and we watched the film adaptation. We also watched Al Gore’s films An Inconvenient Truth and An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. She had several questions for each film that required in-depth, critical answers.

Starting in January, we switched to Astronomy. We are using Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour, by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott as our text, which has a companion workbook. The book is based on a course the three of them co-taught at Princeton University. The book covers the composition and age of the universe and planets, the Theory of Relativity, and cosmology.

Each week, she reads one-two chapters and completes the corresponding problems in the workbook. She has also been doing weekly PowerPoint presentations on the sun, planets, and moons in our solar system, and various constellations.

In addition to the book, we are incorporating a lot of documentaries.

·      Season 1 of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos

·      Secrets of the Solar System

·      Journey to the Pale Red Dot

·      Season 1 of The Planets

·      Season 1 of Edge of the Universe

·      The Farthest: Voyager in Space

·      Supermassive Black Holes

·      How the Universe Works: “Comets” and “Asteroids”

Geography isn't quite finished, so the rest of her classes will follow soon!