Closing the Homeschool Year!

Another homeschool year is put to rest. All that is left is the "End of the Year Testing." It has been a good year, an exciting year, a grueling year, an adjusting year. We've had to adjust to our oldest son/brother living far off in N. Carolina and to having 2 working at the table instead of 3. 


I'm a hands-on homeschool mom. I don't know if it is my teaching style or their learning style but homeschool means me at the table with them for the majority of the day. That's okay! Teen to mom bonding is VERY important and boy have we bonded, mostly over High School Math! It doesn't come easy to them and it doesn't come easy to me so we poured over Algebra 1 (for R) and Geometry (for C) most of each morning! 


Next week my goal will be to clean off the school bookshelf and I am moving shelves around to better accomodate us. I'll also put together Christian's grades for his High School Transcript. With Tyler I let myself procrastinate because I was frozen in fear. No more! I'm not going to let the years pile up because it gets worse not better when you do that!!


Next year we'll like spend part of the school year (at least one semester) in Central America completing our adoption. I've been warned by a friend there now that I will not be able to haul all of our books down there. It's just too much weight. So, we are looking into Kindles for the kids so they can continue their studies. I'm going to try my best to keep out the busy work so we can do the hands on learning that will come from living in a foreign country. 


Here's what makes me laugh... I decided earlier in THIS school year that NEXT year we would do a study on various countries and what it would be like to live there. Little did I know then that it would be a VERY hands-on study!!! 


So here is what I know about our curriculum for next year:


Math
Teaching Textbooks Geometry (Rachel)
Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2 (Christian)


Spanish
Pimsleur Spanish (the whole family, studying as a family beginning NOW)
Note: We actually have a few Spanish curricula floating around the house!


Literature and Composition
Composition: I am either hiring a tutor or hiring someone to correct their papers as I assign them. I'll be assigning papers connected to their history and science studies. 
Literature: I am giving them a list of Classic American Novels to choose from and to do analysis on. I am a bit choosy. In my opinion much of the typical High School American Novels for classic studies are not at all edifying. 


Science
Stilling searching, but we know we'd like to study Astronomy.


History/Gov't
We may be entirely researched based with History. I haven't decided yet. Christian wants to research world governments and Rachel wants to research the effects of wars and different world and national events through the years on the American family. So, we'll see...


Cross Cultural Studies
Somehow I'll be developing a course to take advantage of our travel and the people we will meet! More to come on that!!


This is the first year in quite awhile that I don't have everything planned and purchased by now. We're walking by faith knowing that God will supply! I'd love to hear about the curricula and studies being planned for other homeschoolers. Please share in the comments or leave a link to similar posts on your blogs!