We’re Homeschooling High School and Our 9th Grade Curriculum Picks

Ninth Grade y’all, seriously!

I don’t think I’m ready for this and when I sit down and think about homeschooling high school I have panic attacks. It reminds me so much of those first few years when I started homeschooling, and then discovering what giftedness looks like. 

I know this feeling is both an emotional response to him growing older and that overall lack of confidence that happens when we allow the worldly view of education to invade our thinking. Still, it’s where I am at the moment. I know I’ll get over it just as I’ve done before and as we settle into the new school year I know we’ll find a rhythm. 

It just seems entirely too impossible that we’ve reached the homeschooling high school stage already. 

So with that, I’ve struggled to make decisions about his curriculum. But, I’ve finally settled on this list and I feel pretty good about it. 

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Homeschooling High School 9th Grade Curriculum

Homeschooling High School Bible History 
(Bible can and will act as a Social Studies credit)

For Bible this year I will be pulling resources from a variety of places. I’m hoping to put together a comprehensive advanced study for my son. My focus for the year will be continuing to build Bible knowledge and deepen his understanding of scripture, Christian evidences and the history of the church from Acts to today. I’m hoping to spend the first half of the year with Christian evidences and the second half on church history.

• The Discovering God’s Way curriculum

This Bible study curriculum is designed for use in a congregation’s Bible class setting. However, I think they are also perfect for homeschoolers. I plan to utilize them in a Bible Chronological study and allow them to be a survey of the Bible type of study. I really like that they go from a Bible study perspective through church history, and incorporate guides for living as well. This brings the scope of study full circle from digging deeper into the word, to the application to one’s life. 

• Apologetics Press – Home Study Course – Christian Evidences

This Christian evidences course looks at the arguments that exist concerning the existence of God, the history of the Bible, the story of creation, and the truth of the Gospel. They look at arguments against, as well as evidence that support Chsupports belief. I believe that it’s important to have a good understanding of Christian evidences so that one can declare with confidence their faith in Christ. 

• Bible Land Passages – World Video Bible School

The Bible Land Passages project is dedicated to showcasing those historical facts through powerful video segments that teach faith lessons from the Bible lands. Since we are going to be doing world history this year, I think adding in these powerful videos detailing the Bible lands from a Biblical historical perspective will serve to expand learning in both Bible and history studies, as well as deepen understanding of how Christian evidences exist today to support Bible history.

• Bible Copy Work

Going along with our focused studies this year, I’ll have him do the Genesis Journible and the  Acts Journible. He completed James, and Philippians, and Romans, last year. I’m amazed at how much care he is taking in writing out God’s word. 

Homeschooling High School Social Studies

• Exploring World History from Notgrass History

This will be our 3rd time using Notgrass History for homeschooling. It has become a must-have for us. The Notgrass History curriculum guides a student through their lessons in a way which helps the child develop their own independent study abilities. Which is one of the reasons why I love it so much. 

Exploring World History is a  one-year homeschool curriculum for high school. As Christians, we want a world history that teaches students to understand history from a Christian perspective. And, Notgrass History does just that. The lessons incorporate, literature, Bible memory work, and writing assignments as well.

You can find sample lessons here.

Homeschooling High School English

Each year, I pull together language arts curriculum from a variety of resources. While writing continues to be a struggle it’s not because he doesn’t have the ability to write. It’s a real frustration with being required to write that he has. But we are slowly, ever so slowly, breaking through the struggle. 

For Language Arts this year I’m thrilled with the overall variety of English curriculum we’ll be using. I think it’s going to give him a great foundation to continue to develop his writing skills. 

• Exploring World History Literature Companion Set  

These Notgrass History unit studies incorporate literature that includes original documents, speeches, poems, and stories. Doing this takes the mundane out of the historical study and puts it into real-world, real life, perspective. They also incorporate classic literature helping to bring to life the time periods which the student is studying.

Exploring World History“>

Exploring World History“>

• Writer’s in Residence from Apologia

Writer’s in Residence is a complete language arts program that is writing focused. It teaches writing from a real-life perspective. While covering the traditional forms, personal, expository, persuasive, and narrative, of writing, WIR works through those forms from a practical approach, the way that we write in real life. It helps students to understand the writing process of planning, drafting, revising and review and helps them through each step of the process.

Additionally, the material introduces students to real-life authors to help them see good writing in action. Writer’s in Residence is suggested for grades 4 through 8, however, since we are truly trying to dig in and resolve his writing struggles I feel it’s appropriate for him this year. 

For more information on Writer’s in Residence see my review:
Homeschool Writing Curriculum with a Real World Application.

• Easy Grammar Plus & Student Workbook

A comprehensive English language grammar system. This curriculum is geared for Junior High through Adult ages. It is comprehensive in scope and I’ve heard that once it’s completed the student never needs to take a grammar course again. While my son has a good understanding of grammar, and will also be visiting grammar in Writer’s in Residence, I’m most likely going to approach Easy Grammar Plus for a more in-depth grammar study, and it may take us 2 years to complete since he’ll also be doing WIR.

Homeschooling High School Math

• Khan Academy: Pre-Calculus & Trigonometry
  It works for my son. In fact, he’s asked me to stop giving him other math curricula because Khan just simply works for him. He has completed Algebra 2 and Geometry and is already 40% mastered in Pre-Calculus and 54% mastered in Trigonometry so I don’t imagine it will take the entire year to get through these courses. We may move on into Probability and Statistics, but we’ll have to see how the year pans out. 

Homeschooling High School Science

• Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Chemistry

Seriously, it’s hard for me to believe that we’ve reached Chemistry! Wow! Like how does that happen? I could start high school with Biology but he’s simply more interested in Physics since he wants to be an architect. This way he can do Chemistry this year, Physics next and then follow those up with AP Chem & AP Physics to be able to CLEP his college courses. I’m not entirely sure how I’ll fit in Biology and he’s so interested in science in general he may want to do Anatomy as well, but I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We may just do one or both as summer courses. 

Homeschooling High School Electives

• Foreign Language
  • Biblical Hebrew – Mango Languages 
    We’re using our library resources to login for FREE. I really like that they have a Google Play app he can do his lessons on the go when need be. It’s also available on Kindle via Amazon, and iTunes.
• Music
  • Piano Lessons – Last spring we were able to enroll our son in the Music Arts Institute. The instructors there are professional performers and highly-qualified educators. Under the tutelage of his instructor, we have watched him progress very quickly to very advanced pieces. We are thrilled to hear him play, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Pachebel, Chopin, Joplin and more.
  • Music History Study – Throughout the year I’m going to pull from various composers studies using these Music in Homeschool Resources.
• Art 
  • Art Lessons – I’ll continue using Sparketh. My son really is enjoying exploring different mediums and I love the convenience of quality art lessons available online in video format. I’ll also be looking into local art lessons at a nearby art museum. 

• • Art Appreciation – I’m so excited about the new art appreciation curriculum available by Alisha at The Masterpiece Society. We’ll be doing the  Masterpiece Society Art Appreciation, Set 1. Looking forward to diving into a serious art history study. 

 

• STEM 
  • This year he’ll continue to learn coding on Khan Academy, and Code.org, Scratch.MIT.edu, CAD with Tinkercad.com.
  • First LEGO League
• Homeschool Co-op
  We’re joining a local co-op with some friends that focus on research and presentation. Looking forward to seeing my son working on projects that require a written presentation.

I’m participating in a fun Back to Homeschool Wishlist CASH Giveaway!!

The iHomeschool Network Bloggers & Friends are doing a loop giveaway on Instagram!! We’re giving away $800 CASH!
Yes, you heard that right! $800 cash. To ENTER click the image below, click LIKE, make sure you are following me, then click the image and click on the next tagged blogger. Continue that pattern until you follow the loop. It’s that easy!

Our homeschool year begins Monday, September 11th. So I still have some time to finalize all of the details, but this is a general overview of our homeschooling high school curriculum choices for 9th grade. While the idea of homeschool high school still gives me the shivers. But we have always said we’d homeschool through graduation, so ready or not, we’re doing high school this year.

 

 

 

 

This post is part of the iHomeschool Network 9th Annual Back to Homeschool Blog Hop. You too can join this fun blog hop, open to ALL Homeschool bloggers.

 

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