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Our Homeschool Curriculum for 2024-25 (with a 17-year-old and a 14-year old)

This school year, alongside our all-together schooling, my 17-year-old Alina daughter continues her self-directed studies and my 14-year-old son Ian will be dipping his toes into the water to do the same. We'll be focusing on American and World history from 1850-present, Physics, and following the passionate, unique interests of both of my kids. This post will detail our curriculum and resources for the 2024-2025 school year.



 

Character Comes First

Education is much more than academic learning; it involves our emotional and spiritual development as well. I believe that teaching my children to be honest, responsible, kind people is more important than the acquisition of academic knowledge.


I messed up on this in the early years of our homeschooling by focusing too much on academics. Through painful experience, I was re-oriented and realized that character development has to be paramount over everything else we do in our homeschool.


I intentionally focus on character development through:

  • Relationship development

  • Household responsibilities

  • Discussion of character during read-alouds

  • Service within our community


 

Life Skills

When my kids were younger, I focused on teaching them life skills that we worked on together. Now that my kids are older, they're learning independent life skills to ensure that they'll be ready for life on their own.


 

Household Responsibilities

Both of my kids have a fairly large list of household responsibilities, which they have been taught and are expected to complete on their own. They are working to master all aspects of home care, including laundry, cleaning, maintenance, yard care, etc.


 

Household Shopping and Errands

Since Alina is now driving independently, she and her brother are learning how to handle household errands on their own. They are sometimes tasked with family grocery shopping, returning books to the library, dropping off donations at charities, etc. In this way, they are learning the skills they will need to be householders.


Obviously, this has some big benefits for me, as well, in time savings. 💖💖💖 (Thank goodness, since local and state advocacy work is taking up a large chunk of my time now, in addition to my two part-time jobs).



 

Farm-to-Table

Although they know all about raising chicks and keeping chickens on a day-to-day basis, one aspect that I'm continuing to focus on teaching the kids is how to butcher and prepare chickens for our dinner table. Old hens must be periodically culled in order to keep our flock productive, so I'm teaching the kids all about respectful chicken harvest.



 

Cooking

Each of my kids cooks dinner for the family once a week. They choose the menu for their assigned dinner days. When my schedule allows, I help them learn how to cook new recipes.

Besides simple spaghetti, burgers, or pizza, some of my kids’ current favorite foods to prepare are:


Ian:

  • Cheeseburger salad - Favorite cheeseburger ingredients chopped up and served on a romaine salad, topped with ketchup/mayo dressing

  • Teriyaki beef strips with broccoli - Beef steak strips, breaded with arrowroot, fried, and then glazed with Teriyaki sauce and served with broccoli over rice or noodles

  • Beef and okra stew


Alina:

  • Slow cooker roasted chicken and potatoes

  • Vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting


 

Individual Needs and Interests

The homeschool philosophy we love is Thomas Jefferson Education. In this homeschool model, rather than children being in specific grades, they are in “Phases” which each have a specific learning focus. There is more info about the Phases here, and in brief, they are:

  • Core Phase – Age ~0-8 years old – Focused on character development, right and wrong, good and bad, etc

  • Love of Learning Phase – Age ~8-13 years old – Giving the child the opportunity to fall in love with learning through nurturing their own interests and providing opportunities for exploration of academic subjects

  • Scholar Phase – Age ~13-18 years old – Focused on study in a wide range of topics with increasing ability and commitment


An important part of nurturing a love of learning in my kids is through encouraging them to pursue their own interests. One of the biggest advantages of homeschooling is that my children have as much time as desired to follow their passions. I'm supporting my children's current interests as follows.


 

Egg Business

My kids are partners in a small chicken egg business. They work together to take care of the chickens daily and sell a few dozen eggs weekly (besides the 2-3 dozen our family consumes). Owning their own business has given my kids the opportunity to learn much about raising and caring for animals, handling and saving money, profit vs. loss, the value of hard work, perseverance, and long-term commitments. They're becoming experts in management of the flock, and they make the hard decisions about keeping their business viable throughout the productive and unproductive egg laying years of their hens.


 


17-year-old daughter Alina – Scholar Phase + Writing + Sewing

Alina is in self-directed Scholar Phase. This means that, in addition to our all-together schooling time, Alina is also pursuing her own studies independently. There is more info about how we implement self-directed Scholar Phase here.


For the last couple years, Alina has created her own study plan each semester, with my guidance towards making it balanced as far as content. However, the coming semester is going to be quite a bit different than Alina's Sophomore Year.

  • Alina and Ian will both be participating in TJED High Online Liberal Arts Mentoring Program (more about that below).

  • Alina will also be taking a college English Composition course at New Mexico State University.


We're not yet sure how much time these courses will take, so Alina is going to take a few weeks to settle into everything before determining what the rest of her self-guided studies will look like. She may end up just focusing on writing her novel and doing a little math.


Alina continues to be passionate about hand-sewing stuffed animals. She is also learning how to tailor clothing recently.



 


14-year-old son Ian – Transition to Scholar Phase + Cars Cars Cars

Ian is transitioning into Scholar Phase so he will be trying out TJED High this semester (more about that below).


Ian has had a lifelong passionate interest in cars and other wheeled vehicles, tools, and machines. We support these interests through:

  • Teaching Ian how to perform routine maintenance and repairs on our two cars and 4-wheelers, such as changing spark plugs, changing oil and transmission fluid, changing coolant, changing batteries, servicing carburetors, etc. (My own car maintenance days are long past 😎, but my husband Ryan has been spending many Saturdays with Ian working in the garage on our vehicles.😍)

  • Getting Ian involved in household maintenance (such as letting him help with changing bike tires, using the drill and manual staple gun, etc.),

  • Including a focus on inventors and inventions in our history studies,

  • Paying Ian to do home maintenance jobs that involve power tools such as sanding the picnic table, clearing brush piles, chopping wood, etc., and

  • Making sure Ian has plenty of books about vehicles and machines to read.




 

Academic Subjects

I purposely do not push my children academically, but I do give them exposure to plenty of academic subjects and pursuits. We currently have family “kidschool time” for 1-2 hours ~3 days a week, before the kids go off to do their Scholar Time.


There is more about the how we make our homeschool successful and sustainable here, why the homeschooling environment is more important than curriculum, and more about our general homeschool routine here.


 

TJED High Liberal Arts Mentoring Program

Thomas Jefferson Education (TJED) High is a classics-based liberal arts program wherein the youths read one or two books per week, in conjunction with mentoring videos and an online forum where they can discuss the readings with peers and mentors. Alina previously participated in TJED High for two semesters a couple years ago. At that time, this program worked very well for helping Alina build good study habits (which she then applied to her self-directed studies over the last couple years).


Now that Ian is going through puberty and exhibiting the developmental changes necessary to move into his own Scholar Phase, I thought it would be good for him to potentially try TJED High, too. Since Ian has been a bit hesitant about moving into Scholar Phase, I asked Alina if she would be willing to join TJED High again for this semester and she agreed. So now, both Alina and Ian have chosen to sign up for TJED High this semester. We also invited a few friends to join the program, and that means they will get to discuss their readings with real-life friends as well as online friends in the discussion forum.


Some of the readings for the coming semester include:




Literature

Literature is foundational to our homeschool. It gives us exposure to different cultures and values, allows us to "walk a mile" in others' shoes, and facilitates important discussions that lead to character growth.

Daily Read-Aloud and Kids’ Book Club

Even though my kids are in high school, we still read aloud classic books frequently. Read alouds spark many of our most important discussions about culture and character. For the last year or so, we have been taking turns reading aloud to the family in the evenings; this is helping my kids learn public speaking and how to project their voices. I also lead a children’s read-aloud classic book club once-a-month at our homeschool group.


Our recent and upcoming read-alouds include:



Classic and Fun Audiobooks

Audio books have been a fantastic way to give my kids exposure to a wide variety of classic books without any additional effort from me. In moderation, my kids are allowed to listen to audiobooks as desired; when my kids were younger we needed to limit the duration to one hour daily. Some of the audio books are free downloads from Librivox.


Recently, my kids have chosen to listen to:

Reading

Through a steady habit of read-alouds year-after-year, my children have fallen in love with books. Alina learned to read at age 4, and Ian learned to read at age 8.5. Although Ian's reading would have been considered "late" were he in school, thankfully I had learned about the wide range of developmental readiness for reading so that I (mostly) avoided pressuring him about his reading progression. Some kids like Alina naturally learn to read when they are very young, but it is totally natural that some kids do not read until later, even until as late as 12 to 14 years old.


Alina and Ian both choose to read on their own many days. Recently, some of the their favorite authors and series' include:


 

Writing, Spelling, and Typing

We don't use a formal curriculum for writing or spelling. Instead, we find ways to incorporate writing into our everyday lives, so that the writing my kids do will have real meaning rather than being a forced exercise. There is more about writing in our homeschool here.


Some of the current ways in which my kids engage in writing are:

  • Penpals, writing letters to family and friends

  • Writing stories, on their own or in collaboration with friends

  • Informal spelling bees, where we take turns asking each other to spell words

  • Formal spelling bees, once a semester as part of our homeschool group

  • Email accounts for communicating with family members

  • Spelling games such as Quiddler and Scrabble

Alina also writes quite a bit during her Scholar Time, since she is writing a fantasy novel.



 

Math

We don’t use traditional math curriculums. Recently, we've focused on learning math in the context of everyday life as well as with through these resources:




 

History

Each semester, we alternate between focusing on science or history. This reduces the stress of trying to fit it all in and allows us to dig deeper into specific topics.


We use the following a 4-year-cycle for history:


We have completed two iterations of this four-year cycle, gaining more complexity and nuance each time. We are working through our third iteration and will be studying 1850-modern History again this year. Our main history resources for this year will be the following:




 

Hands-On Science


We have completed two iterations of this science rotation and are working through our third iteration. This school year we will be focusing on Physics. Our science studies will include some combination of the following resources:




 

Spanish

Spanish is a subject that I struggled to fit into our homeschool routine for years. However, we finally found our Spanish groove last year! These are ways that are currently working well for us to learn Spanish together:

  • Reading aloud Spanish children's books - this works best when I can find the ones that have both English and Spanish text; I cover the English part up and we try to figure out the Spanish, then reveal the English to check our translations.

  • Having a weekly Spanish video night as a family, watching in Spanish language with English subtitles; this can be done with movies or TV shows

  • The Language Tutor - Spanish Lessons for Beginners 

  • Listening to and learning the lyrics to Spanish music with artists such as Juanes

  • Translating some words into Spanish when I'm reading aloud to the family



 

Current Events

2-3 times per week as part of our morning homeschool block, we watch The World from A to Z with Carl Azuz. This is a short current events show; the episodes are 9-minutes long, perfect for adding into our routine. This gives us many opportunities to have discussions about complex issues in the USA and around the world.


 

Beauty and Creativity

I'm not naturally a very artistic person, but both of my kids are. I nurture these interests in the following ways.


 

Arts and Crafts

Here are some of the resources we are currently using for arts and crafts:


 

Music Appreciation

We cultivate music appreciation through:

  • Homeschool band class 3x per week; Alina plays flute and Ian plays trumpet and clarinet; both kids now attend the beginner's class as mentors/helpers for the younger kids as well

  • Music and arts focus in December, culminating in a small family music recital and A Christmas Carol reading on Christmas Eve

  • Attending live music shows including classical music, jazz, and classic rock

  • Listening to a wide variety of music including classical, world music, classic rock, and pop



 

Physical Education

Some of our current favorite ways to get physical activity are:

  • Family walks

  • Bike and/or scooter rides

  • Rollerblading

  • Hiking with our 3 Generations Hiking Club (me, the kids, and grandma hiking 1-2x monthly)

  • Yoga

 

What changes have you made to your homeschool for the coming year?


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