It's July and I'm just getting to finalizing Kyrie's grades and documenting what I did with her.
Bible-Though God's Great Covenant: New Testament 2 Acts is ideal for middle school, and since I used it for both Kyrie and Evie together, I added in Martin Franzmann's The Revelation to John and Eugene Peterson's Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination to make it more challenging for Kyrie. She loves theology, so this was a great addition.
History-Kyrie also joined Evie in The Story of the World Volume 4: The Modern Age. I found an online school and followed their syllabus for turning the course into a high school course, adding in writing projects on both events and people to make this more challenging. Kyrie did her final project on the Civil Rights Movement.
Latin II-This is her second year of high school level Latin and she took it through Schole Academy. Her teacher is Mr. Eddie Kotynski, who also taught Ben for a year. He is a great teacher and Kyrie thrived in this course. Schole offers quality online instruction with clear policies and a good platform.
Physics-We used Novare Physics and followed the course syllabus which provides a schedule, quizzes and tests, and experiments. This course focuses on mastery and there is a continual review process, particularly in the quizzes which are comprehensive and focus on written answers. The lab consists of 6 labs and lab reports and are expensive and some were just too elaborate to carry out for a homeschool course. We did most of the labs, an extensive lab report, and added in some similar but simpler labs from Evie's middle school physics. I really liked this curriculum a lot, but the lab portions would work better in a co-op or school situation.
Business Math-Ben needed an elective math and I thought Kyrie would benefit from taking a year to do something else before going on to Geometry. We used Abeka's Business Math. Both kids thought it was really useful and enjoyed the course. I thought it was too easy, and outdated (still teaching 1040A and 1040EZ with no mention of online filing), and taught things in a really weird order. The very last section covers personal banking, after covering accounting procedures, real estate, etc.... We all agreed the subject was really worthwhile, but I wouldn't use this curriculum again.
Writing and Literature-I love the Writing and Rhetoric series and Thesis I teaches students how to write a thesis answering the question, "What is beauty?" Resources from Aristotle to Roger Scruton slowly and carefully teach the basis of a good thesis essay. In addition, she read C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters and walked through the literature guide. She read G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and discussed all three books in a book group.
Logic-We used The Discovery of Deduction-An Introduction to Formal Logic which is engaging and provides great examples and allows students to work through examples, definitions, and other useful exercises.
Music-Kyrie continued with piano and was able to participate in a spring recital for the first time in 3 years.
Debate-Kyrie participated in team debate last year through Christian Communicators of America. This year, she was able to compete in four complete tournaments. She had a great time and promises to drag us all over the midwest again next year.
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