I'm to the middle of winter

With the homeschool planning, that is. And if you are talking broad outlines, I have that taken care of, too. The slow but is plugging exact titles and page numbers and activities into the calendar. I'm now stuck for a moment while I wait for some library books to arrive. But I also think it won't take me very long to finish once they come in. 

So what are we doing this year? It's a little different because I have only high schoolers (other than H. and R.) So as well as planning the school year, I'm also beginning the process of shifting responsibilities for learning on to them. But in general, everyone is doing biology, the Renaissance, study skills, and rhetoric.

Biology will be a little untraditional. (Imagine!) I'm using a sort of backwards curriculum this year. Each week everyone will be given study questions that they need to research. Then the next week we will spend one day a week going over their answers, discussing them, and doing the lab portion that goes with that week's study. I do need to purchase some biology supplies. I find this a little baffling since for so many years it felt as though we were awash in dissecting specimens.

The rhetoric piece should be interesting. I have some logical thinking skills books, which I'm pairing with a public speaking class on Wondrium. I've already listened to this class and the teacher is phenomenal. Plus, it really is rhetoric...  starting with the ancient Greeks and moving forward as she dissects various famous speeches and explains why they work. We'll also discuss propaganda and the different techniques behind it and they will be keeping a notebook to document the different forms of propaganda/advertising they cone across during the course of the school year.

The Renaissance will cover the years ~1400 to 1600 (really starting with the printing press.) We'll do the Renaissance Florence (so catching the Medicis and Machiavelli), Renaissance Venice, explorers, artists (spending a bit of time each on da Vinci and Michelangelo), moving to Tudor England (Henry VIII, Thomas More, and the English reformation), then move to Europe and Martin Luther for the Reformation. From there we will probably take a pause and look at Renaissance music. Then it's back to more explorers, including Magellan. A stop with Copernicus is next followed by the Northern Renaissance and the artists associated with it. Well finish up with Galileo, putting us on the cusp of the Enlightenment and the early modern period for 24-25. 

Of course there will be math and we will finish our grammar books. 

K. will be working through economics on his own with weekly check-ins with me for it.

So that's the school year. There are still quite a few details to work out because I don't like to have to figure things out or find resources once we start. But it seems doable for our start date of September 6.

It might even leave me some time to plan the literature class I'm teaching for our co-op this year. That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

Oh, the best part? I think I only need to purchase four books for history plus the lab specimens. For all the rest I'm either using what I have or the library. Oh, I might purchase a couple of new learning activities for R., but still not bad for six children, huh?