It is really not much fun to be stuck at home without the family. They spent the last four days at one of our church conventions in Oregon. They saw a lot of old friends, made a bunch of new ones, and generally had a fun and fruitful time. I talked to Lorena three or four times per day between meetings and meals to hear what was going on. The kids both got to help out–Kelly served food in the cafeteria line and Christian washed dishes. I promised to try to send us all back there again next year.
I did not waste ALL my time at home alone feeling sorry for myself. I spent some time programming, but mostly I put our 2009-2010 school year together. Our math and science will continue in a similar fashion to years past, but the rest of the materials will be fairly different. For math, Christian will finish up Geometry and move on into Pre-calculus while Kelly will finish Pre-calculus and move on into Calculus. For science, Christian will do Apologia Biology and Kelly will do Apologia Chemistry.
After that, just about everything changes. Kelly has already passed to years worth of college level Spanish. She will continue to study Spanish daily, but the bulk of her foreign language effort will move to French. Christian will continue in Spanish through most of the year, but should be able to take the CLEP test and move on into French sometime this spring. Lorena and I want to start studying French, too! The kids and I are reading a U.S. History textbook right now to help Christian get ready for the U.S. History I and II CLEP tests. When we finish that, I will find him another textbook to read through on his own. We will find a Western Civilization text to read aloud together (after we read a cool book on interpersonal relationship skills).
One of the fun parts of our program is to find books on economics, history, sociology, and other topics from great scholars like Rodney Stark, Ben Witherington, and the like. Kelly will read one of those every two weeks, then post her thoughts on the books on this blog. We will also continue with memorization, poetry, physical education (preparation to run in a 10K race), and other such materials. I will start my homeschool update posts right after labor day.