One would think the fourth time planning ninth grade would be relatively easy. At this point, it should just be lather-rinse-repeat. Right?
But the truth is, each of my kids is so vastly different from their siblings. They have different passions and different giftings. I'd be remiss if I did not reshuffle the deck from year to year and plan a unique high school program for each of them.
So, that is what I aimed to do as I was making curriculum choices for my ninth grader. After having some great discussions with him about his future hopes and dreams and after reviewing the results of a few different career aptitude tests he took this summer, I used the Brave High School Record Keeping for Homeschoolers pack to put together a four-year plan that will hopefully position him to achieve his post-graduate goals.
Since we only homeschool 4-days a week, you can assume that each of these subjects will only be covered four times each week unless otherwise indicated.
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Content-rich Subjects
As always, he'll do all of his content-rich subjects like Morning time/Bible, history, and art with his other siblings. You can see those curriculum choices here>>>
Personal Devotions- every day
Language Arts
- English 9 from BJU Press
- All About Spelling level 7.
- Read for pleasure. (every day) I will gather a list of titles including those on my High School Must Read list for him to choose from each month. (Vetting titles in bulk is a great way to provide a teen/tween some helpful discernment while still offering choice in their reading selection.)
- Word Roots Level 1
Math
- Pre-Algebra-- This is a live Zoom class offered by Excelsior Classes, a group of Christian teachers who teach online classes to homeschoolers.
Science
- Physical Science from BJU Press Distance Learning
Extra-Curricular Subjects
Cooking
- Culinary School episodes- He'll watch these in the first few weeks of school.
- Taste of Home Cooking School- After reading all of the front matter of the book, he'll then select a rotation of recipes based on the categories in the book.
- Plan one full meal menu from the cookbook and cook it. (1x a week)
Blacksmithing
- Continue with his blacksmithing apprenticeship at a local forge a couple of Saturdays a month. (One of our house rules is that by the time you graduate, no matter what your future college/vocational plans might be, you will have had to learn a trade under a tradesman. Mastering a trade will open doors of ministry, side-hustle income, and/or save you money when you can do a job yourself instead of hiring it out to someone else.)
Baseball
- Try out for the public high school junior varsity team.
- Play for the local club/traveling league in the late spring and summer months.
Life Skills
- Mow the lawn or shovel the snow as needed with his siblings and at an Airbnb in our neighborhood
- Volunteer in the church nursery. (2x a month)
- Volunteer at the local soup kitchen with the rest of the family. (1x a month)
- Clean his room and make his bed each day.
- Daily chores: sweep the library, empty the dishwasher with his younger brother, wipe down the surfaces in the upstairs bathroom
- Weekly Chores for his child-of-the-day privileges and responsibilities: help make lunch/dinner and do two loads of laundry (Fridays), rotate with his brothers to mow the lawn and/or shovel the snow as needed
- Monthly Chores: dust the main floor with his siblings, mop the library, mop his room, randomly select one additional chore from our chore jar one Saturday each month
Co-operative Learning
His first-semester co-op classes will be as follows:
- TBD
- Twin Ports History
His second-semester co-op classes will be as follows:
- TBD
- Leadership Through Teamwork
From drawing to pitching baseballs, blacksmithing to cooking tasty treats, he's a boy who likes to work with his hands. His ninth-grade year will, no doubt, provide him plenty of opportunities to create, make, and do.
Do you use the teacher's manual and student book for English 9 or is the student book enough? I'm trying to find something for my daughter to cover grammar more thoroughly. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteDeanna
How do you find ways for teens to apprentice for a trade? What does the process look like for you, your husband, and your child to pick a trade for the child to learn?
ReplyDeleteHi I'm curious about this too. We have a long time until then but I really like the idea. Also, what did your daughter choose to do? Thanks!
DeleteI will be putting together a post about this in the coming weeks. My daughter apprenticed with flipping furniture for profit. She bought them cheap at yard sales and thrift shops and then refurbed them to make them more modern.
DeleteGreat! Thank you!
DeleteI just want to add my voice to the chorus of those wanting to know more about what apprenticeship/trade training looks like. This fascinates me (much like when I learned about highschoolers getting dual-enrollment credit; could've knocked me over with a feather). I'm eagerly looking forward to your blog post and hearing how you've navigated it with your kids.
DeleteGreat! I look forward to chatting more about it.
DeleteI love the plans for the Cooking extracurricular. I'm planning a loose life skills cooking focus for my 13 yr old daughter this year. She will also be responsible for meals once a week, by the end of the year. The Culinary School videos look like a great resource.
ReplyDeleteIf you're looking for other recipes to try for your son and to learn other tricks of the trade, I highly recommend watching Chef Jean Pierre on YouTube. He's an approachable teacher, he's been a chef for over 50 years and very fun to watch. He has recipes that are simple and some that are more involved. I love how he teaches what and why he does what he does. His videos are usually 10-20 mins long.
Good to know. What I like specifically about the culinary videos that my son will be doing is that the information is taught sequentially. For instance, he'll learn how to properly cut veggies in order to be able to make a stock in order to be able to make soup.
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