Homeschooling 9th Grade

A year in review

When I spoke to my son about his 9th grade year, I asked what he wanted to learn. I laid out the requirements and some options for fulfilling them (unit study, design it ourselves, use a curriculum etc.) And with his input, we chose curriculum for certain subjects and designed a year-long study based around his interest in the World Wars.

Math was a no brainer as we’ve been using Mr. D Math for a few years now and absolutely love it.

After about a month of one Biology curriculum, we ended up switching to Guest Hollow Biology and really enjoyed it. I love all of the supplemental reading options and not only did he read a few things from that list, but I also counted them for his Health credit.

With the green light from my son, I created a unit study of the World Wars which included credits for History, English, and an elective, Film studies. I went about building the History and English credits like I would any other unit; books first. We included biographies, primary sources, novels—both classic and modern—articles, and poetry. I also looked for youtube videos of survivors and veterans telling their stories from WWII. I chose a WWI and a WWII history documentary as his spine for each war which included footage, analysis, and interviews with survivors. Finally, he also looked at art from the wars and listened to music influenced by each war.

For the Film Studies elective, I started a very very long list of possibilities before I trimmed it down to a reasonable list. I was a film studies minor in college and have a fairly good knowledge about the academic study of film, not just watching movies, so I made him a guideline to help him consider all aspects of the films and then we discussed them, also taking into consideration the decade in which they were filmed. (I’m hoping after this move to get the guidelines ready for you!) He said he can’t watch movies in the same way as he did before this course.

Overall, the documentaries, literature, films, etc. worked out very well. He had requested a schedule for the year so that he could work without waiting on me (smart boy) so I created one for one semester at time and we adjusted as needed. We added in extras that came up and edited out other things. This schedule worked so well that I plan to do it again for next year. As part of his work for this unit study, he was required to keep a portfolio including key figures, maps, quotes, and weekly summaries as well as essays.

A fun project that came out of his studies of the World Wars was an imagining of a WWI and a WWII video game. He wanted to tell the perspectives of different nations’ soldiers and base it in historical accuracy not just shoot ‘em up. He created different missions based on what he learned and included different participants. It was fun to watch him figure out a storyline and include lots of different aspects of culture by inserting famous writers, composers, poets, music, speeches in an artistic way that makes sense and moves the story forward. This wasn’t an official project but he’s done a lot of work on it and even if he never finishes, it was totally worth it!

For his foreign language credit, he enjoyed a full year with Homeschool Spanish Academy. We chose the 1:1 lessons for a full year of high school Spanish and it’s been great! We love the flexibility of scheduling the classes and that the teachers are all native speakers. He plans to continue Spanish all four years.

The big surprise this year was the addition of German. A couple of weeks into World War I, he became really interested in learning German, so he started with duolingo and then asked for a few other resources. He was putting in hours each week teaching himself German and dabbling in Russian as well. So after one semester, we decided to make it an official course and find him a teacher. We found a native German tutor in Barcelona through a good friend who had recently moved abroad. Yay for good friends!

Lastly, he’s been doing jiu jitsu for a couple of years so that’s his PE credit.

Our first year of high school is complete! Onto planning 10th grade…