Our 11th Grade Curriculum Choices for 2016-2017 School Year

I love starting a new school year with brand-new curriculum! I have been homeschooling for 11 years now and I still get excited about Back-to-School! I LOVE curriculum – everything about it; looking at samples, thumbing through pages, reading reviews, and learning about new things I have never heard of before. The great thing about homeschooling year after year is that new stuff always comes out….which can also be a problem for someone like me, who wants to use it all! Can you relate?

We had a great year last year; one in tenth grade and one in first grade. I was so afraid to teach high school, but it has proven some of our best years ever! My daughter is very independent with her school work and enjoyed the curriculum we used last year. 

This is what we used in 10th grade:

• Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1 *We came back to TT and so glad we did! Read our story here.
• Notgrass Exploring America  *She REALLY enjoyed this
• Experience Astronomy Online Class *This was her favorite last year – read her review here.
• Bluestocking Press Economics and Nature of Government Course for High School Students *She LOVES, LOVES the readers in this course (she is not an avid reader, so that is a big deal!)
• Master Books – Cultural Issues: Creation/Evolution and the Bible *We did this in a co-op and our Pastor taught it and it was WONDERFUL!
• Easy Grammar Ultimate Grade 10 *We have always liked Easy Grammar! Our FAVE Grammar Curriculum!
• Wordly Wise Grade 10 *She HATED this
• Phonetic Zoo B *She improved her spelling by leaps and bounds
• Writing With Sharon Watson’s What Are You Waiting For, High School Writing Prompts (Creative Writing) *She LOVES Sharon Watson’s style
• Driver’s Education *I cannot believe my baby is driving now

This year for 11th grade we are incorporating some fun, new subjects. Read about them below.

Math – Teaching Textbooks Geometry 

I love that Teaching Textbooks is self-teaching and auto-grading. I cringe at the thought of teaching math and grading is not my favorite. We left TT for a while in Elementary, but came back to it a few years ago. Read our story here.

Science – Winter Promise’s Forensic Science for Grades 7-12

Doesn’t this sound like fun?! We love to watch forensic shows together. This curriculum is one semester of Anatomy & Physiology and one semester of Forensics. I have to say – I may even actually ENJOY labs this time!

Notgrass Exploring World History

We used Notgrass Exploring America last year and my daughter really enjoyed it. It was a little surprised because it is a tad more text-booky than The Mystery of History, which is our all-time favorite history curriculum! We are just doing the history portion though, as we have a bunch of language arts curriculum we are using and getting her to read extra required books is like pulling teeth. She prefers to study the Bible through the reading of the Word and personal devotions. If you wanted to use it as intended, your student can earn 3 credits: world history, world literature, and Bible

Website Description:
Exploring World History is a one-year homeschool curriculum for high school that teaches students to understand history from a Christian perspective of faith in God and respect for the Bible. In addition to reading the history narrative about events, issues, and people from around the world and across the centuries, students read the words of people who made history in original documents, speeches, poems, and stories. They also read classic literature that helps bring to life the time periods they are studying. A variety of writing assignments and hands-on project ideas help students engage in what they are learning. In addition to a thorough survey of Western Civilization, the curriculum offers significant coverage of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It features hundreds of color illustrations and photographs.

Rosetta Stone Spanish

Our last name is Fernandez….yet none of us are fluent in Spanish. My daughter has the natural ability to actually SOUND Spanish when she speaks it, so she is excited to use Rosetta Stone this year. We will be posting a review in December to tell you how we like it. Start speaking Spanish with the most powerful and intuitive language program on the planet. Click here to watch the DEMO. They also give military discounts!

Discovering Music – 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture

My daughter is very passionate about music. She loves all genres and can hear a song from the 60’s and tell you who sings it. I have no idea how she does that. Discovering Music is a unique curriculum connects music with visual arts, political and economic history, and Western Culture from 1600 to 1914. We are super excited about using it this year!

Discovering Music takes a comprehensive approach to history and the arts, linking literature, geography, social movements, science and technology, paintings, and architecture to form a more complete picture. By experiencing the arts of a particular time and place, students are better able to understand what happened – the social and political forces as well as the daily life of historical figures.

Language Arts & Writing/Composition

We are sticking with Easy Grammar, because personally, I do not think there is a better grammar curriculum out there. We are also continuing on with Phonetic Zoo C for spelling. If you are wondering why we are STILL doing spelling in 11th grade, well, I failed my kid in that area. We never started out with a solid spelling curriculum and jumped around a bit and she was really struggling in that area. So, last year we used Phonetic Zoo B and she improved her spelling significantly. So, we are moving on to the next one. 

Since she HATED (I mean REALLY, REALLY HATED) Wordly Wise, we changed her vocab this year. We are still doing vocabulary because she loves words. She reads the dictionary sometimes in her free time. I gave her some choices and I really wanted her to use VocabuLit, but she chose Vocabulary From Classical Roots C instead. Gone are the days when I just choose her curriculum and hand her a stack of books. She likes to participate in the selections and I find she enjoys it much more when she does. Grammar, Spelling, and Vocabulary will constitute 1 English Credit. 

For writing/composition, I am going to give her a separate credit since we are using a full curriculum for it. Last year she used Writing With Sharon Watson’s What Are You Waiting For, High School Writing Prompts and enjoyed her style very much. We are using The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School, 2nd Edition. With The Power in Your Hands: Writing Nonfiction in High School, 2nd Edition, your teens learn writing in a relaxed atmosphere with some humor thrown in. They’ll conquer what they need to know for high school and will be prepared for college writing.

First, they’ll learn to write persuasively, learning persuasive strategies they will have to identify and write about in the new SAT essay. Later, they’ll navigate a comparison-and-contrast essay, a biography, a literary analysis, a research paper with MLA documentation, and much, much more. In addition, students will master description and narration essays.

Next, I will be working on a post for our 2nd grade curriculum choices!