Curriculum for Freshman Year!

So here we go with high school! Or, in a classical education, the Rhetoric Stage. Time to argue...oh joy!

Rhetoric is going to take a large part in Maddie's writing in the coming years. She will be asked to write papers to support her opinions and hypothesis. We will also, of course, continue to practice grammar and work on expanding her vocabulary as those skills will only help with writing! I think the politicians better watch out knocking on our door over the next few years. They thought I was bad...I don't think they've seen anything yet!

All the books to help with writing and rhetoric. 

History and reading are now linked together as "History and Great Books". We are back to the ancients again this year. Maddie will read through the main history spine, The History of the Ancient World keeping track of important people, dates and events. We will also be doing geography to go along with it. Then she will read books from the ancients too! We are starting with The Epic of Gilgamesh. Before we read each book we need to do research on the person who wrote the book and the time period it was written. Then we read the book while taking notes. After we have read the book Maddie will write a summary of it. The Well Trained Mind has a list (long!) of suggested books and said to do at least 8 books, 10 would be better and 12 would be outstanding! I looked at the list of books for this year and told Maddie we would aim for 8 and be happy with 6 if we can manage it. These are books I hadn't even heard about and I am quite sure many adults haven't read! So Maddie picked 10 and we will see how we do. Here are the ones she chose: The Epic of Gilgamesh, Iliad and Odyssey, Oedipus the King, Agamemnon, The Histories by Herodotus, Medea, The History of the Peloponnesian War, On the Nature of Things, The Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, and On the Incarnation.

Science this year will be biology. We are going to work through the main spine..the big book that says Biology adding in labs as we go. Maddie is also going to use the Biology Coloring Book to help reinforce what she is working on. It sounds like fun and I think it will be fun but the book is serious. Specific colors for specific things so Maddie can start to see how things relate as she goes along! Then during the second and third quarter she is going to work on a long research project so we have the STEM book to help us out with that. She has already started banging around topics...hmmm...maybe I could do trees? an animal? evolution? Hmmmm.... She is also supposed to read some books in her field of study this year so she picked (from the list in the Well Trained Mind) Darwin's Origin of Species and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

We are changing up the math programs this year to Math U See which has a DVD for lessons, worksheets to complete about different concepts and manipulative to help the student "see" the concept. Brian and I will be doing the lessons right along with Maddie so we will all be learning (or re-learning!) algebra together! We will also use Life of Fred again because he puts the concepts into real life situations. Probably a Barron's review book for the NYS regents will come into play as well.

All the materials!

Maddie working out the Pythagorium theorem with the manipulatives 

Maddie will continue with both Latin and Spanish. Latin will be The Big Book of Latin volume 2 which is on a disc and we print out the pages as we go. She will be doing Spanish on a website called Duolingo. The best part of that one is that, for the moment, its free!

Art Appreciation is another short course for this year. We will be using The Annotated Mona Lisa for that. And she will continue with guitar.

We also got a 4H book called STEPS to a healthy teen to help cover the health requirement. This looks like fun though and we think she will enjoy it...or at least find it bearable! 

So that is Freshman year so far! I think its more than enough to be getting along with on our end! School is starting August 7 for us if you call after that date and we don't answer our nose is probably in a book.......