From the High School Lesson Book - A Year-End Summary for 2018-2019

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Goodness, I submitted final grades, got her high school transcript, and we celebrated Kennady's graduation a month ago, but I never did summarize the school year here! I think it's only fair that I do it, since it's a bit of a tradition for me.

Grammar and Composition

We used Writing Fiction [in High School]: Bringing Your Stories to Life! from Writing with Sharon Watson in a co-op class for Kennady's composition credit. The class was a lot of fun, and as the instructor, I really enjoyed the students' stories. The students wrote a lot of scenes and short stories, and often we learned about elements of fiction by reading or discussing novels, particularly the required reading for the class, The Last Book In The Universe. We also watched movies and movie clips to see fiction elements in action. Writing is one of Kennady's strengths so she rocked this class that was almost like a bonus English credit. I've written about this course here and there throughout the year, but haven't written a full review of it - but I will plan on doing that sometime soon!

      

Math

Kennady needed one more math credit before graduating, and I require my kids to do a Consumer Math course during high school, so we cobbled together a couple of things. I found a media-based half credit course called Money 101: Seminars in Personal Finances at SchoolhouseTeachers.com and started with that. I picked up an older Bob Jones Consumer Math text secondhand and assigned some chapters from that. We originally planned for her to do this course in second semester, but changed our timeline a bit when she decided to do an extra half-credit course at co-op. Her course load was very full at that point, and she also did a Dave Ramsey personal finance small group at church, so I allowed her to put this at the bottom of the priority list, and focus on it when co-op ended. When she got back to it, I also said that she could skip (or just quickly skim) anything in the textbook that had been covered in the small group. So most of this course is complete, but she is still finishing up the rest of it over the summer.



(SchoolhouseTeachers.com has a hundreds of courses for all ages and grade levels, and has an incredible list of educational resources. There are a couple days left to take advantage of the June Firefly Special and get your first month for just five bucks. Use the coupon code FIREFLY at the checkout.)

History, Bible, and Literature

Kennady also completed American History at the co-op. We used Exploring America from Notgrass so she earned a full History and full Bible credit, and a half credit in American Literature. Kennady struggled a little in first semester with writing tests. She knew the material but couldn't always recall the details or come up with them when under a bit of pressure. This was a good opportunity to work on some study skills! During second semester I did a lot of the unit quizzes as a class review activity, often turning them into a game show format. We had a lot of fun with those, especially when we played Who Wants to Be a History Major? 

Electives - Co-ops and Classes

French II - Kennady completed this at the co-op and did very well. I was kind of hoping that she would want to visit Quebec for the Summer of Kennady and test drive her conversational French, but that was not to be.




Introduction to Business and Entrepreneurship - True confession: the main reason Kennady wanted to take this co-op class in second semester was because she enjoyed her instructor and classmates so much! It was the same group from the Speech and Presentation class, and taught by the same instructor. They read The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and the Gospel of Wealth (Signet Classics) and used that as the basis for some of the lessons. The instructor gave a lecture on business principles each week.

 

Children's Chorus -  It was Kennady's final year in this upper level chorus. It's an excellent program that provides outstanding music education in choral singing, so a full Fine Arts credit.

Guitar - Kennady continued playing on worship teams and writing and performing some of her own material. For part of the year she also worked on the Guitar 360 Method, which is a 13-week self-paced course. She didn't complete the course, but when she had time it made a great alternative to guitar lessons during this very busy year. Guitar 360 is internet video-based, so she could work at her own pace, whenever it worked in her schedule. 

You can read our full review here: Guitar 360 Method - A Homeschool Coffee Break Review



Piano Tuning and Technology - This was her technology credit, and involved a lot of on the job training, sort of a preview to apprenticeship. Kennady works part time at the music shop where her guitar teacher is a piano technician, and they were training her to work on pianos - repairs and rebuilds of the action and insides of pianos. She really enjoyed it, even though she decided she did not have time to pursue the full time apprenticeship while also being a full time student in college.

Final credit count for the school year = 7.5
Previous credits earned = 23.5

Graduating with a total of 31 credits (23 required to graduate) and a 3.9 GPA.

This post is part of the July 2019 Homeschool Collection on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.

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