A Day in the Life part I

Today I will give you an overview of our homeschooling life from the perspective of our oldest student - a Junior in high school.

Basically, my daughter has always been a self-starter. I have been blessed with someone who picks things up easily, likes to work on her own, is creative and responsible. This has been a double-edged sword. I was terribly spoiled by her ability and expected everyone to follow suit. This, of course, hasn't happened. On the other hand, she has been a great example that, in some way or another, everyone has followed.

Her day starts at 6:30 when she gets up and gets ready. If we don't go to morning Mass, her school day begins at 8:00. The days we do go to morning Mass, she packs up what books she can and does her work in the car since we have at least 30 minutes to travel in each direction.

She does the following classes in this order: (in our schedule, most subjects are given 1/2 hour time blocks)

Religion - She thoroughly enjoyed learning apologetics last year, so she has been continuing her study this year using the "Beginning Apologetics" series by San Juan Catholic Seminars.

Once or twice a week, I set aside 1/2 hour where we both meet to discuss what she has been doing, go over any problems or discuss future projects.

Next is Biology. We really like the Apologia series. They are interesting to read and most of the experiments are very do-able. She is using the "Exploring Creation with Biology" book. Last year we were fortunate enough to have a mom teach a dissecting class for any interested high schoolers.

The math program I've had her following for the past 2 years is "Life of Fred". This year is geometry and we allow an hour for this subject.

In history she is studying world history. In addition to reading "Christ the King, Lord of History" and going over the questions and doing one project per chapter, she is also responsible for reading classics written by authors from other countries. Fortunately all of my children are avid readers.

For the past two months we have all been working together on a unit study of the founding of our country and the election process. Now that we are done with that portion, my daughter will be tackling the book "The Making of America - The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution". I wish I had the time to read it as it looks quite fascinating.

After our lunch hour, she then works for an hour on a web site that she is building. We have found a great program called Site Build It! They walk you through the whole process of how to build a content rich web site from the ground up. It is a lot of work, but it is fun and an incredible learning experience.

Finally she spends some time with the Rosetta Stone French program that we got this year. So far I am very impressed with the program - I just wish my computer was. I think it's time for an upgrade!

The rest of the day is spent either blogging, cooking dinner, reading a book, watching her younger siblings or writing something for the next contest she is entering. A couple times a month she is involved in different clubs or performances so when that happens, that becomes school and the other book work is picked up the next day.

She is pretty much our only stand-alone student. As you will see over the next few days, I switched gears a bit with the next couple. Hopefully you found this fly's-eye view interesting.

God Bless!