2017-2018 Homeschool High School Curriculum Choices | 9th & 11th Grades | Bible, History, Geography, & Read Alouds

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Finally, I am going to share with you our choices for the 2017-2018 school year.  We have 2 high schoolers this year - one in 9th, and one in 11th.  We have decided to work together in the subjects of History, Bible, & Geography so I'll start there.

We are studying Ancient History this year and chose Mystery of History Volume 1 - Creation to the Resurrection to be our main spine.  It has some map work in it as well so we picked up a few atlases to go along with it.  (click on the pictures to purchase or see more)

                             

We are also using Simply Charlotte Mason's one year course in Ancient History, Genesis through Deuteronomy & Ancient Egypt to complement our history studies and as our main Bible spine.  Geography will be pulled from both of these books as well as a few atlases and living books listed below.

                                                 

                                           

                                          

For read alouds this year, I chose some from both Mystery of History and Genesis through Deuteronomy & Ancient Egypt.  Here is what I chose:

         



                                           


                      

Coming up soon...9th grade individual choices and 11th grade individual choices!

Review of Spiritual Circle Journal #spiritualcirclejournal #prayerjournal

My daughter has started to include the Spiritual Circle Journal for Kids & Teens as part of her Bible time. This journal, from Spiritual Circle Journal, has been a wonderful new addition to our weekly homeschool Bible time.

The journal is simple to use and comes in a sturdy spiral bound notebook. It is a consumable notebook to be used by one student. It is recommended for ages 8 and up and contains 66 journal sheet outlines meant to be used on a weekly basis with a few extra sheets included.

The journal comes with a fun illustrated cover but it also includes a sheet of blank white card stock allowing students to design their own cover if they wish. 

In the front section are 3 pages of guided instructions to help parents, homeschoolers, and ministry leaders use this tool with their children and students. They give you step by step instructions as well as ideas to help your get your student's own creative juices flowing. The whole point of the journal is for students to make it their own by spending their time with the Lord creating, learning, and remembering what He has done for them throughout the week.

There is also a personal page included at the beginning where students can list facts about themselves for the school year as well as some of their favorite things.

In the back of the journal are 16 summary sheets that students can use in any way they choose. The sheets have 9 circles on them. Some suggestions given were to write in their favorite verses, ways that they have seen God move, or to use them as summary pages for Bible characters.

In Our Homeschool

Sarah, who is 12, is using this journal for her quiet time once a week. Each week she uses her daily devotional and picks out her favorite verse for the week to journal and illustrate. She usually does this on Friday. She uses the guided key and fills in her own personal thoughts for the week. The key has great illustrations that relate to the topic written in them such as the "God Moving" section is an outline of a car and the "Actions" section is the outline of a tennis shoe. All together there are 9 journal entry sections on each page titled Journal Entry, Lyric/Verse, Message, Confession, God Moving, Lesson Learned/Light Bulb Moment (guess what that picture is), Prayer, Thank You/Adoration, and Actions. 

The illustrations make it fun and simple to add her own journal entries. As stated earlier, Sarah uses her daily devotional that she is pulling her Bible verses from but another suggested idea is for students to use their weekly sermon notes, Sunday school lessons, etc.

Then at the end of the month, she writes those verses in the back of the journal in the summary pages for a quick reference to all of her favorite Bible verses. Sometimes she just writes the verses out and sometimes she adds little illustrations to them depending upon the time and her mood.

We think this is a wonderful resource for any household to aid students in their own quiet time! Not only does it add to their retention of God's Word but what a valuable treasure to have at the end of each school year - written evidence of God moving in their life - priceless!

I am so happy that my daughter is learning these truths at a young age and what a blessing when products are designed for just that purpose. May they carry her through all her years!

We were also sent these beautiful servant prayer cards that have a whole page of supporting scripture verses on the back. 

You can connect with Spiritual Circle Journal on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Review of NotebookingPages.com

To aid in our summer studies of focusing on God's Word, we have been taking advantage of the Lifetime Membership from NotebookingPages.com.

If you are unfamiliar with what notebooking actually is, think scrapbooking for school subjects. It's a fun way for students to make subjects come to life. Students journal and draw about what they have learned and every page shows each student's own unique personality. There is no right or wrong way to notebook which is the beauty of this system. They offer pages that cater to students who may prefer to draw and students who prefer to write. There are also options available for a mix of the two.

NotebookingPages.com offers 1000's of pages to download and print in Bible/Character, Alphabet, Famous People, Fine Arts, Geography, History, Holidays, Language Arts, and Science/Nature. They also offer basic lined notebooking pages that can be used with any subject.

So far we have have just touched the surface on the pages available with this membership. The most fantastic part is your membership never expires so you can take all the time you need to complete your projects! You also gain free access to any future updates that may occur with your lifetime membership.

For our homeschool, we focused on the Bible notebooking pages. This set takes you through the Old Testament and New Testament from Creation to John's Vision on the island of Patmos. It comes in a zip file and once unzipped it contains 54 files of PDF printables. This set alone has over 500 different pages to choose from!

I used this set with my daughter, Sarah, who is 12. We used the Bible notebooking categories as our devotion point each day. We began by researching the Bible verse or verses then added our own drawings or timeline and journaling information. Some days, we added a paraphrase with our thoughts and some days we simple copied the verse from the Bible but it has been a great time to spend with each other and growing in God's Word.

One of the files included an overview of every page in the set which made it so much simpler to pick and choose which pages we wanted to work with. Below is just a small sample of what is available.

We hole punched the pages and inserted them inside this small 3 ring flexible binder.  You could also add them to the binder with a clear front and decorate with your own binder cover. 

The Table of Contents page included was great to keep us on track.  You could also number your pages to correspond with the Table of Contents if you wish to make pages easier to look back on.

Here are just a few of the Bible notebooking pages that we completed.

Sarah enjoyed this way of working through the Bible. She is very creative and loves to draw so this was a perfect fit for her. There are also pages available with illustrations for those who would rather just narrate what they have learned as well as a combination of both.

I love to do special activities on holidays so I know the holiday section will come in handy for us too. There are pages for most of the traditional holidays. Here is a sample of just one of the pages offered for the fourth of July.

Next school year, we will be focusing a lot of other countries and geography so I have already begun to explore and print some of the pages in that section for next year too. The geography notebooking pages include maps, country pages, and more.

NotebookingPages.com offers lots of free pages too. You can sign up for a free sampler to see if this unique system will work for your family. I love that there are so many options in so many subjects so I don't have to take the time to search the internet for each individual page. When you are finished with your pages, you will have a real treasure on your hands written and designed by your student.

Find out more about NotebookingPages.com on Facebook and Twitter.