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 Daily Geography Grade 6

I have another great resource to share with you today that is simple to implement and helps students enhance their geography skills. We were sent Daily Geography Grade 6 from Timberdoodle to review. I used this with an older student who is heading into grade 8 but needed some refreshment on reading maps and especially geography vocabulary terms.

Daily Geography is available in a beginners level and for grades 1-6. Our review will focus on Daily Geography Grade 6. This is another one of Evan-Moor's wonderful quick and simple productions. I loved that lessons can be completed in as little as 15 minutes per day making it so simple to implement into our already full day. If you'd prefer, you could certainly do an entire week's worth of lessons in one sitting. We did that on occasion as well and since I was dealing with an older student didn't find it overwhelming at all. However, it was better for us to break the vocabulary terms down into days since that was a strong area of focus for us. This 160 paperback book contains 36 lessons broken down each week into 5 daily lessons. 

Each weekly lesson contains a page to introduce the weekly concept, a black line map, geography vocabulary terms, student question sheets broken down by days, and an answer key.

Students will learn elements on a map, how to read coordinates, mountain ranges, deserts, and rivers of the world, time zones and so much more. They will be exposed to city maps, tourist maps, ancient maps and taught how to read them, implement them, and even design their own. Included in the back of the book is a Geography glossary with all of the terms taught in the lessons.

All of the pages are perforated allowing for easy copying.  Copies can be made for all students in a single classroom.  There is also a free PDF downloadable file accessible by registering at the Evan-Moor website and using a code available in the front of your book.  The file contains all of the black line maps to make it even easier for you to print for each of your children. 

As I stated earlier, I used Daily Geography Grade 6 with my daughter who will be entering 8th grade in the fall. Most of the map work and questions were a great review for her and fairly easy but the vocabulary terms was where she needed the most review and the glossary was a great bonus for us. This book currently sells for $26.99 and can be purchased here.  If you are looking for a simple and quick solution to complement your history, geography, or social studies curriculum this might be a great fit for you.

This book is also a part of Timberdoodle's Sixth Grade 2016 Curriculum Kit.

**I received a free copy of this product through Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.

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.

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