Saturday, March 17, 2012

Homeschool Highlights



This week we have had unseasonably nice weather for our area and our homeschool highlights greatly reflect that!

We did some early spring nature study at our arboretum. It's amazing how many changes you notice when you visit the same spot frequently throughout the seasons.....


......like the cattails! A couple years ago we had done a year long Outdoor Challenge on cattails by Handbook of Nature Study Blog. Now we can't help but see what those cattails are up to every time we visit the arboretum.


Notice the bright pink cast? B broke her wrist ice skating two weeks ago. Thankfully, she gets it off in a couple weeks before her cake decorating class starts.

Here's are some signs of spring pics I snapped at the arboretum.




Of course we had to collect specimens!


Also this week, B set up a mini driving range for the boys. I could watch them swinging through the kitchen window and it was cracking me up. I felt bad that B couldn't swing the club due to her wrist and she was retrieving all the balls for them.


For history, we have been working on a project from "Time Travelers: Colonial Life". It's taking some time to finish but it's looking good. It's a Colonial bed. We have the frame done and next week we will make the mattress' to go on top.


Well....that's it for this week. Hope you enjoy the upcoming week!!

Also linking up to the Homeschool Chick!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Highschool Health Course

I'm finally finding some time to tell you about the health course I created for J2. He completed Sonlights Human Anatomy course in middle school and Biology in eighth grade. This year he is working on Biology 2 which is all human anatomy. So I really had to pray about what I wanted to accomplish for this 1/2 credit requirement he needed. Everything seemed kind of redundant to say the least.
After some prayer, I put together a cover sheet for him to work through. I think I reprinted this 10 times!! I kept changing things!


Here is the main book list;

Body By God by Ben Lerner (portions) He has already started this book and we think some portions are more applicapable to him that others so we are skipping around.

Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations by Brett and Alex Harris

His older brother read this as well and it really impacted him.

Build Powerful Nerve Force: It Controls Your Life-Keep it Healthy by Patricia Braggs
This is my all time favorite health book! I'm hoping he loves it too.
It covers everything you would want a Christian boy or girl to know about health to take with them into adulthood. That's just my two cents though! :-)There is actually a whole series of these but this one sums it all up to me.

I then created time sheets for each book he would be reading.

I got a lot of my templates from the book, Senior High: A Home Designed Form+U=LA. All I can say about this book is....AWESOME! It has really taken a lot of the fear of high school away for me. I bought it when J1 was in tenth grade.
I'm also going to have him fill out a book review sheet from the Form+U=LA for each book he completes.

Now let's talk about driving practice. Very important! I included driving practice and the five hour course as assignments to complete. He's already taken the five hour course, so we crossed off five hours on his main time sheet.
I also made him a time sheet for driving practice.


What else is important for health and happiness now and as an adult? Wisdom! Wisdom! Wisdom! As the head of his household I want him to know that wisdom is the principal thing. So, I included a mini wisdom study. I found both sheets in the FORM+U+LA. You could use these sheets for any study though.


I also compliled some articles for him to read. Topics include; teen nutrition, the anti-inflammatory food pyramid, and what the Bible says about healing and health. Any articles you find that you think would be important for your student (of course from people you respect) could go into this section.


He also had to choose an important vitamin and food to research from the World's Healthiest Foods webstite. (Great site by the way!) He choose Vitamin D and Blackstrap Molasses.


He will also be researching some healthy snacks to create and then have the young critics in the family taste test them. :-)


And that's about it! I may add a thing here or there such as a CPR class. The great thing about creating your own class is that you can taylor everything to fit your student and his/her needs. If something you are doing is not working in the class you created just replace it with a better option.