World History High School:
Wyatt is in Unit 29 of his WH guide, and he is just in such a good place with it!
I kind of like having each of my dc in different Unit #'s of their guides. I know, gasp, right?!?
Ten years back I would have been VERY uncomfortable with that!
So, it been kind of a decade+ of slowly letting go of that need to be all at the same place at the same time with each of the guides.
It is so very helpful to see the finish line with the 4 HOD high school guides now. It allows me to work back from the end and try to help each of my younger dc maintain a good pace to reach that end. I cannot stress enough how thankful I am for TIME, though some refer to it as the 'missing year' in HOD. I have yet to meet a homeschool mom that at some point in her homeschooling teaching career doesn't have something pretty major in her life to deal with. As Wyatt has always been on the youngest side of the target age range, we are spreading out his guides over his remaining years of high school rather than graduating him a year early. This TIME has been such a blessing!!! First, because of my Dad's struggle with pancreatic cancer when Wyatt began high school, and second because of the busyness of life in general for me as a mom of an almost 16 yo, 12 yo, and 8 yo with a dh who constantly travels, and with me working part-time too. My super busy life story seems to be every mom's busy life story - though the details change, one fact remains, we are all very BUSY moms.
Wyatt came to me this year with a plan for him to school 1 day less each week than his 2 little brothers, and then on his day off he asked to help teach them. Is that amazing, or what?!? I never even thought of that as a possibility, but Wyatt has such a heart for his little brothers, he thought of it, and together we are an awesome team at both teaching and finishing 1 day early each week! He loves to teach, and he loves the free time it gives him with his little brothers that day. Homeschooling with HOD for high school is the harvest. I'd not miss it with Wyatt for the world.
In WH this week, Wyatt typed a written narration about the Red Cross and the battle against slavery. He also wrote about the triangle trade routes for his written narration. For Emmett's BHFHG week, we've been singing "Amazing Grace" each day after breakfast as we clean up, and Wyatt's 'mock trial' was about John Newton. All the boys join in the singing each day, and Emmett said, "Look, Wyatt! Here it says 'John Newton' wrote this in my hymns book!" Wyatt said, "That's right, buddy! I'm learning about that too!" William Wilberforce spent his life fighting slavery, and Wyatt just read about him as well. Riley just read about the triangle slave trade route in RevtoRev too in "Amos Fortune, Free Man," and Emmett just mapped it in on his mapping exercise for BHFHG. All of our sons have such a heart full of sadness about slavery right now. They are amazed at the way African Americans rose above all odds to still have faith, success, and love! Wyatt just orally narrated about George Washington Carver, Riley just narrated about JT in Dust of the Earth (DITHOR book), and Emmett just narrated about Venture Smith! All of whom were African Americans that did AMAZING things in spite of adversity! So incredible! Isn't it amazing how my being on different units within each guide lined up these connections for all 3 of my sons beautifully? I do believe God is at the helm of that, don't you?!?
I never worry about our sons 'learning the same thing at the same time.' With HOD, there is always carryover and connections, and they see it all the time without doing the same guides.
It's just natural - I love that!
Wyatt's Literature Journal for Les Miserables always has assignments I look forward to reading. This particular assignment I snapped a picture of had Wyatt doing character analysis and using quotes to 'show' not 'tell' as he learned in 'Creative Writing' in RevtoRev to portray a character. After making a list of character attributes for Cossette, Wyatt shows Thenardier's wife's true character (or lack of it) in this exchange of dialogue with Cossette...
Wyatt and I had another in-depth talk about marriage, thanks to the "Total Health" elective we are doing together! I am so thankful for these talks! There is much depth to them, and they give me time to share with him more of the 'behind-the-scenes' happenings of some of the demise of relationships he has witnessed years' past. I am glad we are doing this guide with just the 2 of us. These talks aren't for 'little ears,' but they are necessary talks for my near 16 yo. The discussions are an ever-present part of our Total Health time together, but the written part makes it easy to 'grade.' After discussing different levels of relationships and possible dating/courting ideas, this is one of the workbook pages Wyatt completed...
Each subject has 'easy-to-grade' facets, yet each subject also has depth with discussions/projects/oral and written narrations/activities that workbooks and textbooks just can't provide. This balance HOD has attained is amazing! Another example of easy to grade aspects of the WH guide is the "Short Lessons in World History" assignments...
One last thing that I've started doing this year that brings God's creation into our home - I planted flowers in our garden, and every 4-5 days I cut some and put them in a vase on each of the 3 tables our boys work at. I have loved it so much, that I am planning to continue it through winter by having planted flowers indoors I use. We'll see how it goes! Oh, and I am not great at flower arranging, so for those of you that are, I bet you could REALLY make these flowers look even more beautiful! Until I get better at it, we'll just take joy in soaking up the inherent beauty of the flowers and the fact that our Lord created them!
Hope you had a good week!
In Christ,
Julie
Emmett used to stutter, and it just made Riley and I so sad, and then so mad. Anyway, both books have to do with slavery, and Amos Fortune's prowess as a tanner and his uncanny knack for making money enabled him to 'buy freedom' for many slaves. JT's struggles with stuttering and his overcoming this by singing, often singing praises to God, as well as his unwavering support of his mother when his father turned to drunkenness, all works on a person's heart to inspire us to triumph over whatever minuscule hurdles we may be facing now! The DITHOR book choices are simply the best, and we often find carryover into the core HOD guide's history, or science, or Bible, or poetry, or whatever. 
Riley's written narrations are becoming better and better, and I truly enjoy his sense of style in them. We are still working on him remembering to divide them in paragraphs, but the content is good, for which I am thrilled! 
