Our school year has been challenging. Learning even more about Katie’s learning challenges caused me to literally chuck everything I’d planned to do this school year. I’m not even kidding. When I look back on what I’d originally included in our Letter of Intent, we did a complete 180. All of it kicked to the curb, along with my nice, neat spreadsheet.
I went through a period of mourning over all the great ideas I had and the books I’d purchased, prayed over that, and told the Lord I’d donate them to our homeschooling lending library if He provided another way for us to take a new direction. He did. And we did. 🙂 We dropped it all off, breathed a heavy sigh of relief and headed to the library.
We have enjoyed stepping into Fun-Schooling second semester, and have found great delight in this new approach to homeschooling. It is very flexible, and can be as rigorous or as laid-back as you design it to be. I had the opportunity to budget for our final two years of high school with our youngest, and thought I’d show you what that looks like.
If you are familiar at all with Fun-Schooling, you know that you encourage a direction for your student, toward a major. Right now, given Katie’s interests, we are leaning toward something in animal science. As an on-ramp to her junior year, she will be doing her second summer with our Zoofari program at the local zoo. She’s been volunteering at the local animal shelter about twice each week all during the school year.
Above is her set of books for next year. So, she will be doing some extensive study in world geography and the US, continuing her science survey journal (she started on botany this past semester), dabble in some classic poetry (she’s working on finishing her Dyslexia Games Series C this summer so that we can get back into language arts), and continue in investigating career paths. The Animal Lover’s journal will be her core book. Then she’ll do her final summer with Zoofari in the summer of 2023 (they age out at 17). Hopefully she can work herself into another position there afterwards, as she’ll have plenty of experience and seniority.
This is Katie’s collection for her senior year. She’ll use the Artist’s Journal for her core book (she has a lot of talent in art, so she’s sort of a “double major”). Math will be a book on finances and economics. Science will continue a zoology focus with wildlife. We’ll look at incorporating foreign language (perhaps Korean ) as well as a Bible journal. And we’ll polish her writing skills with this journal pictured as well as one that is not yet released for which I’ve had some contribution in editing. That one is specifically on writing papers and essays.
Each of these sets of journals is supplemented by selections of library books. We have a wonderful Teacher Tote program through our public library, where they will select groups of books for you on whatever topics you choose. It is a blessing!
If you have questions about how this all looks on paper for credit, here is a helpful blog post. We have the luxury of being out from under compulsory age requirements now, so we can relax and enjoy the rest of the journey “off the books” (the government books, that is). I’m looking forward to it!
I’ll also be starting some beginning schooling with our little grandson, so he has his own journal as well. Here’s to next year!
Check out all the Fun-Schooling books here!
Learn how to Flip to Fun-Schooling here!