College - Part 3 - Updated!

I have updated this (and posted today) with links and more info that a friend pointed out that I forgot to include...

Wow!  What a ride it has been.  Trying to sort out all I need to do for JA to ensure that he is well prepared to tackle college as a pre-med student has been very time-consuming.  But he's worth it!

Here is what we have finally settled on:
He has finished 9th grade! This was a surprising discovery while working through all of this.  Our local high school has 7 periods a day for 7 credits each year.  That equates to 21 credits in 3 years and in reality, he only needs about 24 credits to "graduate"  I realized that since he is finishing up Algebra 1 that this counts as a high school credit.  I also realized that I can give him high school credit for English since his writing skills are already high school level (verified by our next door neighbor who teaches English at the local high school).  So I really only needed to "find" one more credit for him.  And then I realized that his work on obtaining his Star Scout rank in Boy Scouts could count as an elective.  Voila!  He's now a rising 10th grader.

So, here are our plans for 10th grade

Science:

We have used the Robinson Curriculum (RC) for the last few years and I really like it, but it didn't have a strong biology component.  So I went on a search for a solid Biology curriculum.  My plans to let him do a killer science project went by the wayside when I realized that I needed to guarantee (as much as possible) that he'll be able to get through the freshman pre-med weed-out class of Biology in college without much struggle.  I also got more scared when another homeschooling friend told me that her daughter (a Biology major) got a C in her freshman biology class at a nearby private university.  When I found out that they used Apologia, I started looking for a tougher curriculum.  What I finally settled on is BJU with the DIVE videos.  We'll be following the Honors track for this.

English

I started with RC as my base reading list and planned to continue to use Jensen's Format Writing .  I was going to have him use the free study guides to the various books I found on the internet to make sure he was really grasping the content/meaning of the books.  However, I began to wonder "how much was enough" to be able to give him Honors credit.  In my searching on the internet for an answer, I came across the Excellence in Literature curriculum.  After looking over the books for the course  and her sample unit  I realized she had already put together what I was attempting to do.  So, since she has a 5 yr course and I could download it and re-use it over and over (for at least 4 kids!),  I decided to buy that. He'll be following the Honors track for this as well.

US History

I realized that RC seemed weak once you got past the Civil War.  So I began looking for extra books.  I ended up settling on the following:

• Eyewitness to America will be our "spine"  

This will be accompanied with some of the following books (some from RC and some I chose on my own): Of Plymouth Plantation, The Crucible, Johnny Tremain, Journals of Lewis and Clark, Life on the Mississippi, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Lincolns Speeches and Letters, The Life of Stonewall Jackson, The Memoirs of William Tecumseh Sherman, All's Quiet on the Western Front, The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, Speeches from American History, Diary of Anne Frank, The Grapes of Wrath, The Chosen,/The Promise, To Kill a Mockingbird, Autobiography of Chuck Colson, Autobiography of Ronald Reagan, Miracles in American History.  I think this is probably too much reading, so I will probably have him choose some books to read and others we will either listen to as audio books or will watch the movie.  These will be supplemented by the various Ken Burns' Mini-Series and the Drive Thru History series, as well.   In order to give him Honors credit for this, I am also going to require a Google Earth project showing significant locations/dates in American History as well as a research paper on the topic of his choice.

Foreign Language:

He will be taking Chinese 1 through Florida Virtual School

Christian Living (Elective)

For this, I am having him focus on himself for 10th grade.  The plan is to have him also do this elective in 11th grade with a focus on Jesus and in 12th grade with a focus on others.  So, the plan is to have him read the following books:  The Mark of a Man by Elisabeth Elliot, Do Hard Things by Joshua and Alex Harris, Boyhood and Beyond by Bob Schultz, I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris, Created for Work by Bob Schultz and Boundaries in Dating by Drs Cloud and Townsend.

 To round things out, he will be participating in a Summer Youth Band (1/4 credit)  which he will do for 4 summers for a total of 1 Fine Arts credit, Swimming on the local High School swim team, working on his earning his Life Scout rank in Boy Scouts (1 credit in Leadership) and volunteering at the local hospital.

For my next post, I'll post about our plans for BG for 10th grade.