HISTORY:  This year is SUPPOSED to be Medieval History, but I haven’t done that yet. I did WORLD HISTORY. But, the Medieval parts of the World History course lead me to believe that like some of the other courses, here’s where previous year’s work pays off. Everything you did in 8th History makes this year’s material OLD HAT. The kid can just focus on writing, wading through the difficult language patterns, and all that.  

*I have the “units” laid out for World History in the links on the 9-12grd page, if that’s a help. 

LATIN: Starting in 9th, I have to get a Latin grader-person from the school. It’s just beyond me.  We use Cambridge in High School. The school likes people to be farther along than we are in Latin, but that’s not my life. My Latin hater is doing Cambridge 1 in 11th. My others did it in 9th. Either way, that’s FAR behind where the school wants you, but we’re not going to a Latin-loving college; we’re just doing it for the brain training, clarity of grammar compared to English, usefulness of the content, and mostly FOREIGN LANGUAGE CREDIT. The level of “advancement” in Latin isn’t going to add much for us. If you’re going somewhere fancy for college, maybe that advanced Latin looks good.

RELIGION:  This the BARREL THROUGH THE BIBLE year. Holy crap! We have another Father Laux book and papers (for which I hire a grader-person) and the kids read huge swaths of Bible. I love that. I finished 1/2 a Masters of Divinity, but if you aren’t familiar with the Bible, LS or at least a grader is the way to go. WOW, this is like drinking from a fire hose. 

*This is the first year that previous years didn’t cancel out all the content. We just didn’t cover enough Bible in previous grades, IMO. This year is ROUGH because it’s all the work of previous years, PLUS a lot of the content is NEW.

BIOLOGY:  Biology is biology. HOWEVER, Darwin’s Black Box was a major hit in my house. We didn’t get the “dissection” books and kit because my kid volunteers in a veterinary office and sees that all day on live animals. So, I’m not much help there. 

Also, I personally find Apologia science books really annoying, but that’s probably just a personality defect and I’ve yet to find an alternative. This year, my daughter is in SS-11 Biology. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

MATH:  Math is math. We do Teaching Textbooks. We bailed on Saxon years ago. Not much help here I’m afraid. Graphing calculators haven’t changed since I was in college and their still the DEVIL. I hate them. Yelling at your graphic calculator is a right of passage to math nerd-ulthood. We embrace it, and ask that everyone keep it PG-13.