Getting ready for high school

Its that time of year when I start pulling out curriculum catalogues and evaluating what will be needed for the next year. Yes, I am a long range planner, who doesn't like surprises and who likes things decided before I ever set foot in a curriculum hall. It is also helpful when looking for used materials as spring is when people begin selling what they have finished. In this area I have found that it pays to plan ahead! High school has loomed in front of me, since dmd's 7th grade year, as something of a monster to be tackled. I have felt the weight of responsibility in preparing her academically to succeed at wherever God is going to plant her. She has already felt a strong determination to be a wife and mother and plans to spend her time preparing to be such. We fully support this while realizing that four years from now she might want to take college classes. I could not do less than prepare her thoroughly. I have always been eclectic in our curriculum's. I have settled with Math U See and stuck with them all these years. We love Apologia Science! I would never even try another Foreign language curriculum beside Rosetta stone. It was beyond worth the money! We have used Christiana Latina for the last three years and found it to be a wonderful. Next year we will move onto Henle Latin. History is more of a challenging subject. For the last three years I have used the Famous Men series and we have made lap books, time lines, and read numerous G.H. Henty and Rosemarry Sutcliff books. We write several book reports and do a major research project. The only difficulty we have encountered with this is that we don't progress very rapidly. We find something interesting and then camp out on it to long! With that in mind I determined to purchase a high school history curriculum for history. After looking at the scope and sequence of several prepackaged curriculum's I have discovered the reason our country is so historically illiterate. They are not being taught history! What a waste of time. I am still trying to work through this. For seventh grade we had used Introductory Logic. My daughter progressed through this quite easily without the DVD supplement and had very little trouble with it. For 8th grade we proceeded onto Intermediate Logic for which I purchased the DVDs and after two months we stopped trying to figure it out. The answer key assumed knowledge that I did not have and made it completely ineffective as a tool for us. When she got stumped I was not able to figure out if she was doing it right or wrong let alone why. Now I am trying to determine what if any curriculum I could switch to and am concerned that if I start at the introductory level she will spend a full year in review but if we go to a new intermediate level of a different curriculum we may not have all the knowledge that is required. We definitely want to study world views at some point during high school but I have not yet begun the search for the perfect fit. Latina Christiana has been an enjoyable curriculum for the last three years. We shall be moving onto Henle Latin 1. My head is a whirl!

I determined my system for tracking grades this last year. I am still a little unsure as to what to do about credit hours for transcripts. I assume I will use the Carnegie unit. How I will track that I am still unsure about. Now all we have to do is finish out this year!