Our 2026-2027 Homeschool High School Plans | What We’re Using for 9th Grade

[music] >> Hey everybody, welcome to the Well Ordered Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be all about our high school homeschool plans. You guys, I cannot believe Emily's going to be a freshman this year. I really don't know how we got here. And I want to start by saying that these are the plans. This is not necessarily everything that we're going to do and if you've been here any length of time, you know that we tend to kind of just go with the flow. The credits that I am intentionally seeking this year, like I wrote them down, these are the credits that we are going after for her freshman year, are English 1, geometry, biology, world history and geography and I'm undecided on whether world history will be a full credit and world geography will be a full credit. Basically, I'm just going to be like writing everything down and see how many hours we do and then decide on whether they're going to be a full credit each or whether it's just going to be like half credit each and then it'll just be world history and geography as a combined credit. Um we are continuing to work towards a film study credit. We kind of spent the summer doing that, so we're going to continue that. Uh we will be working towards one fine arts credit, uh a PE credit and then we are going to be working towards what we are calling applied life skills. So those are the credits we're working towards her freshman year. That doesn't mean we won't be doing other things that I'm not going to be keeping track of that will not eventually turn into some sort of credit. Those are just the ones that I like am intentionally seeking out materials for. Okay, with that being said, let's talk about English 1. So the English 1 stack that I have includes um the new SAT vocabulary. So we worked through this a little bit last year. We got through maybe a third of it, I would say. So we're just going to continue to work through this this year as part of our English one credit. And then I have both Editor in Chief level three as well as Fix It Grammar Frog Prince. Now, I don't think that you need both of these because this one has editing in it and this one has some like grammar and spelling in it. The thing is we started with Editor in Chief like years ago and probably late elementary and Emily really really liked it. And then we made the switch to Fix It Grammar and I really really liked it. She liked it but I really really liked it. So when it came time this year, she knew that Editor in Chief only had one more level and she really wanted to finish it. So I got her both. I'm not sure how this is going to work out. We may do all of one and some of the other. We may do some of one and some of the other. It It's just I'll let you know. But for now, we have both of these working towards our English one credit. We will also be doing novel studies. I have picked The Hobbit because we just finished reading that so we will work our way through the novel study to go along with that. But also we are focusing on fantasy literature this year. That's her favorite genre and I wanted to make sure that she enjoyed what we were doing especially for her first year of high school. So we are going to be reading lots of different fantasy. Her free reads will be fantasy. The majority of the things that we do novel studies on will be fantasy based. Like I said, The Hobbit is the first one we're working our way through. And then in addition to that, I decided it would be really cool for her to write her own fantasy. So I grabbed a romantasy specifically cuz that's her like specific favorite subgenre. So I grabbed this how to write a romantasy book for us to use which is 99 writing prompts to craft a tale of heart and heroism. So this is going to kind of help her get started in writing her own. And then I also got her a Game Master's Guide to Fantasy Map Making which this was kind of a mix of this would work really really great for her love of Dungeons & Dragons, but also it would be really great for her to like be able to create this amazing fantasy world and draw and label a map to go in what I'm hoping is going to be the front of a short novel that she's going to be writing this year. So that kind of makes up our English one credit. Um not to mention obviously we just read and talk. We have mother-daughter book clubs all the time. All of that just kind of goes together for our English one. For our geometry credit, this is the easiest one. We just have Denison geometry. So she will be working her way through this this year. Um again, if she doesn't finish it, no big deal, it can roll over. We're actually still finishing Algebra 1. She has like four lessons left in Algebra 1 now. So we'll finish that and then we'll start geometry. If she gets through it all this year, great. If it rolls over, again, not a big deal, but that is the credit we will actively be working towards her freshman year. And then for biology, I have a lot of resources for it. The thing that's going to kind of be like the spine, if you will, is going to be Watch and Learn Biology, which is a Crash Course Companion Guide. So this is basically um using the entire Crash Course Biology YouTube playlist and it turned each of them into lessons. So this is going to be like the base of it. And then I'm adding in a lot of other things. I'm going to do a whole 'nother video about everything we're using for biology. Um so just stay in like stay in still and hold tight for that cuz it's coming, I promise. But this is going to be like the thing that I'm using to base everything off of. So for example, if the first video is I don't know. We're just going to say the first video is mitosis. Then I'm going to pick other things that would go along with that. Or like, if it's the animal cell is less than three, and then when she does less than three, this animal cell, the hands-on activity we'll do will be the animal cell that I bought that's like the 4D animal cell. Or um the biology lab that goes with it, or a game that we're going to play. Like, basically this is going to be like the syllabus, and then I'm going to just be weaving other things in with it. And then the same thing kind of goes with world history. So, this is watch and learn world history. So, this is based off of the crash course YouTube playlist as well, and it's going to be very similar, too. Basically, this will be like the timeline that we keep, and then we'll be adding things in like history unboxed boxes, um documentaries, who was, where was, what was mini units. Like, we'll be doing all of that to extend it, but this is going to be like the baseline. And also, if you are curious about these two, if you're watching this video as soon as it comes out, they will be available August 17th. So, I'm waiting to release them when we start the summer sale, the back to school sale, so that you can get them at 25% off right out the gate. So, they will be out soon if you want to join us in watch and learn biology or watch and learn history. For the geography side of it, we are going to be going through traveling the world. We'll be actually combining traveling the world one and two and just picking countries. Like, we'll pick a continent and we'll just go through those countries from kind of both of them, and then we'll keep going. And then the same thing here, too. We'll be making the recipes, um we'll be reading a read-aloud that goes along with each and every continent that we're, you know, studying about at that time. So, all of that just kind of is going to be happening, and it will be part of, but this is going to be like the base. Between this and traveling the world two, that will be the base. It will be our spine. It will kind of be the jumping off point for everything else. For film study, we are going to be working through Lights, Camera, Learn. We started this last year. We didn't get nearly as many done as I wanted. Then we jumped into the holiday movie guide, which we loved. Then over the summer we jumped into Marvel. Both of those were amazing, but I wanted to get back to the original. So, this is what we will what we will be working our way through this year for her film study. This will be kind of a way to finish that credit up. And then for fine arts, we will be doing kind of a mixture of art appreciation, which is part of our morning basket, hands-on art projects, which just happen naturally in our home school, and then she takes guitar and guitar music lessons once a week. So, kind of all of that combined will be the fine arts credit that we're working towards. Um same thing with PE, that will be a combined credit. That will include her archery, as well as she's now working out with me um in the gym one to two times a week. But we will be like tracking and logging all of those hours, and that will all be going towards our PE credit. And if you're curious about how I'm going to be tracking and logging hours, if you haven't watched it yet, I filmed an entire how I plan on record keeping for high school video. So, I will link that up here for you guys. Um and then the applied life skills is exactly what it sounds like. That's what we're going to call the credit of life skills. So, Kevin and I sat down together and we made like this really long list of all of the things we wanted to make sure that she knew for the real world um kind of before she left our house. From simple things like pumping gas to changing oil, changing a flat tire, to like being able to sort your laundry and wash it and dry it and fold it um and iron it and like completely do a meal plan from the picking a recipe um you know, shopping for your ingredients, making it, cleaning up the kitchen. Like we just made all of these like very very in-depth, simple to complicated things like to filing taxes, filling out a resume, filling out an application. Like we made all of these plans of what we want her to be able to do before she leaves our house. Like this is what we think she needs for life. And so that is what we'll be just like slowly working towards. We'll each kind of be like, this is what I want to work on right now. This is what I want to work on right now. And we'll both be kind of teaching her something as we go. I do not think this is something we will cover just freshman year. This is something that's probably going to be all four years of high school because there's a lot of things we want to teach her, but all of those things are basically going to go as an applied life skill credit. I also didn't want to end this video without sharing the subscriptions that we are pretty sure that we're maintaining or at least we're currently subscribed to for the start of freshman year. The first one is History Unboxed. I don't have my first box yet. So I'm just going to tell you that's the first one. We've done it before in the past and since we're doing world history, I hand selected single boxes that I thought would go along well, that Emily would enjoy. So like for example, the Ming Dynasty box. So those boxes haven't come in just yet, but I guess that's really not a subscription since I hand selected them, but anyway, I picked six boxes. So those six boxes will be coming in soon. And then we are keeping our Universal Yums. Although I did upgrade from the smallest one to the medium size. Since we are doing geography this year and it's world geography, I wanted to make sure we had a plenty of snacks to go along with that. So we'll be doing Universal Yums. For letter subscriptions, we're keeping all of the ones that we already love. Writings from the Wild, American Letter, American Heritage Letter. We're keeping all of those, but I am adding in Letters from Afar. We did this one years ago and we kind of quit getting it. Again, since we're doing world geography, I decided to add this one in this year. So we're adding a fourth. I believe that will be four subscription letters for us. And then two beloved subscription boxes that Emily and Kevin will not give up. Hack Pack and or Crunch Labs and Hack Pack. Two of their absolute favorites. This one Emily now does independently for the most part except when Kevin wants to play with the new toy and then this one they do together because it has quite a bit of coding that can sometimes frustrate her and so having him around is great. So there you have it. That is a very general look at what our freshman homeschool plans are. Again, like I said, I will be filming a more in-depth video on the biology and the world history and geography and like all of the resources that I'm going to have on hand to basically make that happen. So make sure you are subscribed and turn notifications on for that.