It's a Wrap!

final grades

The work is finished; portfolios are assembled, the classroom has been cleaned, a list of materials for next year has been created. We will meet with our evaluator next week to go over the boys' work and then my summer can officially begin.

Now that we are in the PHAA diploma program, I have been grading JT's work for the transcript. He ended up having almost all As with just one B in geometry. He will have six credits this year; English, geometry, American history, and German 2 are all worth a full credit. Health and fencing are each 1/2 credit courses. To graduate with a diploma from PHAA he will still need two more credits in English, and one each in social studies, math, and science. In the fall he will be taking a chemistry class at the community college with plans to take a history and art class in the spring. At home he will be taking algebra 2, English, geography, and a music credit using a combination of a Great Courses series, his private piano and drum lessons, the composition and theory class he takes, and possibly a class with Coursera.

EM did a lot of work this year as well. He has a large section of his portfolio dedicated to his literature and grammar studies. We used multiple materials this year, Calvert's grammar workbook, 7th grade Lightning Lit, two different writing and composition workbooks, and two of the Vocabulary from Classical Roots books. He also completed two of the Anatomy Academy books for science and spent the second half of the year working through the Make: Electronics book. For math, he used Thinkwell to study pre-algebra. He took two pottery classes, piano lessons, and learned some archery with his new bow. Next year he will study algebra, earth science, 8th grade Lightning Lit, and take archery and drawing lessons. I also plan to spend more time next year working on his writing ability. If he's going to sign up with PHAA's diploma program, he needs to be able to write a 2500 word essay for each year from 9th-12th grade. We will be trying to get a few longer reports together throughout the year.

Once I had the portfolios together, I decided to immediately clean the classroom. Some years I just want to get out of there and leave the mess until later in the summer. Instead, I cleaned all of this year's books off of the shelf and put the new ones I already have on there. I will still be ordering a few things, but some of it was already here. Of course, if this room is clean that means the mess moved somewhere else.

Next week I'll have some more work to do. Most of what is in this room will be sold on the homeschool list I follow. I'm finally accepting that most of the materials I've been stockpiling for the last eight years will not be needed. I will need very few new things for JT since I already have next year's books and his senior year will probably be spent taking almost all college classes. EM will need some of what I have but I pretty much know what I need to keep and what can go. It's crazy to think that I'm nearing the end of this journey. Two more years with JT and five with EM. But for now I'm just going to enjoy my summer!