Peter's birthday is right before mothers day, so every year I remember that first mothers day when he was a newborn and I think: How can my little baby be this old?!?! This year he turned 16 and within days has a learners permit and a checking account. I watched a recorded presentation he was a part of recently for a state competition and I was blown away by how mature and grown up he seems.
Peter had a great homeschool year. There were a few bumps in the road that led to detours to plans but it all came out to be a wonderful learning journey for him this year. I'm delighted to see him growing more into himself and taking on tough challenges and excelling. He has high standards for himself and I have to remind him to be satisfied with good work.
So let's take a look at what Peter worked on this year.
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Because Peter has a transcript, I'm going to just go through each of the classes he is earning credit for this year.
English 10: British Literature and Composition [1 credit]
I designed a British Literature class for Peter using the following works:
- Beowulf
- Canterbury Tales selections: The General Prologue, The Knight’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Pardoner’s Tale
- Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
- Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Silas Marner by George Elliot
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Selected poems by Donne, Blake, Shakespeare, Shelley and other
Studying each work required watching some kind of video, usually documentary clips from Access Video on Demand, a digital media collection available through our library, as well as answering short answer questions, writing prompts, and several short and long essays. I purchased a British poetry unit [$7.99], A Modest Proposal study [$5.00], and A Tale of Two Cities Close Readings Activities [$3.00] on TPT, where I also downloaded a free 1984 Pacing Guide. I used many other websites and documents that are freely available online--too many to list here. We had no book costs as most were borrowed from the library or read online, and a few we owned.
English is not Peter's favorite subject and this was not designed to be an honors level course. I am pleased with how it all came together. He did a lot of good work and he grew as a reader, writer, and thinker.
Creating a course like this takes hours and hours of work and I think I work quickly. However, it is very cost-effective and it allows me to focus directly on exposing Peter to the works of literature that I think will resonate with him and give him the liberal education that I want for him. I also like to make sure that the course work required is deep and engaging and not reading comprehension.
Finally, Peter worked through the book, Vocabulary Virtuoso (Book 1) by Nancy Forderer [$19.99 from Rainbow Resource Center]. He has a very good vocabulary but he said he did learn some new words from this resource and he scored very well on the verbal portion of the SATs.
Elements of Statistics (Dual Enrollment) [3 college credits = 1 high school credit]
I had enrolled Peter in a very highly recommended AP calculus course that met twice a week online. And we quickly realized that it wasn't the right class at the right time for him. He had never pivoted out of a class before and he felt bad about it, but the class wasn't working for him.
We discussed various options for his math credit this year and he decided to wait on calculus and try statistics. I had him work on AP Statistics on Khan Academy before we were able to enroll him in Elements of Statistics STP 226 at Arizona State University ($25 to enroll in the course + $400 to transcript the course). He worked hard at the class, which had 3 remotely proctored exams, and earned an A in the class.
And his prepared to try Calculus again next year with a different class and a different, older perspective.
Honors Chemistry with Lab [1 credit]
After taking biology in 8th grade, AP physics 1 in 9th grade, next up was chemistry. I was planning to pay for an outside class, but decided to keep this class in house for financial and practical reasons. The outside class used the text, Timberlake & Timberlake’s “Basic Chemistry” 4th edition [$10.49 on Thriftbooks] and after I looked at it, I felt confident that Peter and I could create a great course based on it. I also purchased Study Guide and Selected Solutions Manual for Basic Chemistry [$22.29 on Thriftbooks] so I could easily check his work and use it as a bank for exam questions.
Peter completed this rigorous textbook, reading and studying his way through each chapter, and completing about half of the study/review problems per chapter for more than 85% of the text. In the final few chapters, he studied the text only, but switched over to using the free Modern States Chemistry Course to test himself further and prepare for and earn a free voucher for the Chemistry CLEP exam, which he plans to take in June.
His younger brother was also studying chemistry, and together they did most experiments from Sabbath Mood Homeschool Chemistry Part 1 [$23], Chemistry Part 2 [$23], and Chemistry Part 3 [$18.40 with Black Friday sale]. I also purchased supplies for the labs including $97.51 from Home Science Tools (with a 15% off Fathers Day coupon) and another $20 for items from Target. I had the boys skip the experiments where the required materials exceeded $20+ for one experiment and replace them by completing their 3 remaining MEL science kits (2 experiments each) from a few years back which they received as a Christmas present. Peter wrote up lab reports for most labs.
AP Human Geography [1 credit]
Peter has always loved geography. In 7th grade, he used a regional geography textbook to study the United States and so I had a feeling that he would really enjoy taking AP Human Geography with Global Academic Productions [$475]. He has loved this class so much. I see very of his work because he handles everything, but he has a good grade and he is happy. Last week, he took the AP test [$99] at a public high school about an hour away from us that graciously agreed to let him test there.
German 2 [1 credit]
Last year, Peter used UC Scout plus a college-aged tutor for German 1 and it wasn't ideal. He needed more complicated graded assignments and more feedback. This year he took German 2 [$489.25 with discounts] through My Fun Science. I impulse purchased this class in February of 2025 because the price was right and I wanted an online class for him. The course texts included Deutsch Aktuell 2 (7th Edition) [free with Thriftbooks free book reward] & Workbook [$13.91 on Ebay].
I had no idea how this course would go given that he hadn't taken German 1 with this provider, but it went great. He got great grades and learned a lot. In April, he took our local university's language placement test and tested into the 3rd semester of college language and he has enrolled in German 201 there for the fall semester (for free as they allow local students only to take 1 class per semester). He practices Duolingo German every day and he even thinks about continuing in German and maybe even studying abroad there one day.
College Readiness (Dual Enrollment) [2 college credits = 0.5 high school credit]
In July, after we had planned out what Peter was going to do for the school year, I learned about University of Alabama's Early College program. I attended a webinar hosted by Homeschooling for College Credit about the program and was very impressed with the cost ($33/credit) and the quality of the courses offered, and I was surprised about the level of academic support that was included in the program, specifically dedicated advising staff.
I spoke with Peter, and he decided that he would give the program a try. We paid a $40 application fee, submitted his high school transcript, and he was accepted to the program with an October start date for the 2 credit class (free) that is required before any other classes can be taken.
This college readiness class included lots of practical skills including how to participate in online discussions, note-taking, study strategies, time management, how to avoid plagiarism, how to correctly cite things in APA format, and required a 5-page research paper with a pre-approved thesis statement. It wasn't an easy class, especially because it was a 6-week class with rigid deadlines. Peter passed the class with a high enough score (it was a points based Pass/Fail class) to allow him to register for his first 3 credit class (below!)
Principles of Microeconomics (Dual Enrollment) [3 college credits = 1 high school credit]
Peter has always been interested in economics and personal finance so this seemed like a great first course for him--challenging, but no major writing assignments. The course cost $99 and then I paid an additional $160.60 for course materials--a textbook that was integrated with the course. This is a great price for a 3-credit economics course.
He worked very hard and diligently on this course. A big challenge was that 75% of the course grade came from 3 proctored exams. Studying for exams is not something that Peter has as much practice with and he is still learning. But he studied very hard for the last exam and was able to get the grade he wanted. He is enrolled in Principles of Macroeconomics at Alabama for next semester.
Interesting side note is that he would not have been able to take this class if I hadn't had him take the College Algebra CLEP exam previously as the class had a math prerequisite. So I had to spend $20 to send his CLEP scores, but Alabama awarded him 14 credits for the Biology, American History, and College Algebra CLEPs.
Art History (0.5 credit)
For Peter's last course, he chose to study Art History using the Reframing Art History open source, multimedia textbook. He used the framework designed for AP Art History on Khan Academy to work through the textbook and completed about 85% of it along with related assessments that I was able to download for free from Teachers Pay Teachers. I had been approved to offer an AP art history course, but once Peter took on the University of Alabama Early College program, it made sense to keep this as regular fine art credit. We decided that he did more than 0.5 credit but maybe less than 1.0 credit so we are keeping this at a very robust 0.5 credit course.
Everything Else
Besides his regular high school classes, Peter also had many other meaningful experiences that added to his learning. He continued his participation in our local homeschool envirothon team which met every other week all year. Recently, he competed with a team of five in our regional envirothon competition and his team advanced to the state competition (next week!).
He volunteered for over 40 hours at the Bard College Creative and Analytical Math Program (CAMP), which is a one week day camp at Bard College where his younger brother was attending. He had a great time helping out at this math enrichment camp and a great time camping nearby with his dad, younger brother, and sister. He continued to participate in our homeschool math team and attended 3 area math competitions plus one online team competition.
He earned a Teen Hiker Award and also completed a 100-mile hiking fundraiser challenge. He did a 27-mile multi-day hike with his dad and now only needs another 11 miles to earn another Teen Hiker Award later in the year. He did some environmental related volunteering doing live stakes collection and a very strenuous tire clean up with the PA game commission.
Finally, he wrote a resume and cover letter and applied for a job working on a teen crew doing conservation and trail work in state parks and he got the job. So for 6-weeks this summer he is going to be earning money and hopefully having a great time.
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