In the last post I talked about what curriculum I ordered for my incoming 9th and 11th grader. All of my orders came very quickly, within days of placing them. I ordered from Christian Book Distributors and from Apologia. I am currently waiting on additional materials from Bob Jones Press which I ordered direct from their online store (and they have free shipping on all orders). If you’re looking for deals/savings, I reccommend signing up for the Christianbook.com email list as they will send you codes when they offer free shipping and have sales. Typically they are cheaper than ordering anywhere else but I found that the price was the same from Apologia and from BJU Press this time around. This was possibly due to sales. Sometimes, some of the items you wish to get, are not available from Christianbook and therefore you would need to look elswhere, such as from the publisher themselves or you can check Rainbow Resource, where I’ve ordered from before. If you are interested in Christian Liberty’s program materials, you will likely do best by ordering from them for things where they use another publisher, but created their own tests and teacher guides. This is a huge savings on programs from publishers such as Abeka. I noticed there were some items from Master Books that were not being sold on Christianbook. Sign up for the newsletters and you can also ask for catalogs to be mailed to you. This way you can stay up to date on sales and any free shipping offers. Also check places like, retailmenot.com for coupon codes to save you some money. I don’t purchase anything online without first looking for a discount code. Often you can find one.

Now for the first impressions on my unboxing all my boxes and really taking a good look at the books.

• BJU Press Writing and Grammar 10 – This is the english program we are going to do. Yes it’s rated for 10th grade but I don’t feel it will be too hard for my 9th grader and not redundant for my 11th grader. They have experience with grammar and writing and we didn’t focus on that last year in favor of learning literary terms and response to literature. Inside the teacher book, there is a pre-printed schedule for you, set up for 180 days. There is an included CD (which I will likely not use) for enrichment material and pre-tests. There are 12 chapters and therefore 12 tests (50 questions each) along with a final exam (100 questions). Most days have a Bible integration teaching moment where you would need to use your Bible (I like that aspect). There are several tidbits of extra teaching helps to read to your kids to go along with their lesson in their books. I feel like you can choose how much you want to do there. The teacher book is basically a copy of the student work book with the exta teaching moments and answers. The CD contains Rubrics which are helpful in grading student writing. What I didn’t realize when I odered the kit was that the student book was not a text book but a consumable work book where they will be writing their answers inside the book. You could possibly have multiple students use one book and not write in it and just have them write on notebook paper. I went ahead and ordered another book for my teens. The kit comes with one teacher guide, one set of tests, the test key and the student work text, which is a consumable item. For additional students you will need the tests unless you plan to photocopy them and it’s up to you if you want each to have their own work text or use notebook paper. Below you will see a sample of the schedule and the inside of the teacher book.

• BJU Press Cultural Geography – This is a highschool level course. I’m not sure what grade level they rate it for but my teens have not focused solely on this topic so much of this information will be new to them. It looks like a pretty interesting book. I like that it speaks about cultures and not just solely on map work. This is a complete stand alone course. Of course, as with anything, you can make it what you wish. The set comes with 2 teacher guides (yes, 2!), one student activities book, activity answer key, tests and test key, and the text book. The text book is not consumable so you can easily use this for multiple students. You will need addtional test packets unless you plan to photocopy. The student activity book is questionable. BJU says you need it, but after looking through it and the workload I do not believe we will be doing most of the activities included. However, chapter review worksheets are in the student activity book. The other activities are for further study/enrichment. There is a suggested schedule in the teacher guides. BJU has done a very good job explaining to you, the parent teacher, how to implement this course and contains a lot of additional information not in the student text book. There are 24 chapters and 24 tests. There are chapter review sections inside the student text but they may not have much bearing on the chapter and seem to be more for critical thinking and further study and not review of the chapter which you find in the student activity book. There is a teacher CD included which may not be needed to utilize the course. So, if you don’t have a CD ROM drive, I wouldn’t worry. Below I show you a sample of the chapter review inside the text and the chapter review worksheet inside the student activity book. I think the course will have a heavy workload which is appropriate for highschool.

• Apologia Marine Biology – If you buy the kit you will get one student notebook (needed), text book, tests and solutions manual. For additional students you would likely want additional test sheets and the student notebook. The students will be working solely in their student notebooks as they work through the text. This is meant for independant study so there is no teacher book. I would recccommend supervision for the labs. There are 16 modules (chapters) and 16 tests with 4 additional tests, one per quarter. This course, according to Apologia, is an advanced course and the pre-requiste is at least one year of Biology. My teens have not had a stand alone Biology course, however they have had anatomy included in several years and their life science course was basically biology so they are already familair and we already have many of the supplies needed for the labs. You will need dissection materials (if you choose to perform the dissections) and a microscope and they specify the slides you need. You will need additional blank slides and cover slips. They sell a lab kit. There is also one available for this course from Home Science tools but you will need to buy a microscope seperate if you don’t have one. You don’t need to have the most expensive. I bought ours from Lakeshore. I have not bought the lab kit yet as it contains the specimans and I don’t want them to expire. The course is written to the student. Each chapter should take about 2 weeks, but they emphasize not to rush through. They have allowed some flex time by only scheduling 33 weeks of study. In PA we need to do 180 days so that’s longer than that but I think it will work out. The student text tells the student how to take notes while they read the lessons and provides blank pages for them to do that. There are 3 types of labs; microcope, dissection, and household. They also include a list of all lab supplies needed. The last thing the student will work on is a presentation poster project on their research. Below is a sample of the notetaking instruction page and the schedule.

Other than those items, I also got an additional copy of the Scarlet Letter and 2 study guides from Progeny Press. I’m hoping to tie this secular book to Christian principles. We were going to do this book study this past school year but we just didn’t get to it with the amount of literature work they did already. There are free study guides online if you choose to go that route and that was my original plan. Actually, I created my own study guide based on the study guides I found on the internet. It ended up being quite long, so I decided to buy a ready to go printed book and Progency Press has several of these study guides. Check them out. The guide is rated for grades 9-12. Inside the guide (which I can not show you) there is a pinterest link for additional activities and projects. They also include some pre-reading activities such as some research on the Puritans and Calvanism along with some study on the the Salem Witch Trials and others. You will want to pick up the copy of the book shown below (Bantam Classics) as it’s the version they use. Based on past experience, I can tell you, if you don’t have the exact version, it won’t correspond exactly with the study guide which may not be a huge deal depending on how you approach the study. They suggest students read the book first and than go through the guide.

Still working on electives for the 2021-2022 school year. If you like the information in my post, please share. If you like the blog, be share it. If you know of people looking for information on homeschooling in Pennsylvania, please share my blog with them as I have multiple posts and links to valuable information to help them sort out the law and free printable documents they need to properly file. I also have several posts on curriculum reviews.