Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Things have been rough here and as my mom always told me; ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything.’ Which means I have had to be quiet.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We did and had a celebration full of traditional food and seafood. It was good, for the most part. DH had the boys busy with things and I was supposed to be able to use the time on Friday, Saturday and Sunday planning out ScienceKids new courses however my PC’s AC Adaptor died and so I had no pc juice. Without my PC I could not plan. I could not put the course lesson plans into Homeschool Tracker, and oh my, I really was like a ship out of water. I even spent one day mowing the lawn and bagging leaves. Timing has been off all year for me.

But I’m back and the courses are planned out. We are excited about them too. I’ll share the first one with you, Introduction to Computer Science.

ScienceKid realized at his last YESS session that he is way behind the PS kids computer knowledge. He’s familiar with sw programs such as Word and ExCel and is able to surf the net exceedingly well, but he has not done any programming. When SK gets concerned about being behind he goes overboard with concern and that is just what happened right before Thanksgiving. He wanted to learn all the programming languages right then and there, and he had such urgency to do this too that I knew he would not accept waiting until next fall to get started.

And while we school with a classical approach we are not rigid in our plans, and particularly not with a high schooler. Adjustments can be made and that’s just what I was quite willing to do.

First I posted on my favorite homeschool high school forum, WTM, for feedback on what other folks have used and got pointed toward having SK learn Java. DH and I weren’t sure this was the right step for SK and so I looked a bit more. Sometimes however, we forget, or at least I do, about resources right in our own backyards. Or in this case the resource sitting on my shelf placed there on the recommendation of my niece, a woman with a PhD in CIS, and one who has taught many beginning CIS courses. I pulled the book off the shelf and consulted with my trusted independent source, Amazon.com book reviews. The reviews made the choice really simple and I soon sent an email off to said-niece for recommendations on how to get SK started in this book/course study. I also requested a course syllabus that I could use, after-all, why should I reinvent the wheel?

You’re dying to know the book, right? It is ‘How to Design Programs, An Introduction to Programming and Computing‘ and it can either be purchased or read online for free. The course outline we are following is a NE’ern U college course niece recommended. SK has worked through the first three chapters or sections of the book which is considered just the first week of this CIS U211 course and he is having a blast. He and his cousin have started emailing questions and answers too so it looks like he will have a great support system to take him through this. Today he told me that to fit this in with his other courses, since he doesn’t want to drop anything off hs plate, he will do lots of programming on Saturday’s. What a kid!

Oh, taking a week and a-half per section instead of the one week per section pace of the college course DS should finish up this course by May. Next year I’ll have him take a Java programming course and maybe he’ll be ready for the APCIS test in the spring.

Which brings me to another point I’d like to make, although I know I’m preaching to the choir, maybe. I have fallen directly into the role so many hs’ers who have gone before me told me I would fall into once my child got into high school. That role is one of facilitator. Teaching is my role for math since that is my love but as far as the other subjects where my skills are lacking, such as AP Biology and Computer Programming, I have found others to teach my child. Teaching is a minor role now but finding resources for my ds to use, and being there to listen and talk with him is really my new roles.

High School years are really so much more fun than the earlier years and I really do need to share more about this, so watch for that to come soon.