Review of Trail Guide to US Geography

https://geomatters.com/products/trail-guide-to-u-s-geography

We used Trail Guide to U.S. Geography for 11th grade this school year.  I gave my daughter 0.5 credit US Geography for completing the book, but this could easily be beefed up to cover a full credit.

My daughter loved this course.  It's very open and go.  

For the course, you need:

• The Trail Guide to U.S. Geography book (obviously)
• An atlas or a computer/tablet with access to maps
• A blank map of each state you study - we printed these from online
• Colored pens/pencils (those helped with labeling cities and drawing rivers and landforms)
• The book The Captain's Dog - if you plan to do the literature study at the end of the book
• A computer to search for information about the topics covered on each state's page
• A notebook if you want to take notes on each state 

The course begins with the New England states and continues with Mid-Atlantic states, Southern states, Midwest states, Southwest states, Rocky Mountain states, and finally the Pacific Coast.

The beginning of the book says there is a digital download available (student notebook), but we did not use it.  

Each state has three levels of mapping questions: elementary, middle school and high school.  We answered the questions to all three levels each time, because there were things my daughter did not know that were asked in the lower levels.

Topics covered include:

• Boundaries
• Capitals/major cities
• Major rivers, lakes and landforms
• Postal abbreviations - we did one for each state to refresh her memory
• Time zones
• Populations
• Climate 
• Agriculture, industry and economy
• A little bit of history

The beginning of the book lists required resources, extra things you can add (like Geography through Art and Eat Your Way Through the USA) and a sample schedule.

This was just a super enjoyable geography course.  I did the entire course with my 11th grader and even I thought it was a lot of fun.  We've done Trail Guide to World Geography and equally enjoyed that course as well.

Review of The Elements of Style Workbook (Strunk)

 Here it is: https://www.brookdalehouse.com/product/elements-style-workbook/

I don't think I've ever been happier with a writing workbook.  I wish I would've used this book with my older kids.  I didn't know it existed - no one seems to use this book.  I just happen to stumble across it on Amazon last year, so I bought it for the 16 year-old.

She scored at college level on the TSI English and Writing after using about half this workbook.  Granted, we did do other things to prepare her for the essay portion of the test, but I can tell that this workbook has really helped improve her writing.

This workbook is based on the original The Elements of Style book by Strunk & White.  The workbook includes the topics from the book followed by writing exercises that follow each topic.  

The workbook begins with exercises in punctuation, which are common writing errors.  It follows with sentence structure, paragraph structure, topic sentences...  Exercises continue with active voice/passive voice, positive/negative statements, trimming needless words, definite language and summaries.  The last section of the workbook has the student imitating the "Masters of Literature."  Appendix A contains a great writing checklist, so the student can use that as a checklist for revision or the teacher could even use it as a grading rubric.

This workbook is only about $15 on Amazon or Rainbow Resource and it's 200 pages of excellent writing exercises.

My high schooler did half the workbook this school year (for 11th grade) and she'll finish it for 12th grade.  And she likes the workbook.  So, it just doesn't get any better than that!

The Elements of Style Workbook = gigantic thumbs up

College Tour: University of North Texas

 Last week, we toured the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas.  https://www.unt.edu/

Here's a link to register for a tour: https://tours.unt.edu/

The Welcome Center

They have a dedicated Welcome Center on campus about half a block from a covered parking garage.  The tour starts with a short introduction and a video about the college.  Then, the tour guide takes everyone on a walk around campus to see the Student Union building, the campus bookstore, the cafeteria building (I can't remember its official name), some of the classroom buildings, the business building and the administration building.  The guide tells you about the history of the campus, the meaning of the green spotlight and shows you how to make the UNT eagle sign with your hand.  

Their mascot is the eagle.  Colors are green and white.  You'd better like green, because it's everywhere.

My impressions: 

• This campus seems very clean, safe and well-taken care of.
• It's massive.  You have to walk far to get from one building to another.  That's actually my biggest worry with my daughter.  As an art major, she is going to be hauling art gear and canvases all over campus in the rain, heat, cold, etc.
• There seems to be only three parking situations.  Two are lots and one is a covered garage.  The garage is the most expensive, but one of the lots is very far away.  The tour guide said there are shuttle buses that go from the lots to the main campus buildings.
• Everything seems to be run very well and organized.
• We walked through the art building and my daughter was impressed with the art classrooms.

Things I thought were interesting:

• The business building actually has a day trading room on the first floor.  There are computer stations and a ticker that runs along the wall with real-time stock information.  The guide told us that the business students are allowed to use university money to practice trading stocks.  Any gains are added to a scholarship fund.  Any losses are absorbed by the university.  
• UNT ranks #10 in the country for transfer students.  Since my daughter will be a transfer student, I though this was a plus.
• They have a world-class music program.
• Several of the tour guides were double majors or majors with minors.  I was relieved to hear this, because my daughter's current college discourages double majors or taking extra classes, in general.
• They have a dedicated bus stop area that looks almost like a bus station.  There are express busses that travel from other areas of DFW to the UNT campus.  There is also an express bus that goes from North Fort Worth directly to the bus stop at UNT.

Here's a link to contact the Admissions Counselor: https://www.unt.edu/admissions/contact-us/index.html

After the tour, this university rose to #1 on our list of possibilities for my college transfer student.  We still need to contact Admissions to see how they handle transfers, how they feel about homeschooled students (this will be a big issue - if it's not homeschool-friendly, we don't want to go), how transferring goes with fine arts majors, etc.  I can update this post when I find out more homeschool-specific details.

More Planning 2023-2024 11th Grade

 She will still be choosing what she wants to study, but we have a couple of changes.  First, she has decided that she is going to try to go professional with ballet.  Second, this means that she will probably not be able to go to college right after high school and if she does decide to go to college, it will be as a fine arts major.

To determine what she's already studied and what she still needs to have on her high school transcript, I bought the High School Student Record from here: https://everydayeducation.com/products/high-school-student-record-a-peaceful-planning-booklet?_pos=1&_sid=e71ebaba6&_ss=r

I put together a high school transcript on Excel and I made a list of what she's missing for a high school diploma.  She still needs:

• 1.5 credit English
• 1 credit US History
• 1 credit Algebra 2

Besides Algebra 2, we can find interest-led ways to satisfy those credits.

Here's what she and I both would like her to work on for 11th grade (what we end up doing will be a lot more than this, realistically):

Bible

• Finish reading the Old Testament

Math

• Mathusee Algebra 2

History & Literature

• She wants to read several of Mark Twain's books
• I would like her to read some American literature
• She wants to watch Crash Course US History

Science

• We are working on interest-led biology topics
• Ellen McHenry's The Brain
• Organ dissections from Home Science Tools
• Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology (YouTube)
• Animal anatomy and classification
• Maybe some animal dissections
• Geology
• She wants to finish taking the guided tours of the 5 caves in the Texas Cave Trail

Foreign Language

• She and her sister have been trying to teach themselves Korean using DuoLingo and Grandma (who is a native speaker)

Fine Arts

• She has been going to professional classical ballet performances and some college-level orchestra performances
• Ballet classes at the ballet school
• She has helped choreograph several dances at the ballet school
• She plays classical guitar and ukulele
• She will be attending a ballet camp at a pre-professional program this summer

The Screwtape Letters - audiobook and extra resources (free)

 We are finishing up The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.  In the book, Screwtape is a demon/devil who is writing letters to his nephew, Wormwood.  In the letters, he's instructing Wormwood on how to corrupt a particular human and commenting on different aspects of the human's life and events that occur.  Themes in the book include relationships, marriage, war, compassion, cowardice, hell, temptation, humans' relationships with God, the ultimate goal of demons and Satan, etc.

This is about my third reading through the book.  This time, we decided to listen to the audiobook version.  

On Youtube, there is an audiobook version of the book narrated by John Cleese and it is excellent!  This audiobook is an abridged version, but it's really only condensed by a couple of chapters.

We used Sparknotes to get through the book.  Several of the chapters are difficult to work through and we needed some extra help.

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/screwtape-letters/

This website has a book summary, individual chapter summaries, literary devices, essay topic suggestions, and in-depth character analyses.

The audiobook + Sparknotes turned out to be excellent.  I'm working though this book with the 14 year-old and she has been able to follow everything with no problem.  She said this was her favorite book so far this year.

If anyone would like to hear C.S. Lewis actually speaking, go onto Youtube and search for "C.S. Lewis' surviving BBC radio address."  He's giving a talk about how God doesn't experience time like humans do - where we have a past, present and future timeline.  God and Heaven doesn't experience time the same way.  It's fascinating.

Mathusee Stewardship

 My daughter finished Mathusee Stewardship and I wanted to post a quick review of this curriculum.

Here is a link to Stewardship on Mathusee's website:  https://store.demmelearning.com/building-faith-families/stewardship

Stewardship is a personal finance/consumer math course written for high school.  On my daughter's transcript, I assigned one credit Personal Finance.  It took my daughter about 6-7 months to finish the course.  I do think an advanced 8th grader could successfully use this course.  

The course includes the videos (which are found online for free).  At the beginning of each lesson, Steve Demme teaches the lesson material in a video.

Link to videos: https://stewardshipmath.com/videos-and-other-resources/stewardship-videos/

The course also includes an Instruction Manual, a Student Workbook and a book called Biblical Principles (which is almost more like a devotional, but covers the subject discussed in each lesson).

The course covers:

• Income
• Overtime pay
• Bank accounts
• Budgets
• Credit Cards
• Interest and Compound Interest
• How much it costs per day to own a vehicle
• Car Loans
• Mortgages
• House Repairs/Maintenance Costs
• Medical Insurance
• College Costs
• Investing
• Charity/Giving

The math in this course is not challenging.  It's mostly prealgebra and algebra 1 skills.  But, most of the math we use every day is not beyond that level.  We thought the content and topics covered were excellent.  My daughter learned a lot during this course and I will definitely have the younger two work through this course during high school.  I regret that I didn't buy this for my oldest two before they graduated.      

10/7: Final Review of Trail Guide to World Geography

 We did it - we finished World Geography!  I'm giving both of the high schoolers 1 credit World Geography on their transcripts.  

Altogether, it took us 6 months to get through this unit study.

For World Geography, we did:

• Trail Guide to World Geography
• Mapping the World with Art, by Ellen McHenry
• Literature that takes place in different countries around the world
• It's A Jungle Out There (South America)
• A Long Walk to Water (Sudan)
• Hatchet (Canada)
• Born Free (Africa)
• Red Scarf Girl (China) - EXCELLENT book
• Gandhi (movie version - India)
• Around the World in 80 Days (movie)

Trail Guide to World Geography

• We made it through the guide using a large, dry erase markable map sold by Rainbow Resource:  https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/001554/USA-World-Double-Sided-Laminated-Map.html?
• It's recommended to buy Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide, but we did not use it as much as I hoped.  We mostly used the internet, National Geography videos on Youtube, etc.
• We did not do the Around the World in 80 Days unit at the end of the Trail Guide, because I had added so many other things to the course
• There is an absolute ton of map work in this course.
• Altogether, this was an absolutely wonderful unit study.  This was one of my favorite curricula - ever (in 13 years of homeschooling).

Mapping the World with Art

• This was a wonderful resource to add onto the Trail Guide.  It's a series of DVDs (I think she might have downloads now, I'm not sure).  On the videos, she guides the kids into drawing the entire world.  You just need the videos, paper, pencil, ruler and sometimes a protractor and compass.  There is also a PDF with notes about each region, and she has a YouTube channel with videos.
• The girls ended up drawing the entire world.  

Literature

• All of these books were excellent, but we particularly enjoyed Hatchet and Red Scarf Girl.  Red Scarf Girl is absolutely an incredible book.  It's an autobiography of a girl who lives during the Cultural Revolution in China.  High school age is probably best for Red Scarf Girl, in my opinion.  We ended up having a lot of conversations about communism, how the Communist Party tried to erase Chinese culture, etc.  Hatchet - that was a book I had never read before, but we listened to the audiobook during lunch, etc and we all really enjoyed it.  Even the 6 year-old liked the book.

Wordsmith Craftsman and Language Lessons for the High School Student

 15 year-old complained about Wordsmith Craftsman for the last time.  I pulled it from her curriculum and I just ordered Language Lessons for the High School Student, volume 2.

https://www.queenhomeschool.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=366

The 13 year-old is using the junior high series and she seems to like it a lot, so I'm going to have the 15 year-old try it, as well.  

From the samples on Queen's Homeschool website, it looks like volume 2 covers:

• Different forms of essay writing - persuasive essays, etc (which she could use more practice with)
• Editing
• Picture studies/narration
• Dictation and copywork
• Some creative writing

Here's a scope and sequence for their language workbooks, but it's not updated, because there is now a volume 3 for high school as well as a grammar workbook for high school:

https://www.queenhomeschool.com/samples/LLplacement.pdf

Here is their complete review of high school grammar book:

https://www.queenhomeschool.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=60_61&products_id=370

I've never used anything else from the Queen Homeschool website, so I don't really have an opinion of it.