How I hate thee, biologee March 26, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, math, older son, science.Tags: biology, curriculum, homeschooling, math, older son
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We’re coming to the close of older boy’s first year of high school, and this has caused me to look over what we’d been planning to do for his schooling in light of my completely unrealistic view of what he could accomplish in a year.
I discovered that this notion that he could do about 3-4 college level classes at a time may be realistic – if one is not also taking 2-3 classes in high school. Oops.
Conclusion: 2 college classes max.
I also discovered that computer classes, while being really great, are too difficult to tackle because of all the shiny, pretty things on the internet. Fortunately, we have no more classes like that as he will be completing his last math class this year. I promised him that if he finished college algebra and trigonometry (aka precalc), that he would not be required to take any further math (much to my chagrin). This means he gets to spend the next two years doing things he really loves: language and writing, history, and social science. First advantage: I hopefully won’t have to keep harping on him to get his math done.
For the next two years, the boy will be doing video courses and classes through Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. The second advantage to this is that I don’t have to oversee any of the JHU classes.
You may notice that science is absent from that list. That’s because it’s a real quandry for me. You see, the older boy is squeamish beyond belief. He’s taking a health class this semester, and it’s been horrible for him. One of the things I felt he should take was biology, but I know there is absolutely no way he can handle the labs. We’ve therefore come up with another compromise: he’s going to try to do early entry at the college for his senior year. I came up with an idea: the kid hates biology…but he loves geology. Our compromise is that he’s going to take physical geology as well as history of Earth through time. The latter class actually deals a lot with biology and the evolution of life on earth. I figure this is the closest he’s going to get to a biology class without passing out or leaving the room wretching.
You can tell he’s definitely my kid.
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