Homeschool Plans for Abigail {Aged 14-15}

Morning Meeting

First thing in the morning will be our morning meeting (between 9-930), which lasts about 30 minutes, sometimes longer. In this time, I will be focusing on Mystery of History (finishing Mystery of History Vol 2: The Early Church and the Middle Ages and starting Vol 3: Renaissance) and The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way. We will also be looking at a double spread of ‘ART: A Children’s Encyclopaedia’.

Study Skills

Between 930-10, Abigail and I will be working our way through Carol Vorderman’s ‘Help Your Kids with Study Skills‘. I will work on one study skill per week, which Abigail will then apply to some revision over the weekend. She is hoping to take her Sociology and Psychology GCSEs next summer so these will be the subjects she will focus her revision on.

Maths

Abigail will be starting GCSE maths, which she will be doing for one hour between 10 and 11 each morning. She uses Conquer Maths, which is a video and question maths curriculum. She does this independently.

Break/Jog in the Park

As Abs’ office is in a really dark part of the house, I want to encourage her to use her breaks to go outside. The army cadets she is a part of requires her to be quite physically fit. Abs is not naturally sporty so we are all going to encourage her by going to the nearby park for a quick jog. Becs, Charlotte, Lillie (when she is around) and I will jog with her.

After the jog, I will make everyone a fruit smoothie which Abs can drink as she studies.

English

We use Homemade Education a lot and have decided to use their bundled year 8/9 English courses to teach Abs all she needs to know prior to taking GCSEs. The goal is to then take English GCSE over one year.

Lunch (between 1230-130)

GCSEs

Every afternoon will be spent focusing on one GCSE so that Abigail covers five GCSEs over the spread of the week. She is taking the following GCSEs and will spend one afternoon on each: Psychology, Sociology, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. We will be using Homemade Education for all of these.

Abigail is hoping to take Psychology and Sociology next summer but is fairly easy going and so happy to take it whenever she is ready. This means she may take it next summer or the summer after.

School on Saturday

The above schedule means she will be working about six hours a day. Obviously she won’t be expected to do any homework, but I do feel she needs to do a small amount of revision each week for the two GCSEs she taking in the summer. So we will schedule in an hour of so at the weekend where she will focus purely on learning her work for these two subjects. I will help her out and verbally test her. This will hopefully take the stress out of the weeks running up to the exams.

Extra Curricular Activities

Abigail is very sociable and likes to be busy. She volunteers at Children’s Church on a Sunday morning and also attends the Youth Group Sunday evening. On a Monday, Abs takes part in a local homeschool sport’s group. She also attends a Bible Study Youth Group on a Monday Evening.

Each Tuesday and Thursday, Abigail attends the Army Cadets, where she is earning badges and is able to slowly work her way up the ranks. She has found going here socially very hard but has continued to go regardless and at the end of last term was definitely feeling like she was fitting in a bit better.

On a Wednesday evening she go to scouts with one of her best friends. She loves this so much! Here they do all sorts of activities and she is learning lots of skills.

Fridays tend to be fairly busy for her as she meets up with another best friend in the late afternoon and has dinner with her (either here or at her house). Every other week, she volunteers at the social group for adults with learning difficulties her big sister, Lillie, runs.

Potential problems

Abigail is very responsible, diligent and an enthusiastic learner. She is really interested in her learning and ambitious regarding her future. Intellectually, none of these subjects should be a problem. However, ever since I can remember, Abs has struggled hugely with her concentration. This means that something that should take half an hour tends to take double that. We have tried everything from short study sessions to longer study sessions; more breaks to less breaks. I think at the end of the day, Abigail has made the sensible decision that she will take her GCSEs when she is ready rather than taking them before she is ready. This might mean taking them a year or more later than most students. But she is okay with that.

Tomorrow, I will be posting Becca’s schedule.