Goss Homeschool Academy

I have an exciting announcement! I have a special place in my heart for goal setting in the New Year and I'm offering my goal setting bundle for free with the code BREATHE. Over the years I have read many productivity books that have shaped the way I homeschool. Some years seemed too spread thin - thinking about setting a goal brought anxious feelings. I felt more at peace walking day to day in obedience and by the principle of "Do ye the next right thing..." I have grown through each one of those seasons and feel a sense of purpose and enjoyment with the thought of reflecting and goal setting. I hope this resource can be a help to you as you navigate your thoughts, dreams, and goals for the coming year. Download here In my daily walk through life there have been several books and resources that have stood out to me as very helpful. I will share these with you below and hope you get a chance to check some of them out! Reading Challenges This is one of my favorite product...

High school seemed so far off when I began homeschooling in 2015 - it is surreal to be here in what seems like a blink of an eye. I love sharing what we do in our homeschool and wanted to come to the blog to talk about some of the successes I have found with the Charlotte Mason method. First of all, I want to share a phrase that I heard Cindy Rollins say at a Wild + Free conference. This phrase has stuck with me all these years - especially this year as I homeschool a high schooler. Her advice to the homeschool mamas was "inspect what you expect." As mothers it is really easy to let some things go - we're busy planning meals, cleaning the house, taking care of children, etc. Having a high school student requires planning to inspect what you expect. In a lot of homeschool groups on social media I hear advice that our high school children are self learners and everything will turn out just fine as long as you give them great books and have them write narrations. Or maybe b...

The season of advent is one of my favorite homeschool traditions. In fact, my teenagers yesterday were so excited to see that I moved our regular school books up to the bonus room to prepare for our Christmas decorations and Christmas School - they look forward to it as much as I do! We take a month off of our regular scheduled curriculum and jump into learning that is centered on celebrating the Christmas holiday. In years past we have done something different each December. My first time creating our own December Term was a hodgepodge of different music, literature, and art. We had several years of studying Christmas in other countries through beautiful literature , and last year we focused just on the country of Germany while also adding the literature of Dickens and the science lectures of the Royal Institute . (Follow each hyperlink to see these plans!) I have created a guide this year that stays true to the celebration of the season while also providing a rich literary feast fo...

 I just realized I never added my 2023 Christmas School plans to my blog! Last year was a lot of fun as we enjoyed the month of December as a break from our regular schedule and focused on everything Christmas! I will link all the activities below and you can also download this Middle School Christmas guide for free in my Gumroad store! Science The Royal Institution has a 100+ year tradition of giving science lectures to students at Christmas time. They are called the Christmas Lectures and are perfect for middle school students! Although there was a lot of evolution theory in the series we watched, it was still very informative and entertaining! A perfect example of "Edutainment!" See a list of all the Christmas Lectures here Literature We loved reading the Christmas in Germany book this season and basing all of our food and crafts on the traditions and cultures of Germany! Here is the book we read from: For extra resources like crafts and videos I made a free download here:...

  This month we have been focused on electricity and magnetism in our homeschool. Christian is 9th grade and Eva Mae is 7th grade and this year we have been studying physics in a "one room schoolhouse" type of way. I created a schedule that allows for a 4-5 hour a week assignment for my 9th grader. This includes scheduled reading pages, video lessons, written narrations, and lab homework with completed lab notebook assignments. For Eva Mae, her assignments are less rigorous as a 7th grader and include less reading than Christian, but still written narrations and lab assignments. Read all about my schedule here and download the physics plans for free! As I was preparing our lab activities I thought I would share a lesson plan for your 6-12 grade students that focuses on the difference between volts and current. I found the concept fascinating as we are using coin cell batteries for several projects. If we were using mostly AA batteries we would need to have an electrical resis...

Our monthly hymns and folk songs for 1st semester ( Download lyric sheet here ) August  For the Beauty of the Earth - version 1 / version 2  / acoustic version The Log Driver's Waltz - video / version with orchestra / acoustic version September Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken - video with lyrics  / acoustic version The Water is Wide - James Taylor - Eva Cassidy October How Great Thou Art - story behind the song / Lauren Daigle / Shane and Shane Now is the Hour - acoustic version / Bing Crosby  / history video (Most of the popular songs that grew out of World War II came from the European side of the battle. One of the very few that reach us from the Pacific was “Now is the Hour“, a song of the maori’s of New Zealand, originally known as “Maori Farewell Song“. It was given English lyrics and its English title, and Gracie Fields, the great British musical entertainer, popularised it during the last stages of the war. This was a period when the conflict in Eur...

The journey continues! I'm so blessed to have another year to plan and home educate two amazing people! We have a wonderful community as well that I'll share a little about in this planning post. For reference, if you are interested in any past planning posts you can visit them here: 2023-2024 , 2022-2023 , 2021-2022 , 2020-2021 , 2019-2020 , 2018-2019 , 2017-2018 , 2016-2017 This is the first year I will have a high schooler!!! I can't believe Christian is 9th grade! For that reason, I'm keeping our normal records of books, activities, etc. but also formatting them into transcript form for Christian. I have a long post here all about high school credits. If you're interested in learning more feel free to download the free handout I created for our community. Now, as is typical of my planning posts, I will go through each subject under the Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Man, and Knowledge of the Universe to share a few things about our school plans! Links to books ...