Goss Homeschool Academy

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 ...

In the 2023-2024 school year I planned several of our Riches subjects into a Monday morning schedule called " Magnanimous Academy ." I plan to continue this schedule in the 2024-2025 year with a few additions and new ways of approaching the subjects. For this blog post I'll detail each subject and what we plan to study through the year!  Ourselves This was one of my favorite subjects the past year. We read a little less than half of book 1 this past school year. (2023-2024 we read Part I and Part II of Book 1. This year we will read Part III chapters 1-7 in the fall semester, and chapters 8-15 in the spring semester. You can see all the chapters at this post. ) We keep a narration notebook and I have Christian and Eva Mae write down some of the key phrases in each section but the most important part of this subject is the conversations we have during the reading. It ends up becoming a beautiful devotional time as everything we read points back to a life lived by character...

  I love pretty things and I love seeing a list on one page! The Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Man, and Knowledge of the Universe are the guiding principles I follow as I create our curriculum each year. There are many facets to each subject but if you would like to print this visual for your homeschool planner feel free to copy and print, or download the PDF for free on my Gumroad site! FREE DOWNLOAD For my friends that I met at the recent Charlotte Mason Mini Retreat, I've put together some helpful links that you might want to use in your planning. My personal homeschool blog - you're here at my main homeschool blog where I share updates to our school year and the resources I use each semester. My latest planning blog lists books, websites, and more that we are using for grades 7 and 9 this year! My nature lessons - I started leading nature classes when my children were in elementary and we have continued it in middle and high school! Click any topic for information and ide...

  I cannot believe that the time has come to start preparing a high school transcript for Christian! In the hours of reading and researching I did for our sciences I have found a beautiful rotation that is working so well for us! If you would like to go back to previous blog posts, we started physics way back in 2021 through the Screen Free Science class ! In 2022 we studied chemistry , and last year we had an amazing year of biology . Click the links to read more about the books I used for each of these classes. This year, we are starting the rotation over with physics and a deep dive into the life of Newton, a wonderful and living text on physics by Walter Lewin, and a series of educational videos by the Crash Course team. I created a document for anyone to download that includes hyperlinks and a reading schedule for the year! I hope it is helpful to you if the traditional textbook science just doesn't work for your family! I love what Lewin says at the end of his book: "My ...

The 2024-2025 reading schedule is here! I am so proud of our book club for continuing through all the volumes and now committing to reading through many of the wise articles published in the PNEU and Parent Review journals. To purchase Book 2 click here. For all our previous reading schedules see this post. Session 1:  On First Reading Charlotte Mason’s Books – The Educational Philosophy of Charlotte Mason https://charlottemasonpoetry.org/on-first-reading-charlotte-masons-books/ https://charlottemasonpoetry.org/the-educational-philosophy-of-charlotte-mason/ Session 2:  Children Up to School Age and Beyond – Children Up to School Age and Beyond (cont.) https://charlottemasonpoetry.org/children-up-to-school-age-and-beyond/ https://charlottemasonpoetry.org/children-up-to-school-age-and-beyond-continued/ Session 3:   Education is a Discipline – Discipline in the Schoolroom – Discipline in the Schoolroom, Stage Two https://charlottemasonpoetry.org/education-is-a-discipli...

  It's officially summer!!! We had a wonderful school year and I wanted to create a blog post with links to document the 6th and 8th grade school year of my amazing children! I would say the highlight of this year was our Wild + Free group. I started a teen group this year with something every week during the fall semester and then in the spring semester it was pretty much still something every week with hikes, book parties, and field trips! To me, everything we do as a community has a purpose in our education as well. For example, all of our book parties fit into our literature study. I use a literature guide at home as we read through the books and I love the discussions that we have during each party! See all our books here and download the free literature guide Our hikes are a part of our nature studies which is part of science! Every month we had a fun adventure and learned something new to add to our nature journals! See all our nature lessons here! And some of our amazing fi...

Rhapsody in Blue turns 100 years old this year! I'm so glad we are going to hear it live at the Nashville Symphony next week! There are also some amazing pieces that showcase the blend of classical music with the "American Experience." To read more about the anniversary of Gershwin's classic click here.  Nashville Symphony Curb Dress Rehearsal   Florence Price, arr. Still: Dances in the Canebrakes  (read about it here ) 10 min - The first movement is called Nimble Feet and is a "rag" - I will direct my students to listen for the low brass, cellos, and basses when they have the melody. I also love the back and forth "walking" or stepwise motive that is passed between the glockenspiel and harp. - The second movement is called Tropical Noon and has a great syncopation motive repeated throughout. When I teach this syncopation to my piano students I have them say "peanuts and popcorn" while clapping the rhythm (synco-pa-ta-ta.) In this piece I...

 In July of 2023 we enjoyed a 3 day trip to the Knoxville area for a fun summer vacation with friends and a little bit of school!  Oak Ridge, TN has been on our mind this year after spending the year learning about Chemistry - especially the developments in the periodic table of elements during Marie Curie's life. It's amazing to me how fast things seemed to move in the development of chemistry and physics from 1910-1940! As we finished our biography of Marie Curie and looked into the development of the atom bomb I knew we needed to take a trip to the Knoxville area to learn more! The Oak Ridge site is made up of several locations. We took the American Museum of Science and Energy tour (ages 10 and up only) and it was very thorough and a great tour.....but long! And not really geared to the ages of 10-13! If you want to go with your kids I will give a suggested itinerary below. If you want to take the bus tour which gives you access to multiple sites you can purchase tickets a...