School Year Recap
Since the invention of social media, my blogs are few and far between! However, I still feel it is the best place for documenting our curriculum and school year for my own reflections and planning purposes.
Here is the post I shared last summer with all the good intentions: https://gcahomeschool.blogspot.com/2025/06/2025-2026-planning-post.html
and here is a recap of the year and classes!
Knowledge of God
We were able to check off a lot of what I planned with our devotional readings, New City Catechism, and books for spiritual growth. The highlight of the year was when Eva Mae asked to work out a Sunday morning where she could be baptized again! She made the decision to be baptized when she was around 6 years old, but felt the Lord calling her to be baptized again after a beautiful encounter with the Holy Spirit at church camp. We were so proud of her for making that decision and obeying the Lord's calling.
Knowledge of Man
Chaucer Canterbury Tales / Otto of the Silver Hand / Frankenstein / Emma / The Importance of Being Earnest / Silas Marner / Black Beauty / Robinson Crusoe
Click the links above for more information on the literature we read this school year! Each novel also included literary guides from places like Course Hero and various English class resources. We had so much fun with our book club!
Grammar:
I am proud to say Christian got a 25 on the English section of his ACT! Studying for this section during the school year paid of well and I recommend using a course to parents of high school students. Even if you haven't done a lot of grammar, much of what you need to know in high school will be covered in an ACT course. Download my ACT study schedule here: https://kindandcultivated.gumroad.com/l/ACT?layout=profile
Poetry:
I let this one slide.....oops! We didn't do much in this genre since we were so busy with some more difficult literary novels. However, we did have a fun poetry night as a family with a project called "black out poetry!"
Social Studies:
Our Government and Civics class was one of my favorite classes this school year because of all the amazing field trips! It was such a full year that I ended up writing a complete separate blog post that you can read about here: https://gcahomeschool.blogspot.com/2026/04/government-and-civics-class.html
Our end of the year party celebrated what we learned through the year with an America 250 theme for food and activities!
Charlotte Mason's Ourselves and Plutarch study also make up our yearly study of citizenship. We enjoyed learning about Cicero along with some ancient Roman history (Augustus Ceasar book by Foster, and attended the Nashville Shakespeare's Julius Caesar play.)
Languages:
We continued with our Storybook Latin 2 book and also took ASL classes in person with my best friend Natalie! She made class so much fun and we can't wait to join again and learn more!
Art and Music:
Our art history credit for high school was a class I put together called Art History Through Architecture. This was such a fun class and we learned soooo much! You can get the guide with all the reading links and videos here: https://kindandcultivated.gumroad.com/l/Architecture?layout=profile
Here is a list of everywhere we went for our field trips:
✔️ Parthenon ✔️ Strawbale Gothic Arch building ✔️ Greek Orthodox Church in Brentwood ✔️ Field trip to my friend's home to learn about architecture engineering ✔️ Belmont Mansion ✔️ Traveler’s Rest ✔️ Frist Architecture Tour ✔️ Cheekwood ✔️ Downtown Nashville (lots of concrete architecture along with steel and glass) ✔️ Union Station Hotel ✔️ Governor’s Residence
We also enjoyed several trips to the Frist - especially to admire the Impressionist paintings!
Music was a continuation of hard work at Nashville Notes! Christian and Eva Mae did an excellent job in both their winter and spring concerts for band and choir. 
Eva Mae played piano in Pianorama in November, and Christian played in the Tuba Christmas event! I'm so thankful for our amazing musical community and love going to Nashville Notes each week! (I also loooooove teaching the elementary kiddos every week. It refreshes my soul and is so much fun!)
In addition to learning music within their ensembles and theory classes, we also take time at home to do composer study to prepare for the Nashville Symphony concerts! We attended the Beethoven Symphony 5 concert, Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Beethoven's Eroica symphony, and 2 Young People's Concerts - Carnival of the Animals and Lemony Snickett's The Composer is Dead! (That's 5 trips to the symphony in one year!!! I'm proud of us for getting all our culture on!)
Knowledge of the Universe
Science
Our science club studied chemistry this year with some amazing living books! We would do our readings and assignments at home, and then get together once a month for experiments. I saved the reels and pictures from each of our monthly meetings in an instagram collection you can view here.
Natural History (Nature Study)
And as we do every year, studying with our nature journal group is a large part of our homeschool. Here are the object lessons we covered this year (Click the link to view pictures of our outings) Honeysuckle / Redbud / Henbit and Purple Deadnettle / Prescribed Burns / Black Walnut / Winged Elm / Crossvine / Mimosa
Math
Another great year using CTC Math - Christian finished all the lessons in Geometry and Eva Mae finished most of the lessons for 8th grade. We are going to jump into Algebra 1 for Eva Mae and Algebra 2 for Christian next year. He also completed the math study guide for the ACT and hopes to raise his score the next time he takes the test. However, he did a great job with the math needed for chemistry and passed the Modern States Chemistry class for a free voucher to take the CLEP test. Another CLEP test he took this year was the Information Systems. If you want to learn more about taking CLEP for college credit, check out this course I created - it walks you through planning a course of study for your student, registering for the test, and taking the test either in person or online! https://kindandcultivated.gumroad.com/l/CLEPWORK?layout=profile
Our learning doesn't fit into just these boxes that I've listed in the blog. I've been so happy to see learning happen throughout life - some examples: Eva Mae's musical theater work, Christian's computer programming club, his recent trip to Tennessee Tech for an engineering camp, Eva Mae's interest in creating commercials for organizations, Eva Mae's writing award for short stories and her participation in our Wild + Free science fair, both Christian and Eva Mae winning a patriotic essay award, Eva Mae's first participation with student congress, both of the kids participation in our Wild + Free handicraft fair, Eva Mae meeting a film director at a Christian film debut, family trips (Wheeler lake, Christmas village in Alabama, Pickwick Landing State Park, volunteering at food banks for our BETA club hours, going on full moon hikes, Christian learning to drive and getting his permit, Reelfoot Lake, singing the National Anthem at a Nashville Sounds game. Phew! (I scrolled through my online photo albums to see what I missed mentioning in this blog!)
I love sharing our highlights of each school year and look forward to planning the next!
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