Gearing Up

Seems like summer break started only last week, but a look at the calendar shows it's time to start gearing up for the coming school year. This year my own daughter will begin 10th grade, so in addition to gearing up for the subjects she'll be taking this year, we also need to gear up for the looming college years.

All the supplies have been purchased. All the textbooks are decided and ready to start filling her brain with knowledge. I know we should've started last year, but since we didn't, this year will begin the seriousness of high school life. We've got six subjects ready to go, as well as time for P.E. and the library (which, if your child is like mine, the latter is an absolute necessity).

This semester we* will be taking:

-Geology
-Physics
-English (with an emphasis on essay writing)
-Algebra
-Spanish
-Social Studies (I haven't determined which branch of this supposed discipline to hit this year, but I have a couple weeks to decide.)

Everything we're doing now is with college and the future in mind. We've already looked at dozens of schools (she's thinking about MIT, but time will tell on that one), and she's already decided what her major is going to be - Chemistry. Each course she'll take in high school will be taken with a thought to what skills she'll need for her college career, and also with a thought for the standardized tests she has to take each spring, as well as the SATs. (Which explains why we're doing Geology and Physics this fall instead of focusing on Chemistry again. She needs to have it all to score well on the Science CSAP test she'll be taking this coming Spring, and she'll also need to have a well-rounded education to score well on the SATs.)

One of the main things we've been doing to gear up for college (other than prepping her educationally) is looking for ways to pay for it all. Right now a year at MIT costs upwards of $50K, and that's a bit pricey. Hence, the search for college scholarships. Now we're already hunted down many of the scholarships available, and since she already entered two last year, this year's essays should go much smoother. Heck, she placed third in a minor contest already (and even though she didn't place in the bigger contest, I think her essay probably just missed the mark - they didn't say, but out of 13000 kids, she had to be in the top 500).

I guess what I'm trying to communicate is that it's never too early to start thinking about life after homeschooling. Some places even have scholarships contest starting in 1st grade. And since we homeschoolers don't have the same resources as the public schools, we need to do our homework early.

So, what are you gearing up for, and how are you accomplishing it this year? Anything exciting on the horizon?

* I say 'we' because I'm going to have to learn as much as she does, so I can teach it to her. Sometimes homeschooling is as much a learning experience for the parent as it is for the student. ;o)