This one-semester course will go beyond basic economics, covering contemporary news and building context to better equip students with meaningful knowledge that can easily be applied to everyday living, both now and in the future. Studying economics empowers students to navigate the economy, understand national and global events, and become informed voters. All students will benefit from materials that develop their financial understanding and critical thinking skills, all of which will be filtered through a robust Biblical Worldview.         

Key concepts include:

1. Economic Theory and Financial Literacy: banking, investing, budgets, real capital, types of debt, supply and demand
2. Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve, interest rates, savings, forms of money—fiat and hard currencies
3. Transformational Technologies: Bitcoin and blockchain, AI, Robotics, digital assets
4. Entrepreneurship: business forms, marketing, value added, service, profit and loss, working capital and finance
5. Analyzing Financial Goals: risk verses reward, primary and secondary impact of decision making, understanding asset classes, short- and long-term investments

The course material is from a biblical perspective.  This course dovetails nicely with Personal Finance and Civics and Government.  The goal is to inspire and equip students for the realistic process of pursuing excellence in their financial lives. This includes the development of maturity, discipline, and wisdom preparing students to process and adapt to the rapidly changing economic landscape they will undoubtedly face in the years ahead.

Instructor: Forrest Hobbs

Most of the people on Earth are not Christians…but the vast majority of them do belong to another religion, including “irreligion.” How much do you know about Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Chinese Folk Religions, Indigenous Tribal Religions, and the New Age Movement? What about traditional Christians and non-trinitarian components of “Christianity” in general, like Protestantism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and Seventh Day Adventists. The first part of this course will focus on establishing a general understanding of the world’s biggest religions…and how biblical Christians can effectively reach out to them.

The remaining part of the course will focus on creating an effective Christian apologetic. We will look at the major components of apologetics in terms of defending the faith, but we also need consider the unique times that we find ourselves in, because some of our more traditional approaches are losing effectiveness in an increasingly post-Christian America.

Instructor: Steve Noble nobleuschool@gmail.com

Materials: TBD

In our early Middle School Science class, we will lay foundations for research, exploration, and scientific study skills. These foundational principles will also guide good study habits and scheduling disciplines.

As we focus on our earth, we will discover the general properties of the earth’s land, seas, skies, and solar system.  While studying the earth’s crust, we will learn about minerals, rocks, and the rock cycle.  Earthquakes and volcanoes will reveal plate tectonics. Rocks will reveal fossils and the creativity of our God as well as the catastrophe brought on to create those fossils.

From this catastrophe, we will learn the wonder of water with polarity, hydrogen bonding, heat capacity, and oceans and freshwater sources.  Fresh water in the air will open up tremendous learning about our atmosphere and weather. As we reach the top of our atmosphere, the course will end with two chapters on space, one that covers the solar system and one that covers the universe as a whole.

Students also get hands-on experience with waves, gases, wind, water purification, cloud formation, the Coriolis effect, precipitation, and acid/base interactions.

Instructor: Gus Carey guscarey1@gmail.com

Materials: TBA

Course Description

This class will survey three areas of English Grammar that are often deficient in high school writers: 1.) sentence structure/ parts of speech, 2.) punctuation/capitalization, and 3.) spelling. 

The sentence structure/parts of speech portion will address issues concerning complex sentences, verbs, dangling participles, fragments, independent vs. dependent clauses, etc. The punctuation/capitalization section will focus on when to use commas vs. semicolons, apostrophes, hyphens, quotations, etc. along with the ten rules of capitalization. Lastly, the spelling component will center around the most misspelled words of middle school students, addressing challenging words like ei vs. ie, compound words, hyphenates, Latin roots, or challenging suffixes such as able/ible or ance/ence. This course will prepare your student for 8th grade English Grammar and Composition. 

Instructor: Vickie Schell 919-205-3533, classicalvickie@gmail.com 

Curriculum

Frequently Misspelled Words 6th-8th Grade https://a.co/d/g93WEY9

Spectrum Language Arts Grade 7 https://a.co/d/gvgiLtB

Fix It Grammar Level 3 https://a.co/d/3I0xHgk