School Daze: What's Strider been doing all year?

While the other 3 kids have been home subject to my voice droning on and on all day, Strider has sprouted wings, and three days of the week he's off and flying at the local classical high school, Greyfriars Classical Academy.  (See him pictured in one of the group shots at the top of the page) He has thoroughly enjoyed this year.

The classes are hard and the teachers are very involved and eager to challenge each individual student, for which we are very grateful.  The headmaster emails us regularly, usually to let us know what kind of shenanigans Strider has been up to that week, and we are thankful that he cares about our son and the man he is becoming.

This year Strider has taken history, aesthetics and literature, all focused on the time period between Ancient Greece and the Medieval years, as well as geometry, theology, and biology.  At home he's supplemented these courses by doing an online French class and a little bit of logic (we'll be doing more this summer).

His first round of final exams are this week and he seems to be alarmingly undaunted by the whole thing.  I have been doing my best to try and impart to him some of the stressfulness I have always assumed must accompany finals week, but so far it's not sticking.  We'll see how he does!

He is quite proud of himself, though, for turning in his final literature/history paper on time -- a full 5 pages of a research paper on the fall of Rome.

In addition to classroom time and pulling stunts to earn him some demerits and detentions, he has also been busy with football in the fall, debate in the winter, and golf team in the spring.  He also has had some of his first forays into the working world with a stint as a dog-walker and now some assignments as a referee for a local kids' sports league.  He's chomping at the bit to start Driver's Ed, but lucky for us the state has cut a lot of its funding to local high school programs, so that may not happen soon.

He's taking the ACT in a few weeks, though, so he can put all of his eager energy into that instead.... right??

I can't believe this guy is almost finished with his freshman year of high school.  Crazy.