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With our intended start date less than two weeks away, I’m sorry to say that this is actually just my best guess on our curriculum choices. We still may be making a few changes because of some requests of our kids. But, for the moment, this is what we think we will be doing. If we make changes in the first month or two of the school year, I’ll come back and make some updates.
As you may remember, we have three children, but our youngest asked to try going to school last year. We spent a lot of time discussing this with her, and ultimately let her give it a try last school year. She enjoyed it, and is headed back again this school year. This time around, she’ll be trying out the school’s gifted class. It will be a lot of extra work, but it should also be more hands on, which I think she’ll enjoy.
For right now, this is what we believe our official plan is for our 8th and 9th grader. (Or, it might be for a 7th and 9th grader, but that’s a long story that I’ll get into much later.)
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Our 8th and 9th Grade Eclectic Homeschool Curriculum
English/Language Arts*
Starting with this huge category because it always has the most items listed for us. So many things go into the language arts heading!
Typing: Mavis Beacon Typing, Typing on Various Assignments
Grammar: Easy Grammar Ultimate Series: 180 Daily Teaching Lessons, Grade 8 Student Workbook and Easy Grammar Ultimate Series: 180 Daily Teaching Lessons, Grade 8 Teacher Text
Vocabulary: Wordly Wise 3000 Student Book 8
Composition: Essentials in Writing
Plus a variety of activities this year possibly including, but not limited to:
- Papers or presentations about topics we are studying
- Short stories
- Letter writing
- Working on blog posts
- Making their own zines
- Poetry writing
- Lessons from Grammar Girl Presents the Ultimate Writing Guide for Students
- Whatever fun writing projects we can find (this is an area my older kids struggle in, so we’re making it a priority this year)
Reading
Silent Reading Each Day
We’ll be reading eight to ten novels this year. We are planning to do one novel in a more in depth way each nine weeks with help from guides from Total Language Plus. We were very impressed with these guides when we saw them at the Great Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati. The books that we plan to use those with are: The Swiss Family Robinson (free on the Kindle), A Christmas Carol (free on the Kindle), My Side of the Mountain, and Anne of Green Gables.
*Now, here’s a caveat. We might not be doing any of this (or at least not most of it). Noah and Jack may both be taking English class outside of our home on a daily basis.
Math
Teaching Textbooks – Pre-Algebra (8th grader) and Algebra 1 Kit, Version 2.0 (9th grader)
History
Holt World History: Patterns of Interaction Homeschool Package
Science
Holt McDougal Earth Science Homeschool Package
Religion
Bible Reading
Faith and Life series
Youth Group
French
This will now be just for Jack, as he’s the only one still interested in French, unless something changes.
A variety of activities from the following sources:
Rosetta Stone Homeschool French
French in 10 Minutes a Day (book and audio CDs)
French flash cards and computer games
First Thousand Words in French
100+ Reproducible Activities in French
Spanish
We are outsourcing Spanish for Noah, as per his request.
Computer/Coding
Mod Design I: Learn Java with Minecraft
possible addition: a course through Homeschool Programming Inc
Various Activities
We will also try to take opportunities to work on physical education, health, home ec/life skills (like in my eBook – Training Your Children in Home Economics)
Past Years
Interested in what we have used in years past?
Our Curriculum in 2009 / Grades: PreK, 3rd Grade, and 4th Grade
Our Curriculum 2010 / Grades: Kindergarten, 4th Grade, and 5th Grade
Our Curriculum 2011 / Grades: 1st Grade, 5th Grade, and 6th Grade
Our Curriculum 2012 / Grades: 2nd Grade, 6th Grade, and 7th Grade
Our Curriculum 2013 / Grades: 7th Grade and 8th Grade
This post is linked to iHomeschool Network’s Not Back to School Hop
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Angie, a domestically challenged nerd and mom of three very fun kids, is the founder of Real Life at Home, the combined home of the former sites Many Little Blessings, The Homeschool Classroom, Catholic Printables Online, and Catholic Mothers Online. Angie also listens to music every chance she gets, writes eBooks, loves Pinterest, documents the little moments in life on Instagram, and occasionally sleeps. |
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I love your decisiveness! I’m kidding 🙂 I admire the way your kids have plenty of input into their educational decisions.
I know – it sounds kind of ridiculous, right? LOL We’re in the midst of arranging for the boys to take a few classes outside our home. We’ve got Noah’s set up, but Jack’s we’re figuring out this week. So, until I know all the details on that, a few things are kind of up in the air.
Hey – did you see the post about the podcast yesterday? It’s all about you. 😉
Respectfully – I think that you could quadruple the number of books and reduce everything else other than math. And look into Scratch for programming. This age is all about getting the kids to own their own education and for us to back off and find ways to empower them. It’s different for every family (thankfully), but the ownership piece makes all the difference between education and rebellion down the road.
Thanks for coming to comment, Ross. As I’ve talked about before on the site, my kids actually take a pretty active role in choosing what they’re working on. So, they were the ones that decided on a lot of this, based on their particular needs, strengths, and weaknesses. That’s why we may still be doing some tweaking because of a couple of changes they are wanting to make.
I totally agree – isn’t it great that we all get to pick out what works best for our individual families? I’m so thankful for that, since every family’s children (and even individual children within a family) are so different.
A couple of my kids really love Scratch. One in particular just took to it right away once he tried it out the first time. He just loves all of the things that he’s creating. 🙂
Oh, and I assumed when you said “books” you meant the novels mentioned in the reading section. That was just referring to the novels that I’m picking for them for us to all read and discuss in a more formal way. They do quite a bit of reading of their own choices, so I like to leave them a lot of time to make their own choices for reading.
🙂 Didn’t mean to come across as ‘challenging you’ in any way – Just hoping to add in where I can. Our kids are in college now but I remember really stressing about the 9th grade year. Looking back on it now I think that we should have done more to held them accountable in math, but they immersed themselves in reading and that has had such lasting benefits (4.0 honors in college). Everything else seems easy after they fell in love with reading, and that’s the one place where they really differentiated themselves from their public school peers. Can’t say enough about giving kids the time and space to read 🙂
I didn’t think it came across as too challenging to me until I thought I read it as you suggesting that the kids might rebel against me one day if we used this kind of curriculum. LOL 😉
The kids really had a very large say in the curriculum choices this year. That’s always my goal. I want to do what they are really interested in.
Don’t worry though – we never do everything that we plan at the beginning of the year. It just gives us a framework and we tweak and drop (or add) as we go. Some things always sound better in planning than in practice. 🙂
All of my kids enjoy reading, so that’s a blessing. It wasn’t always like that around here. Our oldest especially hated it and really struggled. Finally, it just clicked for him and he has been a voracious reader ever since. Even if we’re going to run to the grocery store, he wants a book to take with him for the drive. I never thought I’d hear myself say things like, “It’s a 10 minute drive. You don’t need a book!” LOL
We have a heavier emphasis this year on writing activities, because that’s an area that has been difficult for them. So, we’re trying to push that more, as well as giving a variety of types of writing activities. Through doing that, we found out that our oldest enjoys writing poetry. Go figure! I think he was as surprised as we were.
Oh, you’re all set then 🙂 I remember the “books on the way to the store” phase well. 🙂
That’s really exciting actually. I love to hear stories about families who just ‘work’, even if they don’t follow the plan. That’s where homeschooling has SUCH an advantage over the alternatives. We are free to follow our kids, wherever their gifting might lead them, rather than being constrained inside a “program” that’s designed for the mythical average student.
Take care and keep up the great work!
Ross
LOL – I still don’t get that reading a book on the way to the store. I especially don’t get it when he grabs more than one. It’s ten minutes away, kid!
Then again, I used to love to read when I was around his age too. But then I think four years of high school and seven years of college with so much required reading just took away that love of reading. I never got back into the same way that I did when I was younger. I’ve always thought that was pretty sad.
I don’t know that we’re doing “great work,” but we’re doing the best we can. (Thanks for saying it though. I appreciate it.) Wait, maybe we’re not doing the best we can. We’re doing mostly the best we can. 😉 It certainly is a challenging lifestyle choice, especially with some kids with special needs. I figure we’re just putting together things the best we can, urging them to give us more feedback on what they want to do/learn about (since it’s often, “Everything is good just the way you plan it, Mom.”), doing a lot of praying, and hoping for the best.
I enjoyed looking at your choices and may borrow some of your french ideas. I can’t afford Rosetta stone this year, so I will be starting smaller. Thanks for sharing.
Blessings, Dawn
Dawn – You should also check with your local library. Ours offers something called Mango Languages for free to patrons. It’s on my library’s website and we just have to log in with our library card. My kids like it better than Rosetta Stone, and I’ve been very impressed with it. I guess a lot of libraries have it, so I would definitely look into it. There are tons of different languages available through it too.