My baby, my youngest, is starting eighth grade this fall. This will be our last year to homeschool middle school. After this, it is on to the big, bad world of homeschooling high school. Just kidding, high school can be fun to homeschool, too. Our job this year is to get her ready for high school subjects while having a fun year. I mean, why homeschool if you cannot have fun with it, right? So this year, I chose to do things a little differently than I did with her older sisters for eighth grade.
Starting with English, I decided to go with a writing program that looked like it would be fun. My youngest has already finished years 1-7 of The Good and the Beautiful ELA, and was not interested in any of their book studies. Honestly, they look a little boring to me as well, and I cannot remember either of my older girls finishing a TG&TB book study and asking to do another. My youngest is also my most reluctant writer. She usually does the bare minimum in writing assignments. A friend had given us their “Byline” by Clearwater Press curriculum when her daughter graduated, and I had planned on using it with my youngest. “Byline” is meant to be used for high school students, but can be adapted for eighth grade. However, when I went to the website to get pricing on the student books, I saw they have a different curriculum called “Cover Story” geared toward middle school.
It covers many different types of writing, including poetry, and at the end of the year, students can put together a magazine of all of their work! I was on the fence about shelling out the big bucks for a whole new writing curriculum when I had an adaptable one sitting on my shelf, but God provides. Another homeschooling mom posted “Cover Story” DVDs and teacher’s manual for sale on Facebook for a great price, and I jumped on it. I ordered the student journal and workbook from their website and had my daughter watch a bit of one of the sample lesson videos online. We are both really excited about this curriculum choice!
For social studies, I decided after a year of Texas history and US government, preceded by four years of US and world history, that world geography would be a nice change of pace. Guest Hollow has two levels of geography curriculum. I decided to go with the high school level and adapt it for eighth grade by following suggestions in the guide. The digital high school curriculum includes a printable lesson schedule, book and materials list, and pdf student workbook. The textbook is a free online book.
There is quite a booklist that goes along with the curriculum, but after reviewing the books and what our local libraries have to offer, I decided to only purchase five of the books listed (used, of course), and check out the rest as needed. I printed and bound the lesson schedule, because I like physical copies to hold in my hands, and printed the workbook pages that go along with the books we will be using. I haven’t decided whether to bind the workbook as well or use a 1″ binder so that we can add in other assignments, such as written reports or photos of projects. I’m leaning toward the binder.
For science, I decided Earth science goes along well with geography, and her high school sciences will probably be biology, chemistry, and physics for the first three years, so it is almost now or never. Easy Peasy All-in-one Homeschool offers a large selection of sciences for middle school. We used their zoology curriculum last year after the initial science plan for seventh grade did not work out. She enjoyed the short lessons and it was satisfying to see her assignments and lapbook pages compiled in her binder at the end of the year. We decided to stick with Easy Peasy’s website for Earth Science. I printed the student pages and we will be using a binder with dividers for the different topics (ocean, land, space, etc.) to keep it all organized.
Math is the only area where we did not deviate from prior years. She will be using Saxon Math for Algebra 1 along with videos from Nicole the Math Lady. I will go over each lesson with her, she will watch the video and do practice problems, and then work 15 problems. I do not assign all 30 problems. In my opinion, it is too much. I like the spiral learning and review that Saxon uses, but I also do not want to burn out my kids with hours of math problems everyday. We have a simple system: even number problems for even number lessons, odd number problems for odd number lessons. As this will count towards her high school transcripts, I will be adding some of the exams this year. If she finishes the lessons and exams with time left in the school year, I will have her read “Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra” for review.
For electives, Easy Peasy has art and music lessons to go along with geography & cultures: Art-Cultures, Music-Geography & Cultures. These lessons are only once a week, and should be pretty easy to integrate into our schedule. She is very involved in theater through a local library’s teen drama club which meets once a week to produce and rehearse a play that will be presented at the end of each semester. She is also becoming an expert crocheter and wants to start a crochet group for tweens/teens at the library. We are also considering a local homeschool PE class. After the life stressors of the past two years, I am purposely leaving space in our schedule for these types of pursuits. In other words, I am making sure to leave time and space in our homeschool plans for the fun.
Hill County Homeschooler 