It’s hard to believe we have reached this point in school, much less homeschooling. The last couple of years have been years where “on the sideline” of schooling I have also been stocking up and taking inventory as to what/how high school will look for us. So, some of our decisions along the way (for 7th and 8th grade in particular) have been directly related to where our path is taking us in high school and beyond. And it is true that in 8th grade (even in some cases 6th and 7th grade), you have to already be clear (or clearer) about what high school and beyond will look like for your family. While that shouldn’t scare us into making haphazard decisions, it does bring some purpose to starting to consider ideas and options sooner than later. A couple of examples that stand out from our homeschooling experience include history and math.
In fifth grade, we started using Mystery of History. This is a 4 volume chronological journey through history…starting with creation and ending with current events (because the last book has accessible resources online to coincide newer parts of history). When we chose to start this 4 volume journey, I knew we would complete it in 8th grade…and then, based on our plan at that time, we would be able to repeat it again for the 4 years of high school. (The author does an excellent job explaining options for high school credits on her website.) As it stands, this is still the plan. It will just look differently for our older child (who was older when we started the series—5th grade—and will remember more of it due to that) than for our younger child (who was in 3rd grade when we started the series and won’t remember as much of the early books…but we will repeat the 4 volumes for him in 7th-10th grade which will leave room for a US History review in high school as well as the required Government/Economics credit). So…we will catch up with the younger child on what the older child got at a more “age appropriate” time. And, it is also why I have chosen frequent and often review of American and Indiana history.
Another example comes from math. In seventh grade, I realized we needed to consider the long-term path for math in high school. Essentially, we needed to identify to the best of our ability what math level (or better yet…what level of math interest) our son had so that we could determine whether to push to Pre-Algebra/Algebra in middle school years or just Pre-Algebra or neither. Our son indicated Pre-Algebra in 8th grade was fine and would keep him from struggling with a higher level math later in high school that he (we) essentially weren’t sure he would need to take based on his career interests. Tricky decision! But one you have to be thinking about early enough in order to not “waste” time and/or effort.
With that said…here is what 8th grade looked like for us.
Bible… was the same as 7th grade…along with some other books and supplements that we had interests in…including the History Lives series (by Mindy and Brandon Withrow) and Created for Work (by Bob Schultz).
History…was volume 4 of the Mystery of History (Wars of Independence to Modern Times). This was an enlightening read for us. And we supplemented it with continued readings from the 10 volume series The Story of US, which was a super resource to fill in details of history that we don’t always get much detail about between the Civil War and World War 1. I would highly recommend The Story of US series.
English…Rod and Staff continued to be our choice here. And this year as we went through the book we reviewed the topic (such as nouns) and then incorporated all the types and understandings of nouns into written work. (For example, did you use proper nouns where you could and capitalize correctly; did you use the correct pronoun choice in place of noun; did you list things with correct comma usage when listing nouns…etc. Basically more of an application of the knowledge about each part of speech.) We also found a book at a thrift store that might help any struggling English student if you can get your hands on it. It is a Glencoe McGraw-Hill publication called Grammar and Composition Handbook. (grade 10) Don’t be hindered by the grade level…it helped our older son better understand parts of speech because it used color coding for the part of speech within the sentence. Now, we had been doing something like that with Legos…color codes for each part of speech in a sentence. However, with the Legos, he was guessing the part of speech. So, (in retrospect) I don’t think the Lego color code solidified the concept. Yet, in this book, the repeated use of the color code for the word that is the certain part of speech or the emphasis of the focus of learning helped him almost overnight unscramble the confusion in his head with parts of speech.
Writing…we continued with Writing Rhetoric…Narrative 2 (book 3) and Chreia & Proverb (book 4). We covered a book a semester. But I don’t think we’ll continue these for 2 reasons…1. We are going through them faster and faster (or, actually, using the book less based on the adaptations I think of from their ideas) and 2. Neither of our boys are going to be professional writers and at this point. So, I would like to hone in on bettering their skills for what they will be doing and I feel we can do that through some other means at this time. However, I still wish I had found these in their younger years because these books are excellent in their progression through building good writing skills.
Vocabulary/Spelling…We still used the vocabulary cartoons, increased our knowledge of Latin and Greek roots, had WOD (Words of the Day that were homophones), and we added back in Rod and Staff’s Spelling by Structure and Sound book. I wish I had continued using this spelling book over the years. It does such an in depth job of teaching thinking skills within spelling. Toward the end of the school year, I used their spelling words to emphasize how/where to divide words based on syllables and division rules since we hadn’t touched on that much in a while.
Science… Dr. Jay Wile’s chronological science series (Science in the Scientific Revolution and Science in the Age of Reason) was our main emphasis three days a week. But the boys also used an Abeka Science book I had on hand and they were to choose a topic of interest in the book and read about it. (To follow up, I then might have them give a summary—working on speaking skills, a written summary, or an outline of what it covered.) We alternated weeks between Abeka and Rod and Staff’s God’s Orderly Design. This Rod and Staff book is a high school level book but it had several chapters on machines and engines that the boys were interested in learning more about and it did a good job of teaching the boys how to apply knowledge they had read in the book to the question being asked in the review at the end of a section or chapter. Good critical thinking skills!
Math…We used Abeka Pre-Algebra…using the same method as described in 7th grade.
Literature…We read more classics. And we added to our reading with various magazines, history related non-fiction or historical fiction books, and Rod and Staff’s A Time to Gather.
And, as usual, we ended the year with our “All About Me” document. (see fifth grade for details)
Overall, it was a good year of learning. We were bummed that our spring break trip to Arizona wasn’t as productive in seeing the sights we had read about in history due to the COVID-19 shut downs. And our several of our spring plans and field trips got cancelled. But…we finished ahead of schedule in mid-April (instead of end of April)…and that was okay by all involved! J