Our School Year Curriculum 2012-13

I'm Ready! I'm Ready! I'm Ready! (said in my best Spongebob voice). The conference was amazing as always. More crowded than usual, but fantastic. And now the schooling begins :-)  

Here is what we will be doing for 7th/8th grade:

We are sticking with Sonlight for our history and reading (thanks again to my wonderful friend GFG!!). This year we are doing Core G - World History Part 1 and sticking also with the 4day plan.  This gives us 2 Fridays a month "free" while the other 2 are spent at co-op where J will be involved in God's World News class, Nature/Art class, PE, Nutrition and Election 2012 classes.  SP will be involved in nursery, napping, eating, playing and most likely screaming for fun and running as those are his favorite things to do ;-)  While at the convention, it finally dawned on me that my boy is auditory learner...so instead of simply reading his main history books, I purchased the audio CD's as well so he can listen.  I am hopeful this will make history more interesting for him.

For Math, most of you know we started over basically last year with Math-U-See Gamma which focused on multiplication.  I had to let go of the idea of grade level math for J and start where he needed help, which was truly learning multiplication.  He did fantastic so we started Math-U-See Delta this summer and will continue with that this year, which focuses on division.  Now while that sounds basic, trust me, it's not.  While learning multiplication, he was also introduced to "solving for the unknown" (algebra) as well as measurements (3 tsp = 1 Tbs, 3 ft = 1 yd), area, etc...  Same with the Delta book, he is working with concepts that can relate to division, not just learning the basics.

For Science, we are using Apologia again this year, per J's request.  General Science 2 is our pick and we will be meeting once every 2 weeks starting in September with a family also using this curriculum to do experiments and study guides together.

For Language Arts, we are starting a new spelling program from the Institute for Excellence in Writing (I LOVE their programs) called The Phonetic Zoo. I have been looking at this for awhile and was able to speak with one of the ladies at the booth this last weekend.  I was convinced it would be a good fit for J and our daily schedule. While he has always aced spelling tests, even in public school much like his mama did ;-)...he doesn't always spell the words correctly in his normal writings.  So a little help won't hurt.

We will continue using Fix-It Grammar (also from IEW) for our grammar lessons but will now be covering this with our older co-op friends twice a month as a group (then doing the sentences each week as homework).  We will also be working on writing during the same class time with our co-op friends.  I will be teaching the grammar, my friend Robin will be teaching the writing.  We will also continue working on handwriting the alphabet in cursive at home.  We are taking one letter per week, this year we start with "O".  His penmanship is actually improving quite well and even more importantly, he is finally able to read cursive more easily.

For Bible, we are continuing our "read the bible in a year...or more" plan ;-)  We are finishing 1st Samuel and will continue reading chapter to chapter.  J loves this part of our mornings :-)  We will also continue our Apologia What We Believe bible study series with Book 2 this fall.  He has really enjoyed these.  While we don't use the workbooks (too much handwriting for a kid with cerebral palsy!), it has given him more confidence in his beliefs and he enjoys listening, talking and reading about God and worldviews.

Now, for electives, J will continue his weekly horse riding lessons (which by the way, he has now ridden withOUT Ms. Joy leading his horse once so far!!!) as well as 4H (in which he will be the Chairman for community service opportunities).  We are also continuing with Rosetta Stone Spanish 1 (this year only focusing on listening and speaking).  Then, while at the convention, I found this wonderful curriculum...

KidCoder, a basic introduction into Windows programming, will be our teacher for the year in computer science. This is something I really feel I should let him investigate, something up his alley.  In fact, T and I are hoping to do it with J together because we want to learn this too.  As you all well know, my son is a video game nut.  And while he wants to grow up to be a video game "tester", I am hopeful this fun curriculum will help him see that learning to program them will be even more beneficial.  If this program works for us, we move to Game Programming and eventually in a couple of years he will learn to make smart phone apps, etc...  This would be a great field of study for my video kid, here's to hoping!!

So...our year in a blog-shell ;-)  It looks full, but at the same moment during the convention that I realized that J is an auditory learner (one of those "oh...YEA" and "duh" moments at the same time), I also realized that shorter "classes" each day (much like what is used in the Charlotte Mason homeschooling approach) will be less stressful on both of us and can help him to retain info more easily.  Each day has quite a list of subjects but none of them will take hours by themselves so I'm hopeful J will start to enjoy his subjects even more.  

Of course, he does tend to be like his uncle in the whole "not a big fan of school" thing so time will tell... ;-)  Year 3 of homeschooling begins in 13 hours and I think we are finally getting the hang of it.