Our 8th Grade Curriculum Picks

Alec and I worked long and hard to come up with a good plan of attack for his 8th grade year.  Most likely this will be his last year at home as he has his eye on attending a local high school with a fantastic culinary arts program.  We talked long and hard about what subjects to cover and how to best prepare him for a more traditional school setting going forward.

Here is what we've settled on using:

Spelling/Grammar/ Writing/ Language Arts: Alec will use Write Shop I this year for year.  He enjoyed Write Shop Junior last year and often listened in on Ian's assignments; wishing they were his. He's a fairly competent writer so I think this should be fairly easy for him.

We'll use The 100+ Series Grammar book to continue refining and honing his grammar skills.

Math: Alec will be finishing up the last couple of units in his Kumon Pre- Algebra book and then we'll dive into his No- Nonsense Algebra book.  We debated covering Algebra this year because I know it's a high school freshman requirement but Alec thought it would be great to have some understanding of the math ahead of time making his transition to a brick and mortar school just a bit easier (we hope!).

He'll also work on 8th Grade Math minutes to keep other skills sharp.

Reading: Alec is a voracious reader and I want him to just keep reading as many books as he'd like.  I figure once he hits high school and is assigned reading he may not love it as much and I want him to really hone that love of reading.

Geography: We'll continue to explore new countries and areas through reading and movies, try out new foods from other lands and play lots and lots of geography games.

History: Civics and Government-- We plan to watch Understanding Government and read a few books on how our government works as well as touring the state house, taking in a couple town meetings, and watching other history based films.

Science: Alec will  be focusing on kitchen chemistry. We plan to work through the book I'm Just Here for More Food and to cook up new recipes found in the book. We'll also be learning more about kitchen chemistry through one of Ian's books that he's using this year and I'm sure Alec will be watching and learning too.

Art: Alec has a wide variety of interest in art and we'll continue to nurture his love of drawing, painting, sculpting and the like.

Physical Education:  Alec will continue with his karate classes and we'll continue hiking, biking, roller skating, etc. trying to get in at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day.

Misc.:  To get Alec prepared for traditional schooling we'll be using the Victus Study Skills System to learn how to take notes, study for tests, and keep deadlines on track.

He also needs to take a standardized test to get into the school and since we've never taken any sort of "real" test we plan to use a PSAT book to learn how to take a multiple choice test.  I've warned him that the actual questions might be hard to answer since it's meant for older grades but we can work through it together and see how answers are eliminated.