First Semester of 7th Grade in Review

We made it! One more semester of homeschooling down, with some huge successes and just a few failures. The beginning of homeschooling seventh grade has has its challenges but we've persevered and for both of us, it's been a successful beginning of the year. Because I'm now back at work a little more than half time, we spend a lot of time doing homeschooling at work. The kid has his own desk in the corner of my office and has learned to be far more independent with his work than when we started back in fourth grade. It helps tremendously that I'm the principal at a homeschooling charter. Everyone is understanding of having a kid-shadow everywhere you go, since it is their lives as well. I'm grateful that I job-share with another homeschooling mom/teacher/administrator, because we can share our woes both with work and homeschooling. We back each other up in every way and make it work for us and for our kids.

So what worked curriculum-wise for our adventure? Back in June, I set out our plans for the year. In previous years, our plans have mostly fallen apart. Surprisingly, we've kept to most everything this year!

The Hits
Don't Forget to Write for the Secondary Grades: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons (Ages 11 and Up)- We used several lessons from this book, with a few more planned for spring, including the HipHop Genius.

NaNoWriMo Writer's Program- This year, I taught a class at our school with ten students. The kid wrote a novel of more than 17,000 words and it actually has a solid plot and flow. We haven't finished editing it yet, but I can say with huge confidence that any time spent on NaNo is worth double in any other writing program.

Geometry by Plato Edmentum We looked at several online options for high school Geometry and settled on this one. It's been a huge hit. The self-paced nature of the course, along with pre-tests to test out of material you already know, have really settled well with the kid. I throw in Khan practice problems for reinforcement, since it seems to be a touch light in practice but overall, this has been our most successful foray into online learning for math.

The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way- The kid finished this book, along with the accompanying workbook from CTY JHU. We used this for history curriculum for the semester. Being a strongly science kid, who loves history, this was a perfect choice. He'll start the next book about Newton, in January.

E.O. Wilson's Biodiversity - An unexpected find that was a giant success! When our science seemed to be falling apart, we swapped to this book. The iBook is beautiful with stunning interactives and well written text. The kid liked the explanations and I appreciated the experiments and in-book quizzes.

Misses and Unloved Choices
Intellego Chemical Reactions- I've raved about Intellego unit studies in the past and we have both really enjoyed several of the science and history units. I'm not sure what happened with Chemical Reactions for 6th-8th grade but it was a total dud. The experiments focused mainly on plant respiration, asking for complex science equipment that we don't have at home and couldn't buy very easily. Two tablespoons of ethanol? Impossible to find. We'll absolutely use Intellego again, but this one was not a hit.

Daily Language Review, Grade 8 - Let's just say, that I love it. The kid? Not so much. He pretty much dreads it every day. For me, it's not a miss because it's working on grammar skills in a quick and easy fashion. But he would burn it in the backyard if given the option.

What will the new semester bring? Well we have some big plans! The kid is signed up for Dystopian Literature from Online G3, along with the academic writing supplement. He has taken Online G3 and Athena's classes in the past and he is looking forward to the online class and the reading. He'll also be starting a teen improv class with our local theatre company, taking the "how to volunteer" class at our animal shelter and a bunch of fun classes at our charter, including Vet Science and Filmmaking.

That's a wrap!

The 13-14 school year is in the bag and all wrapped up now. It's been a bittersweet year, full of changes and learning curves but also full of exciting adventures and discoveries. I went back to work last August as the Academy Coordinator (aka- principal) of our homeschooling charter program. With more than 220 students, two buildings and 15 staff members, it's been a challenge to figure out how to work part-time, homeschool 6th grade and still do all the bits that we love while getting all the work done that has to fit in a day.

Looking at our plans for this 13-14 year, some of our best laid plans were completed but some... they fell apart mid-stream. Our curriculum plans were basically destroyed due to me being less able to provide direct one on one instruction and work. We ended up dropping Bravewriter in late October, in favor of NaNoWriMo and then a writing class from Athena's Academy.  Art of Problem Solving was put on hold while the kid attempted a high school site based Algebra class. He ended up finishing one semester in the classroom and returned home for the last semester via UC Scout.  We did complete Intellego Ancient Civilizations, as well as Horrible Histories related to our spring break travels. The kid happily worked his way through Intellego's Plate Techtonics and Evolution units. These were some of our most fun lessons all year!

We also found huge success in simply free reading. The kid has blown through 60 books this year, raised his lexile score by 200 points and shown that you don't actually need a boring literature anthology to learn. He did two novel studies based around Ender's Game and A Tale of Two Cities. He just finished a fantastic analysis paper on the use of foreshadowing in the movie "Frozen", along with several papers for his academic writing class.

Now that we both have a better handle on middle school homeschooling along with me working, we can start looking forward and figuring out what 7th grade will hold! We're opting for a few changes and a few consistent hits that we've had over the years.  I'm feeling less ambitious and planning to stick to more options that we know were successful in a model where has to work alone most of the day.

Language Arts
Don't Forget to Write for the Secondary Grades: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons (Ages 11 and Up)
Dystopian Literature from Online G3 (hopefully!)

Science/History
We're opting for a double-Science approach this year! Neither of us were really excited about studying medieval history (the standards based part) so we opted for history through science. We'll be tackling all of these:
The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way
The Story of Science: Newton at the Center
Intellego: Chemical Reactions and hopefully Oceanography

Math
We are hoping for a site-based high school Geometry class. Plus Math Olympiad and our regular math competition team.

The Extras
Fencing twice a week will continue. He's also hoping to take a Video Game Design class, along with guitar again and at least one dance class. Our school is also adding a student leadership program which he'll be a part of this year. He has at least three mods he's also planning on programming in Minecraft.

We're discovering that he's at the age where everyone keeps asking when he's going back to "real school".  The truth is, the further we get from "real school" the harder that seems to imagine. We have finally found a school that works for us and lets him be himself. He doesn't have to hide or pretend, doesn't have to shove his book in his backpack and pretend that he isn't reading that one. Perhaps we'll stumble across the perfect fit, but in the meantime, we are happy just being happy!