Ian's 8th Grade Curriculum Picks

Ian has started thinking about and talking about going to a technical high school!  We went to tour the school, check out their program rooms, and talk to the teachers this past week. While Ian is no where near ready to make a final decision yet it has definitely changed our plans for 8th grade.

We know that the school is quite competitive to get into and has a heavy emphasis on math and reading skills.  So we're going to be focusing a lot on those skills going into what might end up being his last year at home learning with us.

We have a lot of books on our list for the next year, but keep in mind that we school year round and so this list includes books for our summer learning session as well as our complete school year next year.

Here are some of the books we'll be using for 8th grade:

Building Spelling Skills Grade 5 (& 6-- These are 30 week books but we tend to work on spelling year round so we will be starting on 5th grade over the summer and should finish up 6th grade by the end of next summer).

Spelling is one book that we use everyday.

Grammar Workbook (grades 7-8)

We tend to add grammar lessons into our day just once or twice a week so while I know we probably wont complete the whole book it will give us some wonderful lessons along the way.

Practice Makes Perfect- Mastering Writing (grades 6-8)

We're hoping to use this writing book on the two days a week we aren't using the grammar book

Kumon Pre- Algebra Workbook I (grades 6-8) and II 

 Having used these Kumon math books before I know they tend to be a bit basic and build on skills slowly with lots of repetition; just what we need to start math confidently in the fall. 

Mastering Essential Math Skills (20 Minutes a Day to Success for grades 6-8)

We use one of these books right now and it's been a great review of all different math skills each day as a warm up to math.

7th Grade Math Minute-- another super quick warm- up for math each day.

Reading we'll take on a book by book basis.  I did talk to him about leaving books from the kids' section behind and focusing more on longer books found in the young adult section; he's not thrilled about the idea so I think we'll try and do a mix of longer more challenging books with some short and easy books sprinkled in.

Geography-- This coming year I'd really like to pick one state each week and study all of the other 49 states.  We've tackled this in fits and spurts in past years but never really finished.

I thought perhaps we'd more successful if we used  this journal to keep us focused.

For science we've always just run fun experiments and read about science topics that interested us... however I am quickly running out of ideas so we're going to buy a book this year.  I figure the younger boys can listen in and watch along with whatever experiments are listed in Ian's book.

I found a science book that looks promising over at Rainbow Resources called Science By the Grade and we'll use the 8th grade book.

That gives us a good start into all the basics and has made me quite excited for next year!