Getting Ready for Year 8

On the one hand, I am so behind where I would normally be at this point in planning for the young man's school year. On the other hand, plans are starting to shape up, so I'm not going to sweat it. I should start by saying we wrapped up the past year nicely. He did a science project on whether dogs can see color with mixed results. One of our dogs was more cooperative than the other. He played a season of baseball and was selected for the all stars team. That was rough on the schedule, to say the least. He has had a whirlwind summer. His hockey coaches had selected him for a scholarship to attend a three week sports camp where he majored in hockey, and minored in several other sports. It was pretty intense. He is now heading in to a training camp for his new Bantam team and looking forward to starting another season of hockey.

We'll take one more week off after the training camp before we dive back in to another year of studies. The plans are not changed all that much from the last post. I am still having him use The Thinking Tree journals for growing in independent study. But instead of the 10-Subject Portfolio, I have decided to continue using the regular journals, similar to those we used the second half of last year. I will list with links to the ones I plan to use. I don't have them yet, but will order the first one this week. He will record his sports science and ancient history studies in those journals, along with some home economics, health, and literature. However, he will start the day with Dyslexia Games, series C, for some brain exercise before embarking on the rest of the studies.

For Language Arts, he will continue to work through the Apples and Pears spelling books and read from the McGuffey's Fifth Reader, and other selections. He'll continue word study using a teacher-created book called Get to the Root of It. I found this on the Teachers Pay Teachers website. I have decided to set aside the Writing Skills, Book 2, for now, and try out a unit from Brave Writer to go along with the first book we'll be reading for literature: A Christmas Carol. It combines some grammar along with literature study and writing. We will see how that goes.

For math, I only plan to have him work through Mastering Essential Math Skills, book 1. If he wants to also continue reading where we left off with Life of Fred, I will leave that to his discretion. He will also be taking a Personal Finance class through our co-op, so I don't feel the need to add anything to our math work at home. His other co-op classes include Judo, and a Career Exploration class. It should be a fun year at co-op.

Extra subjects, like geography and social studies, will come up naturally in the journals, rather than assigning specific days for them. That seemed a bit overwhelming when we did it that way before. It flowed much more naturally with the mixed subject journals. In addition, we still plan for him to work in the Dad Time journal with Dad once or twice/week. And he'll also have opportunity to work on some hobby projects on diy.org. He is currently interested in film making and photography. All of this along with chores, hockey practice, youth group, drum lessons, and so on will make for some pretty full days.

Now, here are the Thinking Tree journals I plan to use:
Fun-Schooling with Minecraft (available soon)
Fun-Schooling for Boys - Winter Homeschooling Handbook
Homeschooling Boys - Library Based Journal

Rough Outline for Next Year

I had first seen The Thinking Tree materials back when I was just beginning to research what we should use for helping our dyslexic student. I believe at that time there were just the series of Dyslexia Games and, while I liked the idea of some of the books, I didn't think the sets as a whole would be a good fit. Then one day several months ago I discovered the homeschool journals that Sarah Janisse Brown was starting to publish. Hmmm. Those really intrigued me. I had an opportunity to ask the author herself how we could go about trying out the journals while continuing our other studies. It was her recommendation that we start out using a journal once/week as a fun-school day. After only two or three weeks, we decided to go all in and are using the Hyper-Active Homeschool Journal every day, as I outlined in the previous post. That journal will be complete in a couple of weeks, and I have the Do-it-Yourself Homeschool Journal & Eclectic Learning Handbook ready to finish out the year.

After hanging out with the author and many other enthusiastic homeschool moms in a Facebook group, I have begun to reconsider my initial impression of Dyslexia Games, as well. There are so many other benefits to these exercises. Many of the parents have shared how much their kiddos have improved in reading, writing, attention, thinking, and much more. They are just good brain exercises, really. So I decided that we'll both do Series B this summer. Series C will be part of his language arts and math for year 8. And I'll probably work through that one, too. Mom has to keep the old brain sharp, too, you know. While I am still thinking through what next year will look like, I have a rough outline of what I think we'll do.

The journals I have for the student so far

• Bible study/devotion at breakfast – Easy Peasy Old Testament
• Language Arts – Dyslexia Games series C, continue Apples& Pears Spelling, Writing Skills 2 (after Dyslexia Games), McGuffey's 5th Reader, and audio literature with the 10-Subject Portfolio.
• Math – Mastering Essential Math Skills 1, Life of Fred, Dyslexia Games C book 6, and Comic Book Math.
• Daily History and Science work - Streams of Civilization 1 for history along with Easy Peasy Ancient History, and his own interest led study of the science of sports, using the 10-Subject Portfolio and the Reading Time and Film Study journals.
• Daily subjects (each 1 day/week) – Geography, business, the arts (Easy Peasy Ancient Art & Music), social studies, and Home Ec. (Vintage Remedies for Tweens, Facing the Facts) using the portfolio.
• Dad Time Journal – they should be able to get that in a couple of times each week with Dad working from home.
• Hobby - he has shown interest in photography and making videos, so I thought I'd sign him up for a subscription at DIY.org. They have some film making courses among other things that look pretty interesting.
• Chores - to be done immediately following school work. Free time comes after all work is completed.

In addition to the  journals for the students, Sarah has also published several journals for us moms. The idea is for us to be an example of how learning is a part of life and we continue learning even when we've grown up. I love that she also made one for the kiddos to do with dad. Learning can truly be a family affair. I'll have more about those in the future, but should mention that I am currently enjoying the Mom's Homeschooling Handbook and it is helping me tackle my ever growing pile of books I'm always meaning to read. Thankfully, The Thinking Tree books aren't just for kids. :)

So What ARE We Doing Now?

I thought maybe I should give a little more detail of how we've changed things up for the remainder of this year. The main thing is that he is deciding what order to do things, usually preferring to do his journal work first. He is currently working through The Hyper-Active Homeschool Journal, from The Thinking Tree. He'll start with a date page, then flip to a "Reading Time" page and do his zoology reading. There is a "Nature Study" page where he'll draw something from zoology, as well. He has just finished up a couple of books about ants, and will begin on spiders next. Zoology goes on the top half of the reading page, and Texas History notes go on the bottom half.

There are various other pages he usually works on next: spelling word hunt, logic games, copywork, World News Today!, and screen time, to name just a few. You can see more samples by clicking "Look inside" on the Amazon link above. I did have to insist that the screen time page be saved for last - ALL other work must be done before turning on the TV or iPad. He would spend a couple of hours watching multiple episodes of something or other, or choose something long. That did not bode well for getting anything else done afterwards. But other than that, he has been deciding what order to do things. For example, he seems to prefer breaking the English studies up rather than working through it all at once.

So every day we do some Bible reading at breakfast, he takes care of his morning chores, then works through: English, Math, zoology, TX history, Latin, and literature, in whatever order he chooses. It is amazing how much of a difference that one little change has made. We add health on Thursdays.

English books: Language Mechanic (grammar),  Apples and Pears (spelling), Writing Skills, alternated with word study, using ABeCeDarian Level D, and finally reading practice from McGuffey's 4th reader.

Math: various Life of Fred books along with Multiplication Games.

We're reading various books (his favorite is A Cartoon History of Texas) and watching various videos for TX history.

For health we just finished the book, How to Eat as a Young Athlete. We'll use a selection of videos for the next few weeks from the WellCast YouTube channel on various topics from the importance of sleep to how to have a conversation. Then we'll read another short book called What's the Big Deal? 

There will be an end of year project for both history and science, which may be combined with an end of year paper from his Writing Skills book. History will probably work well for that. For science, I think probably a PowerPoint presentation would be good. And may we finish strong!

Plans for Year 4 (AKA 4th grade)

All materials have been acquired and the guys went on a 3-day campout for Cub Scouts. So I've spent the last three days going over said materials and figuring out how we're going to use them. Aside from listing books we'll source from the library for history and science, planning is done! whew!

• Bible: we'll continue the Proverbs study at breakfast, and move to An Honorable Boy, studying the lives of various men in the Bible, both from Queen Homeschool.
• Math: thanks to the very helpful folks on the SCM forum, I think we've found something that will get us over the mental hurdle we've been struggling with - Proffessor B Math. I had initially thought we'd go with the computer-based version of the program. However, due to our current financial status, I decided to go with the book, used from Amazon. The book title is Mathematics Power Learning For Children.
• Spelling/Copywork: Queen Homeschool's Spelling Through Copywork, Book A. Later in the year I aim to start a book of mottoes for him to record things that he finds particularly interesting, inspiring, encouraging, etc.
• Reading: we'll continue reading practice with the CLE 2nd grade readers, Helping Hands and Happy Hearts. I acquired both of these by putting them on my wish-list at Paperback Swap. In addition, he'll read some of the books for history and science. He will also read something of his choosing in the afternoons for 20-30 minutes. 
• Spanish: I picked up Speedy Spanish Book 1 at a used curriculum sale, and purchased the CDs online. I plan to see if a friend of ours that is a native speaker will help us with practice speaking and may start a Spanish club later in the year, or next year.
• Geography: our history program will naturally include some geography. In addition, we'll read a chapter from Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling each Monday.
• Grammar: Monday and Wednesday, continue English for the Thoughtful Child orally, gradually adding in more writing (got this from Paperback Swap, too).
• History: Tuesday-Thursday TruthQuest American History for Young Students II (1800-1865), with the Map/Timeline/Report package. This will take us back to using living books as we had enjoyed before with SCM, overlapping just a bit with where we left off this past year.
• Science: Tuesday and Thursday, the first half of the year we'll study Real Food Nutrition for Kids, using Simple Kitchen Experiments, by Muriel Mandell, and Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon, for experiments and cooking in the kitchen. We will also view videos from westonaprice.org and YouTube, as well as a documentary or two on Netflix. At the end we plan to visit a farmer's market and a farm or two.  For the second half of the year we'll work through Properties of Matter from the God's Design for Chemistry series. I found that at the used curriculum sale, too.
• Literature: reading books, of course. :) After Black Beauty, here's what's on my list: Understood Betsy, Heidi, The Wizard of Oz, Swiss Family Robinson, The Incredible Journey, Bambi, A Life in the Woods . . . We will also continue through Poems Every Child Should Know by Mary E. Burt.
• Character Study: reading a chapter of Prudence and the Millers each Thursday at lunch.
• Picture/Composer/Nature studies: I am determined NOT to let these fall through the cracks this year. Picture study is scheduled at lunch each Monday. Composer study is scheduled each Wednesday before heading to the park. If we have a CD we can even listen in the car. Nature study is part of our Friday rotations to happen one Friday each month. For picture study I'm going to try using an old book my mom found (1925) from Kansas and Nebraska public schools. I hope to find better images of the pictures as we go along. I'm going to see what we find in the library for composers. And for nature study, I plan to simply walk in our neighborhood or park and we'll each draw one thing in our notebooks. Simple enough. 
• Park and PE: We hope to re-join our local homeschool PE program, which will be Tuesday afternoons. And, of course we'll continue to attend park days each Wednesday with our local homeschool group.

I mentioned Friday rotations. Last year we tried a 4-day schedule with Fridays as game days. But Friday's wound up turning into Saturdays with dad being home. So this year, we'll continue the 4-day schedule, as that worked well. But Fridays will be project days instead, rotating field trips, Webelos projects, nature study and Spanish conversation practice. So there you have it, our plan for year 4. Now I can't wait for the end of August so we can get started.