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Middle School Junction - Our Curriculum Choices


So my oldest has been in middle school for over a year now. I have been meaning to write more about the middle school years, and time seems to always evades me. Another reason for my not writing so much about the Middle School years is that, my son is very independent so it feels like I would not have much to share. That said, it would seems that there is not that much out there written about the Middle School years, so I will endeavor to join  Megan over at My Full Heart to bring you a weekly post on our Middle School Homeschool journey.


To start things off this week let me share with you what we are using  for his 7th grade year.

 Last summer I wrote a plan of what I was hoping to use this year, so you can refer to it and compare to see what we dropped and what we kept.

Math:
  • Unlock Math. Zach really likes working with Unlock Math. It is an online program with a live teacher, lots of exercises and test. You can check my review from last year.
  • Worksheets from the pre-algebra Kumon books for extra practice twice a week.
  • Life of Fred Pre-Algebra - Physics book./

Language Arts:
  • For spelling we are using Phonetic Zoo which we got for review last year. Spelling had never been Zach's strong point. After using the Logic of English a couple of years ago, he had started to improve, and I was really happy to be able to review Phonetic Zoo last year because of IEW's reputation. I have not been disappointed. His improvements are steady.
  • For Writing, we are using Writing and Rhetoric, and have been using it for the last couple of years. He does not particularly likes to pick up a pen or pencil to write, so this has been working well for him because of the incremental requirement to actually write a lot. You can check my review of it here.
  • For Literature we follow the Literature track of Tapestry of Grace.
  • For Grammar we are using Analytical Grammar.

Logic:
The Art of Argument from Classical Academic Press, which we just started in January.

French:
Duolingo


History
Tapestry of Grace. This is our 6th year using TOG. We are on our second round through of Year 2: Between Ancient and Modern. This year I had him joined a co-op to help me be more intentional about the Accountability and Thinking questions. This is working out really well so far. Both he and I are enjoying it. I was assigned to teach 12 sessions out of the 72 sessions (it is shared teaching).

 Science
Our official curriculum right now is Visual System Learning, which we got to review last year. We took a break the last few months to review The earth Science unit from Standard Deviants Accelerate, which the boys really love (review here and here). They just finished it last week, and we are going back this week to Visual System Learning to continue studying Physical Science.

This is in a nutshell Zach's Curriculum line up right now. Next week we will talk schedule.


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Comments

Megan Russell said…
It looks like a great curriculum line up! I have not heard of Visual System Learning, but it looks interesting. Thanks for linking up. I look forward to reading more in the coming weeks.
February 2, 2016 at 12:17 PM
Joanne said…
I have not heard of all that many of these choices. I have one son in 6th grade and we're just starting to look for ideas for next year.
February 4, 2016 at 6:58 PM
Annette said…
It's neat to see what others are using and why they've made the choices and why it's working for them. :)
February 6, 2016 at 4:05 PM
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