7th Grade has officially started and we are off to an interesting start. We are already making changes and fine tuning the schedule. Originally planned on changing from Voyages in English to Saxon's Grammar and Writing. James did a couple lessons and decided he hated it, so back to Voyages we go. Will be supplementing the writing portion with Susan Wise Bauer's Writing with Skill and continuing with Spelling workout.
After much research, decided to go with History Odyssey for History. In the process discovered K12's history book Human Odyssey and fell in love. Thanks to the ladies on WTM, some had matched up already with Story of the World and some with History Odyssey. After much debate decided to go with Human Odyssey as our History Spine and a blend of lessons from the other two activity guides. I spent the past two weeks working up a schedule in order to match up with Visions in Education's calendar of things to study for each learning period. So much fun and finished the plan last night. James decided he likes Usborne's Encyclopedia of World History over Kingfisher, so we will be utilizing it for timeline and additional info. We have a bunch of fun historical fiction books including Door in the Wall, Adam of the Road, Trumpeter of Krakow, 1001 Arabian Knights, King Arthur and his Knights, plus a few others.
Math wise, James is still not ready for Algebra and my wonderful counselor at Visions said anything before Algrebra is pre-algrebra so don't sweat it. *whew. We are continuing with Saxon 6/5 and supplementing with Life of Fred Fractions, Decimals and Percents and Pre-Algebra with Biology. Love, love love Life of Fred. The series has changed James attitude about math and he doesn't dread it anymore.
James and hubby will be doing Life Science together and have fun doing experiments from Pandia Press's Logic stage biology course Classiquest. We'll be doing straight biology for the first semester and the 2nd semester will be studying evolution, earth history and light. Still have to work on resources for 2nd semester.
Elective wise going to continue with Thomas Kincaids Drawing Basic and will try out Alfred's Essential Music Theory for the 2nd semester. For faith, character, life skills, I have a few fun things picked out to do and even snagged a copy of Game Maker's Apprentice to get James started in Video Game Design. All in all, shaping up to be an interesting year.
It sounds like James is going to have an amazing 7th grade year and you too!!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you have a great year planned for James. He is lucky to have a smart mom like you. =O)
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