Advice on Homeschooling & Science:

Hi there and welcome! 🙂

I won’t claim wisdom or that I have all the answers but I wanted to at least help start the conversation.

I don’t think any of the areas you mentioned your son being behind in are any thing that can’t be taken care of his 8th grade year. The only area I’m unsure of is math.

One thing I like to stress is that most children are not truly behind, but right where God wants them to be. Each child is a person, an individual who grows and learns at his own pace. The world labels children by age and places them in categories. Thankfully, we don’t have to do this as homeschoolers. The only way I truly believe a child is behind where he should be is if his education has been truly and consistently neglected.

No worries about history. History is a life long study. He should begin to study a more well rounded scope of history, but I wouldn’t call him behind. As I mentioned to another mom on another thread, my history knowledge was pitiful until I began learning along side my children. I was surprised to find history to be my favorite subject and I have learned so much over my 14 years of homeschooling. Your son is not behind in this area. He is probably ahead of the average PS student.

Let’s talk language arts now. Book reports really aren’t needed. They are completely unnecessary and he will never need to write one in college. Written narrations are the best preparation for higher level writing. He should begin with written narrations and segue into essays for high school and eventually try his hand at a research paper, or two, some time his junior or senior year. If you truly want a curriculum, I have heard good things about Jump In from Apologia-especially for middle school boys.

As for grammar, get a good overview like Easy Grammar Plus and have him start working through it one page a day. Easy Peasy. We don’t cover a lot of formal grammar in our homeschool and many students, both public schooled and homeschooled, barely touch upon grammar and do just fine in college and life.

Students educated with CM methods don’t do vocabulary as a separate subject. They learn to have a great vocabulary by reading lots of great literature. The single best thing you can do to help your children have good grammar, vocabulary, writing skills, etc. is have them read, read, read.

Now for science, many students do not take formal science until highschool and do just fine. They will have to face the learning curve at some point, so you can do it now, in 8th grade, or wait until 9th. I choose to start my kids in General Science in 8th and move onto Biology in 9th. We don’t study formal science before that. We just read lots of good science books and have fun with nature study in the younger years. We use Apologia for General Science and Biology but have just discovered Sabbath Mood CM science and are trying it out for Chemistry right now. It’s really good!

I’m not sure where your son is at in math. The only thing you can do is have him keep steadily working through his math program. You may even have him work through summers and breaks until he catches up to where he needs to be. This will be a different place for each child since each child is unique. University bound students will need to get through Advanced Math (Pre calculus or trig) by graduation. If your student plans on going straight into the work force or to community college, this is not nearly as much of an issue. This all depends on your state requirements as well, of course.

Our biggest job as homeschool moms is discipleship. Education happens but our children’s hearts are the main thing. It sounds like your son is doing well in this area and that is a huge blessing. The other things will come. You are doing the right thing.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Matthew 6:33

Hi there,

It’s very admirable that you are humbly looking for guidance.

My son is 12 and one of four so I feel that keeping things flowing is quite a challenge. He is normal in his mental development but has taken alot of time with reading and comprehension, also his maths.

We have used simple copy work from Mcguffeys readers and have started Writing Tales from Amy Olsen. It includes copywork, vocabulary from the story they are reading, spelling too. Oral narration, story sequencing, grammar and rewrites. It is very gentle and not as intense as IEW but covers all the bases. It also includes some activities and games that you can do as a family to reinforce the concepts. I highly recommend it.

To get some independence and ownership of their work, all the children have about 4 or 5 books each of different subject areas that they read indecent ly and then orally narrate. They only read a small portion of each book, but it’s fostering the idea that they are ultimately in charge of their education. Once a week they do a written narrations on one of the readings.

We also do Winston grammar which they love!

Take a look at guesthollow for their science…my teen is doing the chemistry and loves it…we just CM it by written and oral narrations and diagramming.

My son is behind in maths but doesn’t realise…we just plug away until he gets it. He recently told me he loves maths and thinks he’s really good at it..that’s been motivating for him.

Hang in there.

My Dd, 13, struggles with dyslexia and likely dyscalculia and ADD.  School has been a challenge and she is “behind.”  She will be grade 8 (in name only) next year. Only one more year to prepare for high school?!  Our plan:

Grammar: it is a subject that, according to Charlotte Mason, if you wait until the child is older can be taught once without the need for yearly repitition.  We are planning to use Easy Grammar Plus with Daily Grams 6. It appears simple enough for her to read and do independently. When a new section is started she might need minimal instruction from me to get started. We will do narrations, written and oral, and tackle more writing in high school.

Math: We are going to continue Life of Fred. We just started Fractipns (probably a 4th or 5th grade level). We are working on it through the summer. It is completely independent. I just check with her everyday how it is going and help her as needed. We plan to do math thrpugh the summer until she is “caught up.” My other DD is using Math Mammoth (inexpensive with homeschool buyers coop). It is written to the student. I grade her work (though it could be self graded) and help her when she doesn’t understand something.

History: Truthquest Ancients. We will read together as a family and then assign individual books and/or audiobooks.

Science: We will attempt to be better at nature study. Or maybe I should say intentional nature study. We are natury/outdoorsy people bit could be better at the “study” part. I debated how formal or informal to be this year. We finally decided to start Biology using Exploring Creation with Biology. We are going to work slowly and take 2 years to do it. I am getting the audio CD so she can be more independent. I  not planning to use the notebook. We will use narration and do the expirements as able. I expect her to need me more with this but working towards more independence as the year progresses.

Literature: Family read aloud and assigned independent book.

Copywork

Music lessons

Poet/hymn/art studies together

Lay aside what everyone says. Ask yourself what your son needs now and go with that. It isn’t necessary for him to be writing book reports. Use narrations and tackle more writing in high school (then it will count for high school credit!). Even if it takes him an extra year to complete high school he is better offnot being pushed to do more than he is ready for. Also, a lot of what we’re doing is written to the student so as long as he is reading and comprehending he can be more independent.