Homeschool

What sixth grade looks like at our house

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Way back when Poppy started kindergarten, I couldn’t believe she was already 5 years old. Now she’s about to turn 11, and the more things change the more things stay the same because when we start school in a few weeks she’ll be a middle schooler and I am once again in awe at how quickly the years go by.

Poppy was interested in trying public school out this year, but I was hesitant to drop my always-homeschooled kid into a 700-student middle school. We put her name in the hat for a couple of charter schools, but she didn’t get in to either of them. She was perfectly fine with that. She’s still going to get a very small going-to-school experience this year, though, as we’ve signed her up to spend three hours every week taking classes at a place downtown.

Social Studies
  • Poppy and Pete will be doing “Story of the World: Volume 4“ together. Last year I bought the audiobook, and the kids enjoyed listening to it in the car on the way to co-op. We’ll do the same this year. I’m sure I’ll also lament the number of hands-on projects that we actually do this year, too.
  • One of Poppy’s outsourced classes is Civilization and Culture. They’re going to spend the first semester focused on Community and Recreation — the description says they’ll talk about things like the Library of Alexandria and how baseball was invented. It sounds like it’ll be a fun class.
  • I bought the kids a couple of ginormous “Map Skills” workbooks last year. We’ll continue working through a couple of those each week.

    Math

    Poppy will be finishing up McRuffy Math 5 for the first part of the school year, and I’m not sure what she’s going to do after that because there is no McRuffy Math 6. I’ve looked at more traditional programs (Horizons, the web-based Monarch curriculum) as well as more fanciful options (Beast Academy, “Life of Fred”), but I haven’t settled on anything yet. The good news is that I have a few months to continue mulling it over.

    Language Arts

  • I’m still trying to get myself to pull the trigger on the next level of Michael Clay Thompson books. The kids enjoyed them and they retained a lot of information, but it’s a very expensive curriculum.
  • Poppy will most likely do a few Reed Novel Studies books again this year. She doesn’t love it, but they help her to slow down and pay attention to what she’s reading.
  • We’re outsourcing Poppy’s writing this year with an Institute for Excellence in Writing class. It looks like she’ll have a good bit of homework from this one, which will be a new experience for both of us.

    Science

    Poppy’s other outsourced class this year is Earth Science.

    Art & Music

    The piano lessons shall continue. For art, I’m thinking about using Kahn Academy’s art history lessons.

    P.E.

    Poppy is going into the school year as a red belt, and she’s aiming to test for her next belt before 2017. She’s playing soccer again this year, too, and the league she’s playing in this year includes a few tournaments and away games.

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