🐯 Eighth Grade For 2023/2024
- History, Writing, and Literature
- Science and Mathematics
- Interdisciplinary Studies
- Art and Music
- Health and Financial Literacy
- Physical Education
Wow, eighth grade. How is this possible???
Note: This has been updated as of 3/13/2024.
Course of Study
History, Writing, and Literature
History
With the broad social studies aspect of his Falcons co-op we aren’t doing a large formal study of history. On his own he reviewed some Ancient history and the Middle Ages with the audiobooks from Curiosity Chronicles.
There is also a history focus in his art with “Visual History: Draw Stick Figure Stories of Modern World History” where he will be covering
- The transformation of Eurasian societies in an era of global trade and rising European power, 1750-1870
- Patterns of nationalism, state-building, and social reform in Europe and the Americas, 1830-1914
- Patterns of global change in the era of Western military and economic domination, 1800-1914
- Major global trends from 1750-1914
- Reform, revolution, and social change in the world economy of the early century
- The causes and global consequences of World War I
Writing
The bane of our homeschooling this year. So, I got my son some tutoring hours with Anna (see below for Falcons) to help unblock him and hopefully help him enjoy writing again. He’s doing lots of free writing and working some creative writing pieces. With his falcons class he also helped create and edit the Halloween play and wrote an essay on the symbolism in the movie Encanto.
He is also doing an online English Language Arts class. In the class they covered:
- Grammar
- How to summarize a book
- Write an organized five-paragraph paper with a works cited page
- Give two oral “Book Talks”
- Learn how opinion writing is different from expository writing
- Write and illustrate their own fable
- Read short stories and participate in multiple Socratic Seminars
- Study the narrative genre with an analysis of literary elements
- Write a short story, creating a unique world, characters, conflict, suspense, tension, climax, resolution and theme
- Write a book of their own poems
- How to write compare/contrast pieces
Literature
I keep a well stocked bookcase of books that my son is free to pick from. He’s welcome to choose whatever he’s interested in from our collection of books or check out books from the library.
This is what he’s been reading so far this year:
Science and Mathematics
My son was begging to do two science classes this year.
Honors High School Earth Science with a Lab
Once again we are doing a class from Taylor Made Science Honors Earth Science with Lab. He likes the teacher and really wants to stretch himself with science.
So this course covers the main fields of geology and an introduction to astronomy. The teacher sends a box of lab supplies as part of the course which helps out so much. The course is going to be a flipped classroom style this year - which was new.
So he does the textbook reading with guided notes on Friday and watches the lecture on Monday’s and takes a quick online quiz on the material. Wednesday he attends the zoom class where the teacher checks for understanding and then starts the lab with them, often breaking them into smaller groups. He’ll finish the lab after the class and submits it.
Physics (optional)
My son’s love of science really blossomed with Science Mom chemistry course that we did three years ago. Since then, whenever they offer a new course he is all on board. Plus, I want him to have fun with science. This year they are doing physics! The first course will be Physics 1: Mechanics and the second course will be on Physics 2: Electromagnetism. Since he’s doing another full science course this will be a fun extra that he can do as much or as little as he wants.
Mini Course - Ancient Mammals from the Permian to the Holocene
This was a fun outschool class I found for him to enjoy and he spent 8 weeks on it. He covered Mammoths & Elephants, Sail-backed Pelycosaurs (Dimetrodon & Edaphosaurs), Sabre-toothed felines, Dicynodonts, Horses, Gorgonopsids, Camels and Cynodonts. This prompted him to reread his Dinosaur encyclopedia and some of his pre-history bugs and animal books.
Honors Algebra 1
It’s math time. Algebra style. He’ll be using the self-paced online course Derek Owens Honors Algebra 1. I went back on forth on a few different options. Art of Problem Solving was a contender as well as the Thinkwell online course but I decided on Derek Owens because I think the format would work best with my son. There are videos that teach and you fill in notes as you go along. Homework that is done on paper and then emailed out to be graded. It comes back with handwritten corrections. I’m a big believer in handwriting out math and that’s ultimately what swayed me to Derek Owen over Thinkwell. Bonus, they do all the grading and record keeping.
 |
 |
Interdisciplinary Studies
One of the best homeschooling finds I found last year was Falcons. We used the online class last year and it was very apparent that this year we needed to keep Falcon’s as a cornerstone to our homeschooling again. The teacher, Anna, is fantastic. She weaves such wonderful topics together for the kids. Really, they covered too many things to enumerate here.
A small sample of topics would be making their own made up culture, practice about splitting the history part out from historical fiction, symbolism in Encanto, the building of bomb shelters and why people expected the Cold War to turn into WWIII, connecting Hollerith boards to the film “Hidden Figures”, reliable and unreliable sources, universal human experiences, Ramadan, Lunar New Year, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what the differences were between texting and face-to-face communication when it comes to nuanced responses, the behavior of waves, how our brains process facial expressions vs emojis, cyberbullying, Shakespeare, coming of age ceremonies around the world, Aztecs, watching out for AI generated videos on youtube, and infinity
And here are some of the main questions they explored together so far:
- What is the difference between machine “learning” and human learning?
- Can machines resolve a contradiction between wants?
- Do you need bad guys to make a good story?
- Should we be celebrating Thanksgiving at all?
- Does change always mean loss of power? For whom?
- Why do we still have climate change?
- What is a friend? How can we handle things when friends make mistakes?
- How might the rapid/short forms of texting and social media be shaping our communication?
- How does function often follow form in media?
- How can we navigate inevitable change?
- What is Encanto REALLY about? Why do you think so?
- Why is there meaning assigned to human features?
- What separates different cultures? What is culture?
- What is food?
- What is a puppet?
- Why is there resistance to kids learning about Black history right now?
- When does a culture “outgrow” its old laws? What’s done then?
- Does everything in the past count as history?
- How long ago does something have to be to be history?
- Can an object be history?
- Who in history tends to be included and who/what is left out?
- How does symbolism affect how we tell history?
- What determines the likelihood of certain histories being recorded and disseminated?
- What is Black history? Is there a difference between Black history and history?
- What types of changes do wars make? What are changes that aren’t war based?
- What is the ultimate job of a culture?
- What happens in the time after war?
Art and Music
Clarinet
He’s been practicing his clarinet and taking weekly private lessons. I think his interest is waning, but every time I suggest moving on he insists on keeping with it.
Art
We pivoted in art, since it really isn’t anything he wants to engage in. We did an online class called “Drawing Your Own Dragons & Other Cool Creatures!” for 15 weeks and he did make some cool monster fish drawing he enjoyed.
We are now going to try a class called “Visual History: Draw Stick Figure Stories of Modern World History” since he does enjoy stick figure drawing. He will also read “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud and have an end of year art project to make a stick figure poster explaining something historical or scientific, his choice.
Health and Financial Literacy
Life Skills - Social
My son is taking an online class on Pro-Social Skills for Teens. They cover topics for friendship making skills, dealing with feelings, alternatives to aggression, and skills for dealing with stress.
Physical Education
He continues on with our local swim team and attending the local Kung Fu classes when he is able. He was thrilled to be invited to the New England Championship with his swim team.
Things we dropped
- Big History
- Torchlight Constellations
Dispatches from the fleet
What passing ships signaled back
Unfurl the messages