🐲 Seventh Grade for 2024/2025
- Writing, Spelling, Grammar, and Literature
- Science and Mathematics
- Interdisciplinary Studies
- Art, Physical Education, and Health
So last year and this year so far have been intense. And not in a good way. Which is why it’s taken me so long to write down what my kids have been doing for homeschooling. But better late than never 😅
I did make some micro posts about the school year. You can check them out if you’d like
My child decided that they would not set foot back in public school until high school. So unlike other years where I approached homeschooling with a (mostly) rosy attitude, this year I felt I was between a rock and a hard place. Nevertheless, after weighing the options I decided homeschooling, at least for now, was the better option. They had a strong and fond memories of a twice-a-week homeschooling group they could attend and I knew that group would be supportive. Plus academics suffered last year and I felt that taking time to re-solidify the material (especially in math) was important.
Course of Study
Writing, Spelling, Grammar and Literature
Writing, Spelling and Grammar
Writing and grammar this year were covered by a fun set of books I found that I thought were right up my child’s alley. They are the type of kid who memorizes Edgar Allen Poe poetry in their free time. This was a hit. I never had any issues with getting them to complete their lessons using Melancholy Grammar. They loved listening to the recommended podcasts and crafting stories from random prompts.
They also had writing sprinkled in from their Falcons class (more on that below) and for the last half of the school year I found a creative writing class on Outschool from a published young adult author who taught about structuring fiction stories and gave one-on-one feedback. Spelling was more, grit your teeth and get it done… We used Spelling You See this year because I was hoping a more visual approach would help. By the end of this year I think the issue is less with the mechanics of spelling and more with the lack of attention for spelling. Sigh. I’ve also noticed they tend to spell things correctly if someone other than me is going to be reading it. So, I might let this subject go next year and reassess mid-year.
Literature
I just let them pick a bunch of books to read in the first half of the year to get the joy back. Then for the second half of the year I found a cool Outschool class on banned books. This class assigned a book to read without letting the kids know why it was banned. Then they’d meet and discuss it over zoom and see if they could figure it out. Having to puzzle out the “why” kept my kid really engaged in the book.
Science and Mathematics
Microbiology and Genetics
Anything with a microscope tends to be a hit with this kid. So once again I pulled out the Science Mom Microbiology and Genetics course. Both my kids have loved these courses. And I find it charming that while doing art projects my kid just re-listens to the lectures. She must have listened to the one on smallpox a dozen times by now.
Astronomy
Science mom also released a course on Astronomy during the spring and my kids love joining the classes while they are “live” so they can answer polls and ask questions and might get a shout-out. So even though it doubled up the science my kid was 100% game.
Pre-algebra
Math…. yikes…. math. Okay so this was soooo rusty.
The goal was to get them caught back up so they could do Algebra I next year. Now this was a personal goal of theirs. They have many talents and loves and one of those is science. And they know science builds upon math and in high school they want to be on the STEM track.Guys… math almost killed me this year (and them I assume 😆). We started with Derek Owens which has worked perfectly for my other child. This one, not so much. So then we tried Math Mammoth. Utter disaster. Then I tried Understanding Pre-algebra. I got nowhere. Finally I got an adaptive math program, ALEKS, online, because I could not figure out what else to do and just made them do an hour a day (jumping in to help when they didn’t understand a topic).
Somehow they aced the math portion of the end of the year standardized test I give them. And I also found some potential Algebra classes for next year, contacted the teachers, and had them give her a readiness assessment. Not stellar, but they did indicate readiness for Algebra next year.
Whew…
And I learned an important lesson. When my kids become pre-teens I need to back off teaching math. It hasn’t worked for either of them. 🤣
Interdisciplinary Studies
Back to the online Falcon’s group with the occasional in person meet-up.
They contributed pieces to the weekly newsletter/paper and performed in the annual Halloween play. Once again they covered a wide variety of topics (that I’m not doing justice) that included:
- the People’s Puppet Parade and Purim
- Nationalism and World Wars
- Ledgers and formatting financial transactions
- Repercussions of extended space visits on Astronauts bodies
- Endangered species, adaptations, and neoteny
- Persian new year, Nowruz
- The crafting of Roman coins and the history of money
- Symbolism in the book “Spinning Silver” by Naomi Novik
- Holi the festival of color
- How molds were made before 3d printing, metal casting
- Samoa and fa’afafine, studying history through the lens of different cosmologies, gender stereotypes of different cultures.
- Cultural stereotypes around gendered clothing and hair.
- Liminal Space
- Late We’wha from the Zuni tribe
- Why do the money systems of different countries have different values?
- Spreading information or disinformation
- What it means to be open minded and the difference between how people think, versus what they think.
- The Black Death, rats, and leftover resources leading to cheap paper
- Currency, counterfeiting and prevention.
- Developing a money system for use in class and hosting a makers fairs with a base 5 money system, ledger, taxes, and paying civic “employees”
- Decomposition, death, and cultural burial traditions.
- Ellis island and immigration
- Factories, products, and planned obsolescence. Environmental and economical impacts
Art, Physical Education, and Health
Art was a free for all. They would tell me what they were interested in and I’d get them supplies and find teachers on Outschool. The top mediums were clay, painting, and digital animation.
P.E. was the swim team at the local YMCA. Besides swimming six hours a week and then attending multiple swim meets a month, the coaches reviewed healthy eating and how to take care of the body as an athlete. They even won “Most Improved Swimmer” at the end of the year banquet 🥰
For health we attended the chat form Stanford Medicine
Whew. This year was a lot. And even now in August I’m not recovered from it.
Dispatches from the fleet
What passing ships signaled back
Unfurl the messages