Well, it's about that time of year! We are getting close to wrapping up our school year and I am getting excited for starting fresh, new curriculum for the 2023-2024 school year. My oldest son will be 11 and in 6th grade. My youngest son will be nearly 6 and I'll be starting him in 1st grade. Since I manage a large garden in the spring/summer, we have found the best time to homeschool for our family is from early July until April.
First, I'll write about curriculum choices for my rising 6th grader and then I'll write about the choices for my 1st grader in another post. So, here it goes:
6th Grade
MATH-
This year: We are just about to start the last unit of CLE (Christian Light Education) Math 6. CLE Math has been a great fit for family.
Next Year: As soon as we finish CLE 6, we wiill start Math 8/7 (Pre-Algebra Course) by Saxon Math. I would have stayed with CLE but they drag Pre-Algebra out over two years and that is not something we wanted to do. I purchased Horizon's Pre-Algebra (which is known to have a spiral curriculum) but oddly enough the Pre-Algebra course seemed to have a mastery style and very little built-in review, so we aren't going to use it.
UPDATE 7/6/23 - My son begged to do Horizons instead of Saxon, so we gave it a try. He is doing great with it, so we will continue. I found that because the concepts build on each other in pre-algebra, there is enough spiral for him. I think he is doing well with it because of his background with CLE math.
(In case you haven't seen the other update, we ended up settling with Saxon by my son's request because Horizons Pre-Algebra went way too fast...and this is coming from a child who enjoys math and reads Life of Fred for fun. )
LANGUAGE ARTS-
This year: We have been using Rod & Staff English 6 and Building Spelling Skills 5. I have loved Building Spelling Skills 5, not so much for the spelling instruction, but because it is introducing my son to many different topics we don't normally cover. Cathy Duffy called it an "enclyclopedia of information" in her review of it. For example, one unit covered legal terms, another political system terms, medical system terms, geography of different continents. I would not use this particular level with a struggling speller because the words are associated with a theme and not a spelling rule.
Rod & Staff English has been great this year, but also tedious! I'm looking forward to the break from grading the work! We used Rod and Staff English for third grade as well. I'm glad we used it both times. I think it's why my son is very good at grammar, and seems to have a very thorough understanding of the parts of speech, but it is a very tedious, detailed program. There is a good review built in, but I certainly would not consider it a spiral program. We have rotated between Rod & Staff English and CLE Language Arts since he was in 2nd grade. While on this topic, I wanted to add that the writing instruction in the Rod & Staff curriculum has been much better than I had expected. I completely agree with people that say supplementing the curriculum with a writing curriculum is not necessary. While it is necessary for CLE, it is not for Rod & Staff.
Next Year: We will be taking a break from Rod & Staff English and going back to CLE Language Arts. We are actually going to repeat grade 6 since the grammar in both Rod and Staff and CLE is very advanced. He will be going from Rod & Staff English 6 to CLE Language Arts 6. The year after that, we may return to Rod & Staff English again. However, I figure with repeating this grade in a spiral format, he will really have grammar down by the end of the year. For spelling, we will probably do whatever is in the CLE Language Arts program just to keep it simple.
I will also be supplementing with Creating Writing 1 (by Christian Light Education). I have Writing With Skill and am debating whether to start using it a bit in 6th grade, or wait for 7th.
UPDATE 7/6/23 - My son begged to do IEW again. We had stopped at Level A Year 2 a couple of years ago because I needed a break from it. It's very parent intensive! We started back up again at Week 8 and will spread it out throughout the year until we finish. If we do IEW again, we will go to CLE for 7th grade Language Arts, instead of Rod & Staff. I have no idea how we will fit everything in, but we will adjust as needed.
READING
This year: We are wrapping up CLE Reading 6. The program is such a complete curriculum, it's just so hard to thinking of switching to something else! My son also loves it and requested it again. Sometimes I wish my son and I were reading fun novels together. However, I don't want to take the joy of reading away from him quite yet and make him "analyze" books he enjoys. I remember English class in high school. We would spend what felt like eight to twelve weeks on the same novel and then get tested on it. It was incredibly boring and I felt like I never learned much. I don't want my son to feel that way about reading. I made some mistakes earlier on with using a few novel guides when he was way too young, but we have been using the CLE Reading program since he was in third grade. I teach using the Teacher's Guides, so one day he reads the lesson and does the workbook pages, and the next day we do almost everything written in the guide. I can't imagine skipping that part of it. It's one of our favorite parts of school to have that time together. Sure, he may learn the vocabulary just from reading it, but we enjoy going through everything together, the story discussions, etc., and we very rarely skip this part of school.
Next year: We are going to use CLE Reading 7!
SCIENCE
This year: Science got off to a rough start for us this year, but we ended up using Rod & Staff Science 5. I'm glad we used the curriculum overall. Some chapters we enjoyed more than others. It was definitely a thorough curriculum that got the job done this year, and didn't require experiments in order to learn the material. The tests were also very challenging and my son got to practice his study skills by making flash cards throughout the lessons and studying them the day before the test. While Rod & Staff curriculum provides great material, completing it can feel tedious for both the parent and the student. My son requested a different program for next year.
Next year: I gave my son a choice between Rod & Staff Science 6, CLE Science 6 and Lifepac Science 6. I knew my son would get bored with a science program that stayed on the same topic all year, so we are saving Apologia for middle school and above. My son chose Lifepac! It was more expensive than I thought it would be and the experiment materials are even more so! I'm not sure what I got myself into, but he looked at the samples and loved the look of it, and this is one subject he will mostly be studying independently.
UPDATE 7/6/23 - We are through the first unit other than the test. It is going well so far. I highly recommend starting this program over the summer because the first Lifepac has plant experiments that take several days, and hold up all of the other work. The other 9 Lifepacs won't be like that thankfully. The program is getting done and my son says he is learning a lot from it!
HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY
This year: We were all over the place this year working on The Complete Books of Maps and Geography, and reading A Child's History of the Medieval World and Pope, Emperors and Elephants: The First 1000 Years of Christian Culture. We also studied St. Constantine and St. Theodosius using the writings of Vladimir Moss. My son also completed half of Project Passport: The Middle Ages in his own free time, until he moved on to other hobbies. (He said he will finish it later.)
Next year: I purchased The Story of Inventions by Christian Liberty Press, but now it looks like we will be working on that starting next week through "summer school" and not using it during the school year. So far for history, I have planned CLE Bible 6. As Orthodox Christians, we don't often use CLE Bible curriculum, but this particular level focuses on the history and geography of the second half of the Old Testament. It seems to be a very literal and historical course, with very little Anabaptist-specific theology included. In fact, I think I will benefit from this course also and am excited! While some would call this a Bible course, I definitely think this works for us for history. It it is too light, I am thinking of supplementing with World History Detective by the Critical Thinking Company. We are also going to use Daily Geography 6 (minus a few pages that have anti-Christian content).
UPDATE 7/6/23 - Big changes here. We are still going to use CLE Bible 6, however, I decided that Daily Geography 6 or 180 Days of Geography that I had purchased were too secular for us. I noticed that Lifepac 6 History and Geography is very heavy on the geography, and will also be a great history review for my son. I liked all of the online samples of Lifepac 6. I was even pleased that in the sample they are respectful towards Orthodox Christians, which is not true of all Evangelical Protestant curriculum. (Thankfully, I have many Sharpie markers.) Once I see how long everything takes my son to complete on average, I'll be able to make a schedule...it does seem like too much since we added in IEW.
EXTRAS
This year: We are working on finishing Preschool Art by Mother of Divine Grace. This has been a great fit for both of my boys to do together. My son also just finished The Basics of Critical Thinking, by The Critical Thinking Co., which I highly recommend.
Next year: We are going to start Kindergarten Grade Art for my boys to do together. We are also going to start family Norwegian lessons using Sett I gang.
UPDATE 7/6/23 - We are also going to participate in a program called Catholic Schoolhouse. Catholic Schoolhouse is similar to Classical Conversations. While we are not Roman Catholic, it will be nice for my children to be around other children that have some similarities in beliefs and lifestyle. I was able to review all of the memory work and there is very little that we will need to adjust.
Also, since my son's art teacher stopped giving lessons in our town, we are going to try out the classic program of Artistic Pursuits. I'll update with a review once we have tried it our for a couple of months..
Well, I think that's it! What do you have planned for next year? : )