Help me with 6th grade plan - everything is changing at my house

[AmandaVT]

We are having a fair bit changing this year. I accepted a job as a special educator in one of the local middle schools (yay!) and I start in August. We have been trying to find a school that would work for next year for DS, but for various reasons, we need to homeschool him for at least one more year. Thankfully, DH is a therapist who can make his own hours and we have figured out a plan that will allow DH to homeschool most subjects in the mornings until 2 pm and than I will help as needed with DS's online math class. 

I'm trying to come up with a good plan for next year. I think it can either work out beautifully or be a disaster, so I'd like to help DH make it a good year. 

Math - DS is taking pre-algebra 1 with AOPS online this summer and it's working well. He wants to continue with pre-algebra 2 in the fall and then we'll need to figure out a plan for the spring. Algebra A with AOPS? Something else? 

Reading - DS is a good reader as far as fluency, but he struggles a bit with comprehension. We gave him the WIAT at the beginning of this school year and he scored well into the high average range for Fluency, Word Reading and Pseudoword Decoding, but in the low 90's for reading comp. The inferential score was what he struggled the most with. I bought CLE reading this year and we've been working through that together as well as taking frequent discussion breaks when doing read alouds to work on predicting what might happen and summarizing what we've read. I was thinking of getting a Memoria Press literature set for next year for him - but I'm not sure how user friendly it is for a new homeschooling parent. 

History - DS loves veritas press self paced, so I think I'll go ahead and start him on the middle ages next year. And suggest they make time for CNN 10. Not sure what else to add here. DH mentioned wanting to spend time at the library a few times a week. I may have him read the history section in WTM for logic stage to see if he's interested in going that route. 

Science - no idea. 

PE - DS plays tennis 3x a week and that'll continue

Music - piano lessons will continue

Writing - aaah! I really don't know. We did IEW this year through CC and he hated it. I didn't care for it either, so that's off the list. I was going to go back to CAP for next year, but I'm not sure how DH will deal with teaching it. WWS is an option, but I've heard that's better for older kiddos? 

Spelling - DS is a good speller, so maybe vocab here? 

DS and DH have both expressed interest in DS learning to cook (and DH teaching him to cook). I love this idea. FIL is a trained chef and taught DH great cooking skills. I'd love for him to teach DS more formally and as a bonus, this can help me with not having to make dinner every night. 

I'd love to figure out a way to work on organizational stuff - learning to organize his backpack and school things, getting more independent with getting ready for tennis. I do too much (for both of them, if I'm being honest) and I'd love to see DH help DS learn to organize a bit without mom as backup. 

Thoughts?

[kbutton]

3 hours ago, AmandaVT said:

The inferential score was what he struggled the most with.

You might look at Inference Jones for this. If that doesn't do the trick, I would get a language evaluation with and SLP that specializes in literacy. 

As for Inference Jones, the difficulty of the inferences are not much different from the first (3-4th grade) to second book (5-6th grade); it's just that the reading passages are longer and slightly more difficult. Because of that, I recommend doing the first book so that you don't run out of practice. I think each book has about 20 exercises or so. 

We found that my son needed more intervention, and after some language testing (Test of Narrative Language, Test of Problem-solving), we are using products from Mindwing Concepts. 

I would guess that Memoria Press lit would be very user-friendly for a new homeschooling parent. The lit guides are pretty cut and dry. Do you know if it has vocabulary? If it does, and you are fine with discontinuing spelling, you wouldn't need a separate vocabulary program. 

Science--definitely needs to be something your DH would enjoy or something written to the student. We're trying Rainbow Science, and it looks to be written to the student with a well-scaffolded schedule. It's meant to be used over two years.

 

[Coco_Clark]

On 7/6/2019 at 1:55 PM, AmandaVT said:

 

Thoughts?

I have two sixth graders next year.  Personally, our biggest focus for both is increasing independence/self-organization.  It's a lot of "Toss them in and see how they do".  (After years of me organizing everything, and then a year of doing it together).  They will be switching from a daily checklist to a weekly, for example, which feels huge and gives them a lot of space to screw up. 😜

As for your plan...

Math looks great.  If he likes AOPS pre-al there's no reason to leave.  My son felt like it was too much/took too much of his time, and we are moving on to Keys to and Jacobs.

I can't speak to reading as we've never done any formal lit.  We are a read, narrate, discuss family 🙂

We are doing middle ages for history too, and there are so many good/great books in that time period!! Beowulf, Arthurian legends, Robin Hood, so yes, look at WTM selections.

Science I'd honestly go interest-led.  There are SO MANY amazing living science books and now that my middle schoolers can read at an adult-level it's a whole new world.  Ambleside has excellent suggestions.  

PE and music looks covered.

I find CAP easy to teach, personally.  But since public is the plan I'd find out what they expect as far as writing goes and make sure you covered that.  Our schools seem to focus a LOT on free-flow creative writing at this age, for example, while essays are still barely touched.

Cooking would be cool!

Honestly it looks like a great year.

[kristin0713]

For science, look at Exploration Education. My DS has done it almost entirely independently this year and he’s really enjoyed it. It has an online textbook that he used with the text-to-speech feature and hands-on experiments that done through step-by-step instructions in the chapter. It also comes with everything in one box. Very easy to implement!

[Clemsondana]

If you think that he'll go to school and probably take Algebra there in 8th grade, then you might choose one of the non-standard AOPS books if he just needs to fill the spring semester after doing pre-alg in the fall.  We did Number Theory, which my kiddo thought was easier than the pre-alg/alg sequence and fun because it was different.  It might be good to do something that he is unlikely to see in school.  

And, I second Inference Jones.  Both of my kids liked it.