8th grade help needed - damage control

[RosieCotton]

So it’s been 4 years since I posted here. 

I could use some eyes on this as I am not happy with where we are. I need to do some damage control with my 8th grade girl.Suggestions for my 11th grader coming soon to the HS Board!

I went back to work, we went into a coop 2 days a week that at one time was good content but now is just wasted time and socializing mostly with now very few classes of content only with certain teachers. Other teachers simply should not be there IMO at all. They are bored with life filling their time. Wasting ours. 
 

She is just taking Drama, Art, Grammar and Comp from the best teacher there but if it’s not producing fruit we drop it in Jan. Assignments are light so this cannot be her only source of LA for the year. 

We have talked about her interests and I feel strongly of involving her as she doesn’t want to school at home at all anymore it’s boring and she feels isolated. (Attitude and structure I will have to work on with her I realize). It’s been difficult for her all the girls her age at coop are so clicky and moody there is SO much drama there every week I can’t stand hearing about it every week. Same with the church youth group. Trying another large church just for her this fall for their youth group to try to find more girls who are more easy going. Hopefully it’s just the age she has only 1 friend who has a very busy drama play life so getting together is few a far between. 

The writing class she took last year was IEW based but the teacher never graded any of it. No feedback. I helped her fine tune.

LA I have all the Killgallon books for MS I bought in prep for MS so we are starting there adding Wordsmith and probably Rod and Staff 7. 
We have RS 8 not sure if it matters which one we do I remember from years ago people said do them in order from Grade 6 up. She likes to write overall and I’d like to pull in her interest Science topics and Egyptology into some cross curricular essays and summaries. Not overkill but gentle progress is needed. 
 

MATH Lials Pre Algebra she is doing now and doing much better than at the coop for math. Don’t ask. I’m great at math but honestly am losing patience for teaching it. Always wanted to outsource Algebra and beyond but DO did not impress me my sons tried it and was a fail. Janns wasn’t much better for us. Not sure why many on here love them they were not a good fit. Had better results looking up videos on Kahn Academy to answer their questions. 
 

SCIENCE She is taking Rainbow Science 2 at the coop he is a decent teacher. It’s a lukewarm intro IMO but she wants to add an Astronomy and Space class I’m checking out Great Courses and a good text to pair it with at her level and do some cross curriculum writing projects and light papers. She likes hands on projects and crafts a lot looking for a space project kit for activities somewhere. Maybe even a rocket kit. 
 

SOCIAL STUDIES She wants to take World Geography this year (countries, capitals, rivers, mountains etc only she said not cultures )and study Egypt, hieroglyphs, and some archeology. I found a link on the forum here to a reading the hieroglyphs course online that sounds promising if it’s still being offered. Looking for visual open and go geography resource. Maybe pair with Modern States Geography for some lectures. She took Civics and World History (Abeka not thrilled) at the coop and I stepped in to help her finish the textbook for History when the teacher went off script and wasn’t getting it done. So a year of something else here now I think is fine. 

 

LIT Haven’t researched this yet. I would like to read a few books with her, maybe watch a literary guide or talk on it, compare notes and discuss. Not sure why I’m looking so much at TGC probably because the sales look like they are on now and I hoard curriculum. ✌️Lighter here probably better. Figuratively Speaking and just pick some titles? 

VOCAB I like the look of VOCAB for the HS student by Levine. Might just go for it she reads a lot of books and absorbs words like a sponge. 
Still have English from Roots Up my sons did that she missed that boat. Don’t want to overload VOCAB. 
 

LANGUAGE She took a year of Spanish at the coop now wants to try German. I speak fluent French she has no interest I have all the books for that. 😩 I will check my library for the latest programs available and try to pair it with maybe Modern States German not sure if that’s too advanced or not. German workbooks? 

She is taking Gymnastics at a local place, but intro class is all 6 YO. Ugh. She says she doesn’t care yes she wants to do it this year. I might check out 4h we have chickens but not sure she really has true interest in showing them etc. Maybe farm girls are nicer tho. 😘

*** She likes designing things. She plays a game where she build houses and designs the furniture, rooms, kitchens, lofts, windows, wall colors, accessories, landscaping, everything. How can we pull that in? 

I am taking some time off as I can over the next 6 months to do some refocusing with all 3 kids, fine tune and hope I have the patience to do it. I admit I’m upset with where we were but I can only go forward. She needs the most structure IMO. It wasn’t always peaches and cream then either it’s hard work!!
 

Pray for patience for me! I am balancing alot right now and hoping I can keep up the pace without casualties. 😅
 

Any suggestions welcome! 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2023 by RosieCotton

[Brittany1116]

Thinking Tree makes a funschooling journal on Egypt in their Travel Dreams line. 

[Shoeless]

Ok, first, take a deep breath! It will be ok!

Co-op: Does she like it at all? I can tell that you do not like it, but does she get anything positive from it? 8th grade girls are drama no matter where you go; it's just the age.  If she's getting anything good from church group or co-op, I'd grit my teeth and tune out the drama as much as possible. 

LA: We just finished Killgallon Sentence Composing for Middle School. I opted to skip the Paragraphs for middle school because there was a lot of overlap between it and the Sentence book. There's some grammar in the paragraphs book as well, so if she's good with grammar, you may find you do not need the paragraph book. Also, it is a bit of overkill; by the time we got to the end of the sentence book, my son and I were both over it! I have not used Wordsmith, but the grade 6-9 version I looked at seems to have overlap with what Killgallon offers. 

I have also not used Rod and Staff, but I've heard good things about it. Are you planning on doing the whole LA program or just grammar? Again, I see overlap between what R&S, Killgallon, and Wordsmith offer. If your plan is to do each program to completion, you may not need all of them, unless your plan is to cherry pick assignments from each program. 

[Ellie]

I remember you (at least, I remember your name!). 🙂

As far as English, R&S is pretty hefty. If you have her do it all, you will not need to supplement anything for grammar or composition. That would be my first choice. And yes, I'd go with the 7th grade text.

Your sociial studies plan sounds good. 🙂

Not all 12yo girls are gossipy and hard to get along with. I say this as the mother of two daughters who dealt with the same issues in groups. We all just gritted our teeth and lived through it, finding the ocassional, random friend.

As far as co-op, if y'all don't love it, drop it.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Ellie

[Alice]

I'm not sure what your question is. Were you looking for specific recommendations? 

What aren't you happy with as far as how things are going? 

The thing that stood out to me were that your daughter doesn't want to homeschool anymore.

I think it's really hard to homeschool middle school and high school and that it would be even harder to do so with a kid who didn't want to be there. I don't know all the details of what's best for your kid or your family but I'd think about maybe why she isn't happy with homeschooling and use that as a starting point. Is not homeschooling an option? If it isn't, what changes can you make to meet her where she is? The social stuff is really important for kids and if she doesn't have some outlet that is meeting those needs, I'd make that a priority. It sounds like you've tried to do that with  co-op and youth group but maybe those aren't good fits. 

 

[PeterPan]

On 8/29/2023 at 1:47 AM, RosieCotton said:

I am taking some time off as I can over the next 6 months to do some refocusing with all 3 kids, fine tune and hope I have the patience to do it. I admit I’m upset with where we were but I can only go forward. She needs the most structure IMO.

This sounds like a good plan. 

Teenagers can be very unrealistic, and when they are moody and tired and hormonal, they blame YOU for their issues.

On 8/29/2023 at 1:47 AM, RosieCotton said:

VOCAB I like the look of VOCAB for the HS student by Levine. Might just go for it she reads a lot of books and absorbs words like a sponge. 
Still have English from Roots Up my sons did that she missed that boat. Don’t want to overload VOCAB. 

You could shift to a vocabulary log. Every day as she reads she looks for three interesting words she didn't know and looks them up, writes a sample sentence, and logs them in a journal. That's it. Don't try too hard, kwim? 

The busy mom's math answer: MUS. What I liked about it was that dd had to self-monitor her learning and rewind if she wasn't understanding it. It had enough structure that it was clear what to do. It's adequate. I'm not saying you're going to super wow over it, but it's adequate. 

 

On 8/29/2023 at 1:47 AM, RosieCotton said:

She is just taking Drama, Art, Grammar and Comp from the best teacher there but if it’s not producing fruit we drop it in Jan. Assignments are light so this cannot be her only source of LA for the year. 

We did a co-op like that that was nice people but not the level of instruction I wanted. Sometimes it's the right call, if you're willing to de-emphasize that subject and use your time at home to focus on something else. Doing double is just too much. If you LIKE the co-op writing or she likes the adventure of writing in a class (which can be fun), then maybe focus on something else and drop the extra writing program. You could do a logic course together, work through a book on literary devices, so a Shakespeare or opera study (one a week), read short stories together to discuss, whatever you want. I just wouldn't DUPLICATE the co-op, if that makes sense. Let it be good enough or dump it.

Around that age I started using Best Essay collections with my dd. They come as annuals, so best nature writing of x year, that kind of thing. That gives you a consistent source of models she'll find interesting to read, so then you make tasks that fit your goals, whatever you think is missing. So you want to work on vocabulary or rhetorical devices or outlining or whatever, and you have her read the article and analyze for that. What makes this article work? (structures, rhetorical devices) Summarize the article in three sentences. Rabbit trail the article and write a journal response to the controversy.

Some of these essay collections I had dd reading included graphs of information and apparently reading/interpreting graphs is a big chunk of the ACT science score. It ended up being her top score, even though she's not particularly a science person. 😂

On 8/29/2023 at 1:47 AM, RosieCotton said:

I’d like to pull in her interest Science topics and Egyptology into some cross curricular essays and summaries. Not overkill but gentle progress is needed. 

Best Science and Nature Writing annuals. Weekly assigned response writing. 

On 8/29/2023 at 1:47 AM, RosieCotton said:

*** She likes designing things. She plays a game where she build houses and designs the furniture, rooms, kitchens, lofts, windows, wall colors, accessories, landscaping, everything. How can we pull that in? 

They have 4H for that. Sounds like working on sewing would be right up her alley too. I'd ditch the chickens and do your 4h via what she's into. Around here, each club has a different focus. 

Maybe back up and get a fresh picture of your dd's interests. My dd enjoyed diverse things because she was very bright. (hence the history interests, etc. etc) The hands-on/doing side was more her vocational bent/reality. So we used the essays, etc. to explore those diverse interests and gave her lots of time to do her hands-on things that made her feel alive and productive. You could see if she could start to socialize via her hands on interests. 

On 8/29/2023 at 1:47 AM, RosieCotton said:

She is taking Gymnastics at a local place, but intro class is all 6 YO. Ugh. She says she doesn’t care yes she wants to do it this year.

I'd just let her!! She may progress faster and it shows she's very confident. Being active is so good at this age, and she's not having to deal with catty, hormonal females in that class, haha. There's a lot of pressure after a point to become competitive or drop out; the recreational middle sort of disappears. So let her enjoy it while she can. 🙂

[prairiewindmomma]

A few thoughts:

1. Does homeschooling still make sense for your family? Balancing your work with teaching and supervising is a challenge, but a surmountable one. Are you both committed to the process? 
 

2. You tell us what you are using in terms of content. Where does she need to grow in terms of skills? Content is just whatever fodder you use for building skills. Does this content get you to where you need to go in terms of skills? Is she writing well? Is her math on level? Is she well positioned for high school level work?

3. What makes her light up that she ENJOYS? A lot of the co-op and community class stuff flops for my Youngest. We have to bring the sparkle in ourselves. If co-ops don’t suit your kid socially or academically, is she in them for adult supervision while you are working? If so, would school be worse?

[SilverMoon]

I'm a little overwhelmed just reading about all the moving parts in the OP. I see fine arts, gentle co op writing, writing supplement/writing course/writing and grammar book/writing across the curriculum at home, solid math, science class and more science at home, decent social studies plan, lit at home, vocab, foreign language, gymnastics. 

Writing feels like overkill even for a kid who enjoys it. I'd commit to one and write across the curriculum, maybe breaking it up with a Killgallon here and there if it feels monotonous. Not to send you shopping again, but Winning With Writing is broken into clear daily bites and is super easy to use. I'd lean toward dropping grammar and just covering it as needed in her writing projects. 

Maybe Thinkwell for math? But I couldn't tell if you're happy there or shopping around. 

Science might be too much. It's okay if it's a little light this year as long as it keeps her engaged. High school science will start over at the beginning. 

Social studies sounds fun. She could help you write a syllabus or outline for the course. 🙂

Lit, yes to Figuratively Speaking along with reading and discussing good books. 

Vocab, does she really need this considering how much the above includes? 

Ouino for foreign language. It's kinda game-ish like Duolingo but actually teaches grammar and mechanics. Set a time to spend there daily and see how far she gets.

Gymnastics, do it! My youngest danced ballroom most of his life and then started studio dance "behind" most of the other kids. He was the biggest one in the room for the first couple years, but he's worked hard and advanced faster since he's older. Today he's on two competition teams and is thriving. It was absolutely worth it. ❤️