2024-25 School Year

Another school year halfway done. It always amazes me how quickly we get to this point each year. The excitement of a new school year (for me) and getting into the routine again and accepting that school will not be going away this year either (for Eli), turns quickly to the hustle and bustle of the holidays with lots of love, laughter, and, of course, breaktime. This year seems to have gone particularly quickly, however, due to a few reasons, I think. Our approach this year to school in general completely changed. That, coupled with the excitement of the move.

The Approach

Every year, starting around March, I pull out my assessments of the year so far and begin the magical time of year - for this nerd at least - of hand selecting our curriculum for the upcoming school year. I carefully review each subject, where his strengths and weakness were, and scour the internet to find the perfect "fit" for that class for him. It is quite a process, but one that I have always thoroughly enjoyed, especially when it comes time to open it all. It's like Christmas!! I've always been very eclectic in our curriculum, utilizing what I thought would work best for Eli, but always had to go into it knowing I would have to tweak our selections a bit. Which always turned into a lot of bit. Or dropped completely and changed halfway through the year.

This year, however, we went a completely different direction. Last year, at the end of his "eighth grade" year, we made the decision to take another year before beginning high school level work. While Eli is highly intelligent and capable of completing all work at the traditional end of the year eighth grade range, his behavior and willingness and maturity just wasn't there yet for high school level work. Last year had already been an almost daily struggle to get him to produce quality work in areas like writing without a fight, and math ended in a yelling fit consistently. Not that he didn't get it. Not that it was too hard. He didn't want to do it and was digging his heels in most days. That was not going to fly for high school. Ugh.

So, in the end, the decision was made to repeat "middle school" and treat the 2024-25 school year as a review year. More importantly, a year to really work on his coping skills and allow his maturity level to catch up a bit. Once we made that decision, I started to do my usual and get to work scouring the internet with my trusty assessments in hand. After one full day of it, however, it hit me. Why was I doing this to myself? Why was I essentially repeating the same process I'd gone through for years, just to be met with resistance and frustration because I felt like we needed a fancy curriculum, because I felt we needed something robust. But my son, with his beautiful, capable mind, just wanted to get this done and over with. He didn't need the extra fluff. He didn't want to do any of it but ceded to the fact that he knew he had to. And damn it, that meant I needed to do the same for him. And so far, this has proven to be the perfect decision, for him and me!

The Curriculum

So that meant, I needed to get him the information and see what he knew in the quickest, most efficient, most straight forward way possible. Because that was him, and I knew it. And that's when I began to consider the one thing I had never used with him...

Workbooks. Duh duh duh. Workbooks had been a curse word to me for years. I LOVE books. REAL books. I love robust curriculum. Heck, I can even handle a well structured online option. But workbooks? Never. Dirty things. Boring. Basic.

BUT, they did give the information I was seeking still. They did provide him the review he needed. They were efficient and straight forward. And wasn't that what I was looking for this year? Yep.

So, I still got to do some of my beloved curriculum research, but this year, it was comparing middle school workbooks. And you know what? That was so much easier on me and relieved so much stress and spinning of my wheels.

What did we land on? Let's get into it....

Math

While Eli does well with math, I knew there were still a few holes he needed to fill. Unfortunately, I could not find one workbook that covered the topics I was needing him to review. My solution, then, was to purchase two workbooks - one at the seventh-grade level, and one at the eighth-grade level, to cover all our bases. Both are from Spectrum, as they seemed to cover the most material, had simple, easy to follow lessons that he could complete himself and just enough practice problems to get a good feel for the material, but not feel daunting.

We have been completing the seventh-grade book for our first semester and will complete the eighth-grade book second semester. And it has gone SO smoothly this year. We have only had a small handful of days where we had our usual yelling match to even get started. Most days, he opens right up to the next lesson, reads it himself, and gets to work. Every now and then he will ask me to read it with him and work the first couple problems with him, but those are usually the days he's struggling to focus, which is okay with me, as long as he's trying and not yelling.

English

One of Eli's strengths is in reading and grammar. In reading, he's working through the Spectrum Reading workbook and is reading on grade level excerpts and responding to questions, and grammar is a quick one pager each day. Because he does so well with grammar in particular, I did choose to go with the ninth-grade level workbook from the Easy Grammar Ultimate Series to give him a bit of a challenge in one area and he's doing smashingly with it!

Writing is still a struggle to get good quality work, however. He LOVES to do creative writing, but anything other than that, forget it. Too bad, so sad, kid. Gotta at least know about the other forms of writing. And what do you know? Workbooks came through again! We went with Spectrum's Writing Grade 8 and he's now being exposed to multiple forms of writing styles, with the assignments broken up into the bite sized pieces just like he needs right now.

Science and History

So here's the thing. When it came time for science and history, I was very torn. I mean, I knew he had to do something this year, but I wasn't sure what. To be real, the fight of "I already know this," didn't sound fun, because, well, he was right. At the middle school level, he did know it. He had already completed all sciences at the middle school level and had gone through the history loop twice already. So I had a choice. Do I move him along into his high school level work early or do I attempt to find "review" material in this area too? After researching way too long in these two areas, comparing the workbooks out there and taking a close look at what I already knew I would be using for history in particular with him in high school, the workbooks came through with the win.

I found this workbook from Spectrum that covers a little bit from all branches of science. Again, a quick one page read and anywhere from seven to ten questions on the opposite page to answer. He has done well with this for the most part, only asking for help when he can't find an answer, but that's rare.

For history, we are switching off between two books. One day we use ArgoPrep's 8th Grade Social Studies workbook that begins with Reconstruction and ends with America and the Global World. This workbook also contains a link to their online videos where the text can be read to them and then they discuss and pick it apart to make answering the questions a little easier.

The next day we work on Geography and Cultures using the Mark Twain Geography workbooks for both Grades 6/7 and 7/8. We are completing Grade 6/7 first semester, which covers the western hemisphere of the world. Second semester we will be completing Grade 7/8, which covers the eastern hemisphere.

Electives

As for electives this year, we have our standard PE 8. For PE, we do whatever we are in the mood for that day. Sometimes we may take a walk together. Other days we may do yoga or lift (light) weights. Some days we have fun with it and we practice Fortnite dances to our favorite jams. Just as long as he's moving is my motto.

The other elective he chose this year is what we are calling Foreign Language Exploration. We are using Duolingo for two reasons: he enjoys the format, and it's free. It gives him plenty of practice each day (I ask he aim for 30 minutes a day, but he usually goes over). So which language did he land on? He couldn't decide between Japanese and Russian, so he's flip flopping between the two! And yes, because of that beautiful mind of his, he's actually keeping the two new languages straight, which was my main concern when he presented the idea to me. But he's doing great and it's awesome to hear his progress in both languages. He even found a Russian hat at the thrift store last month that he loves to wear as he's learning! LOL

And that's our school year! Again, this is so different for us. We are used to having multiple assignments each day in each subject and fighting for hours on end to get it done. But why? He's learning more this year about himself and his control and still learning "what he needs to" from these handy workbooks that take us a couple of hours each day and no tears or yelling. I call this year a success and we aren't even finished yet!