7th Grade Year

It doesn’t seem possible!  My Bug is growing up and although I am excited to see what God has in store for his life: it makes me sad as he is the last child.  Granted there were only 2, hahaha.  There will be more through foster care, but Bug was just a special child.  Not wanting him to grow up may have been a tiny part of the reason I really hadn’t put together his curriculum for this year; along with fear, inability, laziness, being busy.  But seeing school has already started around here, I finally started working on lesson plans on Saturday.  I spent almost all day on it and still not quite finished.  But enough to officially start the school year today, although we have started doing some school.

Something I found yesterday made a big difference for me and I want to share that incase I am not the only person in the world that hadn’t heard of it.  I have a ton of books to use to teach our son, but how was I going to test his knowledge and retention.  That would mean learning and studying everything with him.  Honestly, I don’t have the time or desire to do that!  Then I found Quizlet.com.  There are so many that you will probably find just about any subject or book.  And if you can’t find them or don’t like what you find, make your own!

Now I can use that A Beka Science book I picked up at a yard sale for $1, but didn’t have the teacher’s copy for.  Am going to be praying and planning for a microscope by the last quarter of school.

This past spring Mardel’s redesigned their store and another home school mom posted they had tons of super low clearance home school stuff.  Needless to say Momma went shopping and one of the things I picked up was a Horizons’ Math kit for Algebra I. Normal price was $90.95 and we got it for $22.74.  That included student book and workbook, as well as the teachers’ book.  Even though it says for 8+ grade, we are going to do it for 7th.  He is very good in math and we want him to be challenged.  While doing the lesson plan, I have slowed it down and gave us some wiggle room incase we have to spend extra time on a lesson.  We will see how he does.

I had also picked up numerous CHRISTIAN HEROES: THEN & NOW unit study guides for $0.60 each, normally $9.99 to integrate into our Bible studies.  Bug did the C.S. Lewis study the end of last year.  We got the book used through the Inter-library Loan program.  And we may have to do that again for some this year but I was able to get some on sale through the YWAM website. I’m so grateful both of my boys have been such avid readers.

(The link above to YWAM is my first and only affiliate link.  It is for a product we have used for over a year prior to my signing up. Not only do I like the series and unit studies, my son does too.)

History is going to start with the Rush Revere Books.  Bug has read them numerous times already and does not mind reading them again.  Rush has a website set up and it already has study guides and printable quizzes available.  We will complete the school year with Texas History using Texas & Texans as I found plenty to use on quizlet for it.

I was able to get the Teacher’s Edition Explorations In Literature by BJU Press.  I don’t remember what I paid, but it wasn’t much.  And it shows the student pages in it, so we will both use the same book to read and then I may need to print some pages out covering the answer sections.  But Literature has never been my strong suit, so am grateful to have the teachers’ manual!

For Spelling/Vocab I haven’t decided what to use.  I know somewhere in the classroom we have a Latin Rootword book I had planned to use.  I also have a Sequential Spelling book and a Wordskill book.  I could use either of them.  Honestly, he will have enough vocab words in almost every other subject that it may be best that we just focus on spelling.

So, I will let you know how things go and how we end up liking the curriculum.

 

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