That development may be quick. Or it may be slow. You may have a child who is able to do math problems in her head at the same time in her life that she finds writing a chore. Or maybe your little one reads all the time but doesn’t truly understand how 1½ cups of sugar fit into a one-cup measure and a half-cup measure. That’s okay.
Walk with your child wherever he happens to be, and you both build a bond much stronger than you get through sharing a textbook alone. Teaching your child where she is may mean going through four years of second-grade math. Or you may find yourself flying through two years in one because your child just seems to “get it” this year. Go with the flow and it will all even out. As your child explores and experiences and follows her interests, she’ll strengthen her general knowledge at the same time that she develops her favorite hobby. This may mean purchasing an extra textbook or two in a year’s time, or visiting the library more than you may otherwise, but in the long run you get a fascinating young adult, and you learn a great deal about the inner workings of the Titanic, for example, in the meantime.
Chapter 7
Handling Junior High
IN THIS CHAPTER
During adolescence, your kids’ hormones go wild, and your kids fight for independence — at the same time that they still secretly sleep with teddy bears. Adolescents begin to think on a semi-adult level, and they’re a joy to engage in conversation. For perhaps the first time, they not only have opinions, but they can defend those opinions with somewhat rational thought. If this is the picture that you look at over the breakfast table each morning, you have a junior high student.
Junior high school or middle school in many communities is the between time. Too old for elementary school, yet not tall enough for high school classes, junior high students spend much of their time sitting through classes that attempt to catch students up and fill in any gaps before high school. If you can grin at their quirks, appreciate a developing sense of humor, and accept some friendly criticism without losing your cool, you’ll love homeschooling your middle grades students.
Beginning in the Middle
It’s not unusual to begin homeschooling in the middle years, especially if behavior or less-than-expected school achievement sends up a warning flag to concerned parents. Some students jump at the chance to be removed from what they see as a no-win situation. Others may fret when you remove them from the social arena that concerns you.
Junior high students who school at home explore many more opportunities than their friends at school, simply because they have more time available to pursue activities. (See Chapter 26 for more information about socializing.) Although a public- or private-schooled junior high student spends the days at school and perhaps evenings at sports practice, homeschooled students can arrange their school time to
Participate in community plays
Volunteer at the library or local animal shelter
Start a home business, whether it’s babysitting, the gift basket biz, or another creative endeavor
Participate in community or competitive sports (such as ice skating, which takes hours of practice for truly competitive skill)
LOCATING CURRICULUM OPTIONS
After you bring your child home, what do you teach? You have loads of options, and only time and money limit your choices. Because nobody has an endless supply of either of these (I know I wish I did!), by balancing the two, you can devise a pretty good curriculum that meets the needs of your student.
All of Part 3 looks at different ways that you can teach your child. You can purchase a full curriculum from an existing school and let that school form a protective umbrella over your homeschool. Maybe you want to write a curriculum on your own. Perhaps you’d rather pull various books from a whole bunch of publishers like the schools do.
No matter how you think homeschooling should be done, Part 3 starts you on your way. Also look at Chapter 6, which lists elementary level curriculums — most of them go through grade 8.
And that’s only a quick list. Look around your own community for opportunities for these students. They generally love to help and want to feel needed. Plugging them into some type of community effort fills both those desires with a special activity or two.
Keeping Track of It All
So now your middle schooler is at home and you realize that you need to track everything she’s doing. When you start to think about the volunteering and other activities that actually carry educational worth, putting it all on paper becomes a bit overwhelming. Even if your state doesn’t require it (see Chapter 3), tracking your middle schooler’s courses and activities gives you great practice for the high school years, when transcripts become all important.
Start with the basics:
What subjects does your state require? Math, English, science, and social studies usually begin the list.
What subjects do you think your student needs to learn? Combining these subjects with the ones from the previous bullet gives you a nice, round group of classes.
What are your student’s outside pursuits?Does he participate on a traveling soccer team? Write it down under physical education or fitness. Did he set up a home business last year? Great — you have to keep track of the money, which is math, and keep the process rolling, which requires general business knowledge.Some activities, such as time spent at the local animal shelter, may simply fall under “volunteer activities” unless your teen gleans some animal science knowledge along the way. (Then, of course, it takes its place beside the weekly science text on your planning pages.)
If your middle schooler tackles a subject early, such as Algebra 1 in seventh or eighth grade instead of waiting for high school, it still counts as a high school course.