6th Grade

Here's how 6th grade is shaping up...what we're using for curriculum and how it's working for us:

Mane's every day list is to ALWAYS:

* Read for half an hour (book of her choice).

* Do assignments on Spelling City (words taken from her Logic of English list or whatever she misspelled in her writing assignments).

* Do Xtra Math for practicing speed with math facts.

* Do 3-4 logic puzzles. Right now she's working her way through a book of Perplexors. Previously she was working on Mind Benders. Later this year we'll be checking out other logic/critical thinking puzzles, and we'd love suggestions!

Mane's 3-5x/week list:

* Do a math lesson from her Saxon math book.

* Work through Logic of English lesson with me.

* Work through Write With the Best lesson with me.

* Work through Biology lesson with me, using Prentice Hall's high school biology book. We plan to use this book over this year AND next year. So, we're taking it slow, digging as deep as we can, doing activities and labs. Mane keeps a notebook of vocabulary words from the week's lessons. She also answers some of the questions from the book and does independent projects related to the book materials.

* Attend her homeschool co-op's history class once a week, read emails from her teacher & do the week's homework!

* Listen to Pimsleur Spanish lesson. All I asked her to do was listen to the lessons and participate. She's decided to put together a Spanish notebook and folder with all the things she's learning!

Mane's once-a-week list:

* Participate in Poetry Teatime with myself and some friends. This means bringing favorite poems or her own writings to the table to share, listening to the poetry others brought, and drinking tea!

* Listen to Classics for Kids podcasts about types of music or particular composers. Keep track of where composers were from and where they lived and place them on the history timeline.

* Listen to the Torah readings for the week and participate in conversation about the readings.

Optional List:

* Watch documentaries already in her queue on Netflix.

* Work with Lego Mindstorms.

* And, of course, all the things she does for fun that also qualify as learning: crochet, weave, paint, write letters & emails to friends, origami, etc, etc, etc...


Over all, things are working out very, very well. Mane recently joined the swim team at the YWCA. So, she has less free time and is learning to budget time. We have had a number of great conversations about planning and getting difficult things done while you're fresh. We've also talked about how getting started is often the hardest part, and sometimes it's easier to decide to do a little bit for now and a little bit later. Often she finds that if she "tricks" herself into getting started she plows through to the finish!