Homeschool Year in Review: 2019-20 (7th grade)

Kyrie has a completely different style than Ben. "Tell me what I have to do and I will do it." She finds me if she doesn't understand something she is assigned and otherwise, she operates fairly independently. But she is exacting about having me keep up on corrections and grading. 

Math- She wanted to continue using Horizons math for Pre-Algebra. She enjoyed it, understood it, and other than a few times when I needed to help her, I just graded her work. 

History & Literature- We continued with The Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages. This curriculum is ideal for younger students, but I teach it concurrently to Kyrie and Evie and Kyrie is responsible for writing a summary and for using additional internet resources. The activity guide makes it for us and we check out 5 or more library books per chapter for additional learning. When the library closed in March, it dampened my style. More e-books, more creativity, and less reading requirements (just like kids who go public and private school) didn't hurt us too much.


Earth Science & Astronomy-This was our first year using Elemental Science and we liked it a lot. Making use of science encyclopedias, labs and written lab reports, and written summaries, I loved the way this book offered additional resources for going beyond, but also could be done simply. Because I was trying to teach the same subject at three levels (using two different texts-more on Evie's later), I had trouble staying ahead. Buying the lab kit in advance would have been helpful; however, for this course, the materials weren't terribly expensive or difficult to find. The curriculum is flexible, offering suggestions for a 2-day a week or a 5-day a week schedule (which can be adjusted to 3 or 4 days/week). It provides valuable guidance in preparing a science fair project, but coronavirus happened.

Grammar-We used Rod and Staff (just the text and teacher's guide). Kyrie continues to love grammar, and while we rolled our eyes at some of the focus on archaic language, bad theology, and farm references, there are not mistakes. A well-edited grammar book is good thing.

Writing & Rhetoric-We kept going with Classical Academic Press's writing program. This year it was Encomium and Vituperation which involved biographical writing while focusing on positive and negative behaviors and analysis of them. Kyrie loves to write and spent hundreds of hours researching Louisa May Alcott for her final paper. (If the library had been open, it would have been easier.)

Spelling-Kyrie worked ahead of grade level, wrapping up her spelling studies this year with Spelling Workout H. We love this series; focusing on a logical study of spelling (or as much as can be logical about English) and offering just enough puzzles and exercises to understand how to spell a word and its meaning.  The 36 lessons are four pages each, and so work nicely with a schedule of grammar four days and spelling on the fifth.

Bible-We've been using God's Great Covenant series for year and I like them more every year. This year was Old Testament 2: From 1 Samuel thru Malachi.  This series does a great job of sticking to Scripture and not missing the point of Scripture: God's love and redeeming work in the world.  It involves a lot of Bible reading, some text, worksheet pages, and a quiz. This can be taught at different grade/age levels and Kyrie and Evie did this class together.

Art-I had plans for 4 museum trips this year and we made it to one b.c. (before coronavirus). I took the Metropolitan Museum lesson plans and chose to use about half of them, particularly anything that coincided with what we were doing for history. Most of them didn't offer a lot of specific art projects; Kyrie usually viewed the art and we talked about it. For Evie (who did the same thing with us), I came up with a related art project.

Music-Kyrie kept going with piano lessons.