“To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being: to truly know yourself,
take a real interest in the world.”
-Rudolph Steiner
You know, I just realized that I shared what we’re doing for kindergarten and third grade and sixth grade, but I never shared what my eighth grader will be doing!
The short answer? Oak Meadow. It’s our curriculum of choice this year and so far it’s working out great.
The spine of Oak Meadow 8 is civics. In an eighth grade Waldorf school class, the students are encouraged to branch out and become part of the world. It’s the end of an nine-year journey that began cocooned in a Waldorf kindergarten and ends with the young men and women ready to step out and step up and become engaged in the world around them, getting to know more about themselves and their beliefs along the way. A common complaint against homeschooling is that we shelter our children too much, never letting them move out of the home and into the world. This year, we will study our community, our nation, and our world, learning about laws and how and why they exist. It is my hope that this helps Michael flesh out what he believes and, more importantly, why.
It’s great that it’s an election year. It will give him a chance to see how the electoral process looks close up. He’ll also be doing some volunteer work in the community this year as well.
For math, we’re sticking with Saxon. Not Waldorf. Not Steiner. But it works for us.
English is Oak Meadow as well, although I’m feeling a bit meh on the literature selections. For one thing, he has already read most of them. For another, they seem a little heavy on “trendy” and light on classics. He’s already written his essay on The Giver and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I do like the Writing for 100 Days book and I love that he’s reading Strunk & White’s Elements of Style.
Science is Physical Science, also from Oak Meadow. We’re too new to it to really have an opinion formed, but I am afraid he’s finding it a little dry so far.
He’s also studying Spanish this year using a program that’s free through our public library, Mango.
While we still haven’t found a cello teacher, he is taking piano and is participating in not one, but two orchestras. He’s also singing in the church choir.
That just leaves physical education (um… running around the block? We’ll have to find a sport to pick up) and his eighth grade project, which we haven’t even discussed yet.
Do you have an eighth grader? What are they doing this year?
