31 Days 8th Grade Homeschool

Welcome to Saturday's edition of 31 Days of Homeschool Adventures. Each Saturday of this month I will feature one of my kids and talk about how I do school with them. Each one of them has their own strengths and skill set and not one of them learn the same way as another. It makes for an interesting and fun homeschool experience and also a very challenging one. I love that each one is created uniquely and none of them are like the other. Each of my children was created with a purpose and have amazing gifts. As a homeschool mom, my job is to help them discover their individual potential and help them learn how to walk in their giftings. Watching them walk in their gifts is one of the most exciting things. And you know, they don't have to wait until they are adults to do big things.As a wise little asparagus once said, "Little guys can do big things too."

Meet Little Man, he is in 8th grade this year. He loves history, he checks out history books from the library all the time. The big ones with like 900 pages. I love that he loves history. He has never liked doing worksheets and has never liked to write. So I don't use the curriculum that requires a lot of written work with him. He loves to build and create. And he loves reading. With those interests in mind, we do a lot of history and especially when he was younger, we do a lot of hands on learning. While he does have language/grammar assignments, I don't bury him with them and keep them low key. Yes, he needs to learn how to properly place a semi-colon but I know from talking with him about his ambitions, he has no desire to write a novel or configure reports for a living when he is older. If he changes his mind, his desire to learn those things will also change. Right now he has been reading about the battle tactics of WWII and he really gets into how everything came together. That stuff bores me to tears, but give me a cookbook and I will read it and take notes (and spend time in the kitchen learning new things). However, if at some point battle tactics become important to where I am in life, I will totally start asking my son to explain it to me as if I'm a third grader. He does really well in Math and while it isn't his favorite subject, we do move along at a faster pace than he does with his language book. That is the beauty of home education. We can move slow in an area that is difficult and less interesting and move quickly in an area that is easier and sparks more interest. And I can let him explore the areas of history and science that he is most interested in. (The velocity of a bullet or missile instead the life-cycle of a butterfly.) By no means does he get out of his least favorite subjects, we just emphasize those he enjoys the most.

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