Eighth-Ninth Grade Lit

To Kill A Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
The Hiding Place
Huckleberry Finn
When You Reach Me
A Wrinkle in Time
Screwtape Letters
Treasure Island
The Elements of Style
Omnivore's Dilemma for Young Readers
Maus
Hero With A Thousand Faces
All Creatures Great and Small
Father Brown
Sherlock Holmes
Red Scarf Girl
Into the Wild
Illustrated Man

Day 3

Faith did OYAN. An excerpt from today's wrtiting: "I could hardly hear anything over the sound of my heart pounding, the blood rushing in my ears, my own rapid thoughts. I was still trying not to throw up."

Gil, Trixie and Gloria cleaned their horrible room. I'll even show you a "during" photo, when it looks the worst because they've dragged everything out from under the beds:

Gilbert downloaded a new Minecraft map to play. Electric Caves, or something. Looks cool.

Abby is reading The Glass Sentence and enjoying it. It's alternate history, so she's spent a lot of time researching how it really was to go along with the alternate.

Day 2

Math for Gilbert and Trixie.

Minecraft for Faith, Abby, Gilbert and Bede. They are cooperating to survive in Exsilium, with breaks to slay ghasts in the Nether on Bede's LAN world.

I'm quite impressed with Bede's Minecraft skills. He's a real pro, with no instruction from anyone, just wiki research. He learned how to build a nether portal alone, for instance, and how to open his world to the other kids.

Gloria is desperate to play Minecraft. It's a good impetus for her to push past her fear/anxiety of learning to read. She's making real progress.

Bede is also making comics. Below is an advertisement, which he has been inserting.

TRY PEPSI. IT'S GOOD TO DRINK IT!

Gloria's Enderman family. Aww.

Faith is signed up for the forums at OYAN. The usernames are remarkably geeky. Sherlock, Doctor Who, LOTR and Princess Bride predominate. It's charming to find a microcosm of homeschool dorkiness.

Day 1

Faith did One Year Adventure Novel, pronounced it AWESOME.
Gilbert and Trixie did Xtramath and both read the second Lunch Lady book.
Gloria did McGuffey Primer.

Happy New Year

Let's see how long I can go this year. I do like blog recordkeeping, I'm just not very good at it.

Last year we kept homeschooling through the year, stopping around April for the arrival of baby Clementine. We took six weeks off of traditional schooling and then began a relaxed summer schedule.

Now high tide school is on! Yay! As usual, goals are to keep everyone at or above grade level for reading and math. And... GO!