Welcome back for Part 2 in my review of our experience with AmblesideOnline’s Year 8 curriculum. I have been out of town for the last several days and don’t have a lot of time to write this week, so let’s just jump right back in where we left off last week!
NOTE: The book titles mentioned in this post are part of the AmblesideOnline curriculum, which is under copyright of AmblesideOnline.org. The information in this post is intended for educational purposes only. Be aware that AO’s curriculum and resources are revised from time to time. Please be sure to check the AO website for the most up-to-date versions of their curriculum, booklists, and schedules.
Geography
This year’s geography texts were Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl and Christopher Columbus, Mariner by Samuel Morison. J seemed to enjoy both texts, but certainly Kon-Tiki was the favorite of the two. I did have him do some related map work with the Columbus book, but did not really follow through with that all year. I let him use Seterra for map drills, choosing whatever interested him this year since we have done concentrated studies of countries on every continent by this point. My kids are naturally interested in maps and knowing where locations are in relation to where we live currently or have been in the past, so they often look up places from books or lessons spontaneously without my prompting.
Citizenship, Government and Economics
Charlotte Mason recommended students read Plutarch’s Lives of the Greeks and Romans for developing their ideas about citizenship. We do not always follow the AO schedule for the parallel lives, and the ones I chose for this year were Cato the Younger, Phocion, and Fabius. We also continued reading Ourselves by Charlotte Mason, after beginning it in Year 7. It is not one of my son’s favorite books, even though he admits there must be some value in it…he just does not connect with the book at all. I believe he preferred reading Character is Destiny by Russell Gough since it has a more modern, practical approach to similar topics. For government, we read both Utopia by Thomas More and Whatever Happened to Justice by Richard Maybury. We had a lot of good (and entertaining) discussions about Utopia and whether all of the ideas presented of this supposedly superior society were realistic or even possible in a world populated by fallen humanity. But we also talked about how some of More’s ideas would have been very beneficial and progressive if implemented, especially during his day and age. When asked about which book he enjoyed studying the most this year, J said it was probably Whatever Happened to Justice because of the clear and effective way Maybury explains complex concepts.
Science and Nature Study
This area is the one in which I made drastic changes this year. When looking over the AO Year 8 science titles and notes about the books, I felt that few of the books would be a good fit for our needs this school year. The books that were continued from Year 7 were not ones we wanted to return to due to not having great experiences with either of them. Several of the new books had content warnings, and since I knew I didn’t have time to be reading science aloud or prereading everything, I decided it would be better to wait a year or two before dealing with those.
So instead we used the following Form 3-4 Living Science Guides put together by Nicole Williams: Biology for the whole year, Technology and Electronics during Term 1, Astronomy for Term 2, and Geology in Term 3. (Actually, I didn’t end up buying the guide for the Technology term, just the recommended text, Electronics for Kids by Øyvind Nydal Dahl.) This turned out to be a great decision as J was able to be very independent in all his science studies and enjoyed doing many hands on projects throughout the year that we never would have done otherwise. He did say the books and concepts were not particularly challenging, but he is strong in the sciences and does a lot of reading in that area on his own time.
Mathematics
I guess that leaves me at the last subject I wanted to discuss here, and that is math. After doing MEP math from the Reception Year level through Year 6, we ended up skipping to MEP Year 9 work for the first half of grade 7 because Levels 7-8 were largely review. Halfway through Year 7 I was no longer comfortable teaching with MEP at the higher level because it was really written for an actual math teacher…which I am NOT! There just wasn’t enough guidance for me to teach at that level.
Instead we switched to using Jacob’s Elementary Algebra and Jacob’s Geometry, as well as Strayer Upton Practical Arithmetic Book 3. We did algebra and geometry each 2 days a week, and Strayer-Upton once a week. This slow way of working through each book meant that this year we reached a little over the halfway point through all the algebra and geometry lessons. It is going pretty well, in spite of needing to supplement a little bit with Khan Academy at times when we both needed a little extra practice or help understanding new concepts. I plan to have J continue working on a little algebra and geometry throughout the summer so that we don’t lose what we have learned and can make a little more progress. My hope is that next year we can switch to Algebra II by Term 2 and finish it by Year 10 so that he can begin taking dual enrollment courses for college algebra and beyond.
That’s a Wrap!
Now that we have wrapped up our school year, I am happy to say that Year 8 was a great year. We were challenged and stretched in some ways, but I also loved seeing how the books initiated conversations about big ideas and are preparing us for even more in the upper years.
If you missed last week’s post about the other major Year 8 subject areas I shared, please click here to go read that now. And if you want to know my thoughts after my second time teaching a Year 4 student, go over here for that.
I hope this has been helpful to anyone planning for Year 8, and if you have any questions about the books I mentioned, please leave me a comment below. Until next time, happy homeschooling!
Kiel
