The Johnson Crew!

Hey homeschool mama I have picked out all the curriculum for all the subject areas for my son's sixth grade school year for the 2023-2024 school year coming up and I'm so excited to share those curriculum picks with you today but first can we have a little moment together where we silently freak out that our kids are in middle school now this is crazy like how did we even get here all I can say is I am so relieved that I don't have to deal with public school for my middle schooler that always terrified me I'm really glad that we homeschool in this day

And age in this climate like holy cow so let's jump into it first and English so we're using a curriculum that combines writing grammar and literature all into one course and that is through the Ron Paul Curriculum if you've not heard me talk about this curriculum before we really really love it it's an online video based curriculum so basically for English they would watch like an eight to ten minute long video and then have an assignment to do afterwards and that could be usually a worksheet or writing an essay

And then also some reading so for his sixth grade year it's a little bit different it's a different teacher than what he's had the last couple of years so the setup for the sixth grade English class is two weeks of reading through a book and discussing it in every class and on every review day which is every fifth day they write an essay and so they'll have to write it on a certain topic related to this book and then they're gonna do two weeks Grammar

And Writing and that just goes back and forth every two weeks they switch between those two things so I'm really excited about this I think that'll be interesting for my son as well to kind of have two weeks Focus here two weeks Focus here I'm kind of excited to see what he thinks of that change up I did let him be part of this curriculum decision process so I asked him you know what he thought of the curriculums that we've been doing over the last year which of course he was already doing the wrong paw curriculum for English

And he said he loves it and wants to keep doing that and I'm a big fan of the rompa curriculum and other video based curriculums because it frees me up to then go and work with one of our other three children so that is a huge perk for math we are going to continue using math UC if you have not heard me talk about that program before I do have an entire review video about that program that I'll leave in the description box below and you can check out later

But just to give you a brief explanation about it again it's an another video based program but for this one you only need to watch one video per week or one video per new unit so typically we work through one unit per week unless they hit something that they're kind of struggling with and we need to spend a little bit more time on it but typically you watch one video it's like three to five minutes long and then they do a worksheet and then I have them do two more worksheets throughout the week

So we just do math three days a week and that seems to work really well I'm a huge fan of Matthew C we have been using this from the very get go we use it with all of our children it's just very simple and straightforward which I like he's still going to be working through the Epsilon book at the beginning of this school year I talked in a video a couple months ago like about how a school year was going so far and I mentioned that he really hit a wall with division

And so we took a break and we really really worked hard on multiplication facts and working on division before moving on so that's why he is where he is in that book right now it worked well to take that break and focus on those more rudimentary things to help him get back up to speed and now he's doing really great so if you run into a similar snag with your child don't let it stress you out and make you feel like they're gonna get behind it's gonna be

So much better for the both of you to actually master that content before trying to move on otherwise it's going to be tears all the time because it's just going to be so hard because they don't understand it so definitely take that time that they need to get them to master that before moving on I'm gonna have him work a little bit on it all throughout the summer too just so that well one I kind of want him to catch up but two I fear that if we take that break that he's just gonna forget everything

And it's gonna be so much harder when we start back up so typically even though we take the summer off I still have them do a little bit each week just to keep things fresh so he'll have a little bit to finish up and that book at the beginning of the year and and then he'll be moving into Zeta okay spelling for spelling we are going to continue with sequential spelling which we started this year and we're not super far into it honestly so that book will probably last us all of next year mainly because I just don't do it as often as the book is laid out for you to do I only have him do it three days a week

And I honestly think that that is plenty sufficient so we will just continue on with that book spelling is one of those areas though that I kind of go back and forth on like which way I think is best for it to be taught and practiced so any tips that you have for me what has worked well for your kids definitely leave that in the comments below because I'm always looking for something that's going to be better for history he is going to continue using the Ron Paul Curriculum he's done that for the last couple of years for history

And he absolutely loves it for the last two years the Ron Paul Curriculum history course was about inventors and their inventions and how they changed history and he absolutely ate that up for the sixth grade history course is about ancient history beginning with Moses all the way to the fall of the Roman Empire it includes tie-ins to Modern political ethical and economic arguments which will help students be able to interpret the world they're growing up in so they have videos reading assignments and writing assignments

And I really have loved how this course has helped him be more of an independent learner he doesn't need me to sit there and hold his hand he's able to watch the video get the work done and then I of course read his writing assignments and it's just worked out really well so really a big fan of the Ron Paul Curriculum for science he's going to continue with the book He's currently using which is physical science and then he'll wrap that up in the fall

And move on to life science and these courses are from science Shepherd again another video curriculum I really do love these curriculums I really love science Shepard I'll leave a review video below of the courses that we've used so far but just a quick recap it's a three to five minute long video with a worksheet and so it helps to reinforce what they just learned and they include great pictures and graphics on the screen that help the kids stay engaged and it's taught from a Biblical world view

So really can't say enough good things about that curriculum in previous years I've said that we were doing piano lessons online and he's kind of not wanting to do those lessons anymore instead he likes to watch those videos where the lights come down onto the piano so you can see what keys they're pressing and he's learning songs through those videos he is blowing me away with what he's learning from just watching those types of videos on the piano so we are still going really strong with piano just not doing formal lessons for Bible my husband has taken that over

And so every morning at breakfast he does a lesson with them and works on memory verses with them and prays with them and that's been a really really good family time for us if that schedule like just doesn't really work with maybe your husband goes to work really early in the morning maybe that's something that he could do around the dinner table or in the evening sometime but I find it really really cool for my husband to do that with our kids I really love that they love it

And so that's been a really great thing for our family and that sums up his sixth grade year I cannot believe I am saying those words right now it just feels way too old whew if you can relate leave me an emoji down below let me know how you're feeling about it all right well thanks so much for joining me today if you're new here I hope you'll stick around and hit that subscribe button below leave me a thumbs up if this was helpful to you

And I hope to catch you in the next video the next two weeks I'm going to be sharing the curriculum picks for my daughter's fourth grade year and my son's second grade year so join us each week for those videos thank you so much happy schooling thank you