Next year Mic is starting 8th grade. He is my tinkerer, he loves to take things apart and invent things. This summer he is working on building his own go-kart from parts he has collected. He doesn't have any plans, he is just figuring it out as he goes. He is my true kinesthetic learner! It has been difficult at times, we have especially struggled with reading. He loves reading nonfiction, his first grade teacher told us that while most kids in the class would pick up Arthur books or other beginning chapter books, Mic went for nonfiction. But that made it was difficult for a few years because there is not a lot of nonfiction choices for mid to late elementary students and he didn't care for the fiction choices. Fortunately, he did enjoy the Magic Tree House books, enough fact mixed with the story I guess. Then we discovered that he also liked classics, so as much as I don't care for abridged versions of books, we bought him abridged versions of many classic books and that finally sparked a love of reading.

Mic asked to do Beautiful Feet's Early American and World History program next year. He enjoyed their Ancient History program this year (middle school level), and like his younger brother wanted to do some American history next year. This program will also give him 1 history and 1/2 literature credit towards high school.

To finish his literature credit, I have many books on our shelves that he can choose from. He will also be using Queen Homeschool's Language Lesson for the Secondary Child for basic English skills, and rounding out his Language Arts with copywork, and Spelling Power. Last year I picked up Writer's Jungle to use for writing, but I never made the time to read it all the way through because the English curriculum we used this year included writing. So I didn't use it this year. However I am not going with the same curriculum this year, it just wasn't a good fit for my super-active son.  So I will be reading Writer's Jungle this summer and using it for Mic's writing next year.

Mic has decided that he wants to focus on science next year. He has chosen The Rainbow from Beginnings Publishing. It looks like an excellent program and it is VERY hands-on, exactly what he needs! He also requested to learn about robots. That took some searching, but I finally found (on clearance) a curriculum produced by OwiKit that uses several of their robot kits in a discovery sort of way to learn about robotics. I was leery about just setting him loose with the kits, which would have been a lot of fun, because I wanted to direct his attention to the principles of robotics (his chosen career field at the moment.) We will also be using a couple of literature guides from Queen Homeschool to do literature directed nature study in addition to our regular nature studies.

Let's see what else... Mic is going to start Math-U-See's Pre-Algebra for math and DH is going to teach the older boys computer programming and web development. I have NO idea what or how, maybe I'll sit in on the classes and learn something too.