6th grade curriculum??

[macimom]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone has some recommendations for me...my dd will be in 6th grade this year and I am at a total loss for curriculum. We have used Calvert and Sonlight in the past and neither suited us well, although she does love to read so I'm not opposed to a literature based curriculum. I would prefer something secular, although, it's not a requirement. With three kids, I really need something planned for me, so I prefer not to put together my own as I have done in the past. I have looked at Moving Beyond the Page and while I think it would be great for us, it's just so expensive. Any thoughts would be so appreciated.
Thanks!!
Kim

[AAK]

Rather than a boxed curriculum, how about buying course specific curriculum. You shouldn't need to do any more than with a boxed, but you can tailor the program to your dd a bit. And, by 6th grade, this is often needed. Even in public school, by sixth grade the kids have some same (history, life science, PE, language arts) and other classes that are grouped by ability or interest (math, electives).

You can also do stuff like spider smart (online class) for reading/writing http://www.spidersmart.com/index.php

Or teaching textbooks for math.

Amy

[onyxravnos]

i'm rather liking oak meadow with some sonlight books added.

[zjande]

I put together our curriculum as opposed to buying a whole package for the year from one company or something. But at the same time I like stuff planned out for me so I don't have to put a ton of thought into what I'm teaching that day.

I'll just share what worked for us last year when my son was a 6th grader.

For history I used Story of the World + the activity guides & test booklet. Each chapter of the activity guide lays it all out for me- questions to ask ds, other books to read, activities to do, movies to watch. We relied heavily on this for much of ds's reading.

For grammar I used Growing with Grammar. Again, I'd just assign him a new chapter each lesson. For math was Saxon 76 and also Challenge Math. For vocab. we used Wordly Wise & spelling tests.

Honestly I never did find a perfect science plan. We mostly did a lot of reading from books I took from "living science" book lists, or watched movies. There are some great websites full of free movies to view online. We also never found a helpful writing curriculum. This yr for 7th grade we're going to do Jump In by Apologia.

Well, that's all I recall of the top of my head. Oh, I just remembered we also did a few literature studies. My ds would read a book & I'd use the "mini-guides" Rainbow Resource sells to ask him questions or further the learning he was doing with the book.

I don't know if I'm being even slightly helpful. Let me know if you have any questions or would like me to share any links or anything.

[annettemarie]

We're using Story of the World Volume 4 as the spine of my sixth grader's curriculum this year. The first three volumes we all did together, but 4 seems a lot darker to me, and I don't feel like my 9 and 7 would handle it well. And it's good, because he can do the outlines, mapwork, and tests and also take some of the more advanced literature selections. Then we're using Life of Fred for math. I'll probably throw in some vocab and he wants to do Latin. I need to look and see what the recommended Waldorf sixth grade blocks are as well to see if there's anything I want to pull from there.

[hotmamacita]

AM - What do you mean that it seems a lot darker to you?

[annettemarie]

Originally Posted by hotmamacita

AM - What do you mean that it seems a lot darker to you?

Well, modern times just seems darker-- World Wars, the Holocaust, the nuclear arms race and the cold war, Chernobyl, all of that. I know that in reality it's not worse than ancient times or the middle ages-- nothing new under the sun and all that-- but because it's so recent it just seems as if it would be harder for the younger kids to handle. Does that make sense? Maybe it's just me.

[mangopassion]

I have our sixth grade curriculum choices on my blog. I haven't finished with all the links yet, but I wanted to get the list up.

Most of the curriculum we are using this year is open and go type stuff except for the Living Math and Family Math. Also, Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding takes a little bit of planning... just to figure out what order you will be doing the lessons in and gathering supplies, but it's not terribly difficult.

[macimom]

Thanks, everyone! I have a lot to think about and this really helps!!