Well, this is bittersweet! This is the last child that I’ll be homeschooling 6th grade. Want to take a peek at our curriculum choices for 6th grade homeschool? It’s funny how many things change through the years. I only have one curriculum choice in this list that I’ve consistently used for all five of my kids at this level. Everything else is brand new for this student or newer for us in the last few years. Come take a look.
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6th Grade Homeschool
6th grade is pretty much smack dab in the middle of your child’s schooling career. So, if your plan is to work yourself out of a job as a homeschool mom, by the time your child is in 6th grade, they should be doing at least part of their subjects independently.
You can buy a “6th grade in a box” type of curriculum or you can go the eclectic homeschool route, which is what we love to do.
When I’m choosing curriculum, I consider these things:
- my child’s needs – their “smarts” and challenges – how can I customize to meet my unique child where they are at?
- my budget – many of us are homeschooling on a tight budget and this is one reason I don’t want to spend $1K per child on a complete 6th grade curriculum
- is it homeschool-friendly? is this particular curriculum open & go and easy to use without a clunky teacher’s manual or extensive lesson planning on my part (because you know that I don’t lesson plan!)
Listen to episode 263
It’s our fifth and final time homeschooling a 6th grader. Here’s what we’re using and why. This is episode 263 of the Homeschool with Moxie Podcast.
Inside Peek Into Curriculum for 6th Grade Homeschool
Mid-Year Homeschool Curriculum Recap for 6th Grade
Here’s the curriculum review that really matters – our mid-year look at the good, the bad, and the ugly for our 6th grade resources! While everything looks promising in August or September, by the time January rolls around, you have a pretty good sense if you need to ditch something or change it up.
And one of the best things about homeschooling is that you absolutely can set a curriculum aside if it’s not working for your child.
That doesn’t mean that the curriculum is worthless. In fact, it might be the perfect choice for your next kid! But embrace the ability to make changes mid-year if necessary.
Here’s a look at what’s working – and what’s not – with our 6th grade curriculum.
Our 6th Grade Homeschool Curriculum Choices
6th Grade Math
BJU Press Math is still our go-to math curriculum choice in the middle school years. From K-5th, we only purchase the student work text. But starting in 6th grade, we purchase both the student textbook and the teacher’s manual.
The student textbook for BJU Press Math 6 is not consumable – so your student will need to write out their work on separate paper. And at this level, I finally break down and buy the teacher’s manual just for the answers. I don’t use anything else in the teacher’s book, including lesson ideas or teaching scripts. It’s just not necessary, in my opinion. I’m not trying to recreate a classroom environment. Instead, I’m able to use a one-on-one tutoring approach with my child.
Here’s what we do. We simply look at the lesson page for the day and talk through the concept. I know immediately if my child understands the lesson or not, and we adjust from there. She may need more explanation or she may be ready to start working out some problems.
Here’s an inside peek into the BJU Press Math 6 books.
Language Arts for Middle School
Remember that language arts includes many sub-categories, including phonics, spelling, vocabulary, reading, literature, grammar, writing, and even speech. We don’t do all of these every year, per se, but on an as-needed and always-changing basis according to age, grade-level, ability, and needs.
This year, we’ll focus on writing, spelling, grammar, and reading. Here are the eclectic resources we’re using for each.
Writing With Skill
We used Writing With Skill about a decade ago with our older kids, so we’re picking it up again to focus on a step-by-step writing plan. WWS is written by Susan Wise Bauer, of Story of the World fame, and is published by Peace Hill Press.
Writing With Skill 1 is geared toward students in 5th-7th grades.
From the publisher:
Learn how to write with clarity and confidence! The Workbook is written directly to the student to foster independence and gives essential training in organization, composition structure, and research methods. All source material included; teaches one- and two-level outlining. Instructor text also required.
Years ago we did a review of how Writing With Skill progresses through each level. I’ll likely do an updated review once we dig into this again.
Here are the seven parts of this year’s curriculum:
- Basic Skills (weeks 1-3)
- Building Blocks for Composition (weeks 4-15)
- Sentence Skills (weeks 16-22)
- Beginning Literary Criticism: Prose Writing about Stories (weeks 23-26)
- Research (weeks 27-31)
- Beginning Literary Criticism: Poetry Writing about Poems (weeks 32-34)
- Final Project (weeks 35-36)
All About Spelling
All About Spelling has been our go-to recommendation for about a decade now. It’s the only thing that worked for our dyslexic child, but it works beautifully for all my kids. It’s simple to use, takes just a few minutes a day, and is very flexible to go at your child’s pace.
Daily Grams
We’ve used Fix It! Grammar from IEW for a few years now, so my daughter has a good handle on her grammar right now. So this year, we’ll do a short daily grammar review with Daily Grams.
Each day’s review is on one page and includes six of these areas of grammar daily:
- capitalization
- punctuation
- fragments and sentences
- parts of speech
- analogies
- difficult words
- clauses
- alphabetizing
- spelling
- synonymns/antonymns
- simple/compound/complex sentences
- prefixes/roots/suffixes
- sentence combining
Literature
We’ll continue reading classics and fun book series. We use a lot of audio books around here too! Instead of written book reports, she’ll continue to use narration to tell back what she reads.
6th Grade Science
For 6th grade science, we’ll be using God Made the World from Generations Homeschool. This curriculum is from an explicitly Christian perspective and follows the general topics of a typical earth science curriculum. We’ll start out using the student workbook with the text, but we may ditch the workbook and use notebooking instead.
Social Studies
We’re excited for a change of pace this year with Guest Hollow Jr. Geography & Cultures! I’ve seen it recommended many times online if you want to use a literature-based approach. Since this is our last time homeschooling 6th grade, it seemed like the right year to dive into a fun new resource like Guest Hollow and give it a try! We’re pretty excited.
Guest Hollow provides a buffet of ideas, book recommendations, videos, hands-on activities, and more, plus a scripted out scheduled for your entire school year in each course. However, it’s your job to curate from this list and craft a customized learning experience that makes sense for your family and your child. The goal is to enjoy learning through living books but not to be overwhelmed by the vast array of options.
This is a digital download of the course schedule, which includes all the recommended resources and when to use them throughout the year. So far, I’ve downloaded the schedule and purchased a few key books. We’ll decide on the rest when we get to them and likely borrow from the library. My daughter is most excited about the Cooking Class book that was recommended and making meals from around the world as we study different cultures.
We’ll definitely provide a full review after we’ve had a chance to get into it in the fall. Stay tuned!
Fine Arts
Since I teach piano, my daughter will continue to take piano lessons from her mama 🙂
Then, for art, we love lessons from Masterpiece Society. We’ve purchased several of their Watercolor Whimsies courses and enjoy the style of the completed pieces. The lessons are go-at-your-own-pace and include videos.
Bible
My daughter enjoyed using our Little Fishes Bible Studies in her K-4 years, but now that she’s older, she has thoroughly enjoyed being challenged by studying inductively through entire books of the Bible. Don’t think kids in 6th grade can handle studying through an entire book? They absolutely can do it and they love it!
So, we’ll be working through the Jonah & Nahum Self Study Workbook for Inductive Bible Study. Instead of completing it in a quick 9 or 16 weeks, we’ll likely spread this one out the entire year like we did last year for James.
