Teresa's Top Picks for Homeschool Jr High School

History is a fun subject for Jr High levels. You can stretch from grade school curriculum levels to high school and make it work to fit your student's level of interest.
In many districts or locals one year of History is excluded but we like History at Agape Academy so we will continue through all three years of Jr. High.
We began 6th grade with Story of the World- though this is a course designed to stretch from 4th to 7th grades we found it perfect for information that was both interesting and easy to read.
Story of the World is writen to teach about the different parts of the world active in its time period at the same time. It was like traveling around in a "meanwhile back at the ranch" type of format.
Included with the set we purchased the activity book. I believe it is a must for all levels of useage. The mapwork was nessacary to complete the learning process of where each country was located and how much was 'occupied' at the time period of study. May activities are offered from question and answers to research projects and even cooking recipes! We enjoyed a couple of the later, but mostly enjoyed the mapwork and questions which we often chose to discuss as apposed to writing out and answering.

This year for 7th grade we have chosen a simlar product from the Mystery of History series of History lessons.
We chose the Red set of books, MOH3. It included a hard cover text book, ( which John is delighted that he will be able to use a nascar book cover protector on after it not fitting last years books) and a paperback activity book as well.
As with SOTW it has crafts to research including web sites to look up and mapwork. It also includes pictures and information to create a Time Line for your wall.
Unlike SOTW MOH is Christian in perspective so we are excited to find more of this angel. SOTW taught us many religious histories of different religions but was not so focused on the Christain aspect of History.
Reason for choosing: When it came down to it the reason we chose it is my son read portions from it and said "oh cool lets get this one it has real photographs in it! Not just drawings!"
So we like the visual appeal.
Later this year I will update to let you know how it is working for us.

Other great choices we were looking at were the Heritage series from Bob Jones and SOS History 7th grade. We found cost efficiently MOH was better than the first one and SOS was something we have used throughout the years with my other students and needed a break from for History.


We are however using it for Science!
We chose SOS Science 7 &8 for this years Science partly because we used it with the other kids and they love science still! Secondly because we already have it. We enjoy the mini tutors and games they have included in SOS courses plus the helpful links to online help when you get a problem is always good to have at AOP.Com.
The scope and sequence available there helped us to originally choose this product because it is in keeping with the schools in our area. I believe this is important when chooseing curriculum, to check the local schools and be sure you are following thier area of study to an extent, if you have already studied that then move on to the next level but being sure you have at least what they have done is important. This is so that your kids do not hear from thier friends what mine did this year " We did that in 4th grade!" in regards to our California History class. We did not because in my high school state I had not taken state history until high school, SO in my book we were early. I am also sure we did a bit more intensive study than 4th graders did. Still my kids were put on the spot and I try to keep that sort of thing from happening in regards to homeschooling because some kids still do not get it.


Another good choice for Science that we love the looks of is Apoligia Astronomy which our home school group is discusing using this year. We may join it and do it as a secondary science class just because of the set up and organisation of study tools involved. It includes a Text and notebook with study questions and crossword puzzles and other ativities.
I heard there is a rocket project involved as well!

English-- Writing Strands and Daily Grams with Stech Vaughn's Vocabulary Connections
We chose this because they seem to be suited for the home school 12 year old. WS speaks to the student including telling the student to bring their work to the parent teacher, and repeating the instructions. We like that this will keep me the teacher from having to repeat myself as much as well as the cute way it talks to the student is right up the alley we were looking for.
Daily Grams is a one page a day lesson geared to be ten minute drills each day of the school year. They are meant to be fast and reminders of the grammar we have learned through the years.
The Vocab we got for 50 cents but is colorful and has some reading comp questions in it so it seemed to be a great fit for us!

Math-- what a delima! Trying to choose a math program is extremely difficult when the all time favorite Horizons only went to 6th grade. We ended up wht SOS8 by default ( we own it already and he is at the level after completing Horizons). If I had chosen to purchase I would have tried Teaching TExt books Pre Algebra on him. I believe he will enjoy the colorful computer program that speaks to you as we tried the samples and he did well with it.
Math U See is our choice for High School math because it is better cost efficently and my daughter enjoys learning from the teacher on the DVD program. She got all As in Geometry so it is worth the cost!

I will update with some more top pics in a few weeks so be sure and check back!