6th Grade homeschool curriculum for my crazy active learners

I’m in the midst of curriculum buying, and planning and realized I hadn’t shared my homeschooling plans for next year, and realized I hadn’t shared my theoretical 6th grade homeschool curriculum for next year.  I say theoretical because we always seem to change something mid-year.

A lot of things are staying the same, so you won’t see too many big surprises here.

 

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Organization for us, this is staying the same for 6th grade

 

We are going to continue to use Illuminations*, this time year 6, and I’m super duper excited, I was looking at the books they’ve got planned and they’re some of my favorite authors for the read alone guides (more on that in a minute).

 

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

We did not read all of the books I had planned last year because I opted to spend extra time working on typing, but next fall the kids will be done with all of their various typing classes, or I will have gone insane from their working on it.  One of those two.  I don’t know which.  But, here’s our reading list from Illuminations (I’m going to be switching between read alone books and family study guides, and all of the Amazon links are affiliate).  I may have a few comments on random books I’m particularly looking forward to, or not looking forward to….

 

Read Alone Guides:  The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco (it’s Patricia Polacco, that alone makes it awesome, that and I think you could do a unit study just on her WW2 picture books, and you would sob your eyes out), Children of the Wild West by Russell Freedman (this will be perfect with my planned Westward Movement unit to go with the Kirsten doll), D-Day Landings: The Story of the Allied Invasion by Richard Platt (I love these leveled readers, so I’m excited for this book), The Dragon’s Child: A Story of Angel Island by Laurence Yep (I’ve heard great things about his books, and think I might have read one once), The French Revolution (Witness to History) by Sean Connolly, Hearts and Hands: Chronicles of the Awakening Church (I am loving this series), The Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis (an excuse to have the kids read it, awesome!), Rescue and Redeem: Chronicles of the Modern Church (still like this series), Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins, Shhh! We’re Writing the Constitution by Jean Fritz ( read this about 20 times when I was in 4th grade), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis (the Narnia movie I refuse to show my kids, it’s THAT bad), War Horse by Michael Morpurgo (we may skip this one, because I don’t know how Princess will handle it), Where was Patrick Henry on the 29th of May by Jean Fritz, and Why Not Lafayette? by Jean Fritz

Family Study Guides: Breaking Stalin’s Nose, The Boys’ War by Jim Murphy (this looks like a really interesting Civil War book, I haven’t seen it before), The Clay Marble by Minfong Ho, Dickens: His Work and His World by Michael Rosen (so I have an irrational dislike of Dickens ever since I was forced to read Great Expectations, I give a pass to A Christmas Carol, but Jeff is working on me to include A Tale of two Cities), Island on Bird Street, The Lacemaker and the Princess, A Long Walk to Water, Of Courage Undaunted, The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Princess will be happy with the poetry, me, not so much), Shipwrecked!, Shooting Kabul, Star of Light, To My Husband and Other Poems by Anne Bradstreet (I find interesting the idea of colonial era poetry), Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

For Math we’ll be moving on with Math U See, and going to Zeta, the last book in the elementary math series.  I’m still debating if I’ll buy the manipulatives or not.  The kids very quickly quit using the blocks for fractions, so I don’t know if that will be worth it.

Writing, we will continue to use the WITS writing curriculum, and the hands-on grammar.  I’ve seen tremendous improvement in their writing this year, but I want to continue that trend.

 

Science, history, and geography

 

We will be in our final year of the four year history cycle, and covering modern history with Mystery of History 4*, I can’t wait to go through modern history.  Along with it, I’ll be using the Super-Supplemental collection again (you can see the Super Supplemental collection on the MOH4 page), and possibly adding in a few notebooking pages from Cobblestone Path.  I’m not sure exactly how I’ll do that yet, but I’m toying with that idea.

For geography we will be continuing our gradual trek around the world and the country.  On Monday I’ll be sharing a post about how I plan geography without a curriculum (I’m still going to be using the Adventurous Mailbox stuff, but there are a lot more countries than there are books, so I’ll use them when we study that country).

As I mentioned a few weeks ago with my Ultimate Chemistry post (click the picture up above), we are studying CKE Chemistry* this coming year, and I cannot wait to try it out.  After what feels like an eternity of studying biology in various forms, it will be nice to study something different.

Also, while I’m discussing curriculum, Bright Ideas Press* is having their annual Spring Sale, and this is THE time to buy your curriculum.  I love that you can use the coupons several times, I’m working out the best use of my money (should I get it all in one swoop, or several different purchases and pay more shipping).

 

Want to see all of our homeschool curriculum picks or reviews?

Then, go check out my homeschool curriculum page, I just finished putting it together last week, though I still need to tweak a few things on it.