8th Grade!!!! I Can't believe it!!

So it happened!! My little man started 8th grade today!!! We decided to do the homeschool, (yes, I looked it up and this is an appropriate spelling) again this year which gives me the opportunity to really fine tune his needs for when he goes back to the classroom for 9th grade.    I nearly had a heart attack when I saw all of the textbooks that were going to be living in my house for the school year.  I have been dreading the Algebra 1, but we made it through the first day. For all families trying to decide if home schooling is going to be a good decision for their family, there are a few things to keep in mind.

• Homeschooling can be very flexible
• you can take vacations that work for the whole family (just take the materials you will need with you)
• you don't need to do all subjects all of the year.
• we decided to do math and English all year and History for the first half of the year and science the second half.  That way, James won't get so bogged down with 4 classes.
• you can do 5 days of work over the whole week making the actual time spent for one day much less.  This works really well for a lot of our kids because they like the same thing every day.

As a creative mum, I have spent a lot of time trying to find games and activities to teach James what he needs to learn without him knowing that he is learning.  This morning for English, I decided it would be great to start back at the beginning working on parts of speech.  James had a blast playing >>this game<<  he didn't even realize that he was reinforcing necessary skills.  

There are a lot of really great sites where you can find free and very inexpensive materials to help enhance you families educational experience.  One of my favorites is Teachers Pay Teachers >> here <<  I just put in the grade I am looking for and click on free.  YIKES!! There is so much there that James will have to be in the 8th grade for 5 years for me to use it all!!  

Finally, for James, one of his favorite things about homeschooling is he adores his classmates and they adore him back!!