My boys are grades 8 and 11 this year.
I will not be re-listing the specific curriculum I am using this year. I already did that on my Resources for 2010-2011 School Year page. If you want to see my favorites for that see my tab at the top of the page or click the link in the previous sentence. Those are some of my favorite resources for the grades we are currently doing, or we would not be using them. On that page there are pictures of the main books we are using and a link to find them. But finish reading this post first or open the page in a new tab and then come back.
Since I already listed my favorite resources for 8th and 11th grades you get a bonus. I am going to list some of my other favorites.
OK... I have a LOT of favorites. We have over 3,000 books in our home and I like them all.
I looked up "favorite" in the online thesaurus and so I will tell you what resources are
| "admired, adored, beloved, best-loved, cherished, choice, cream of the crop, darling, dear, dearest, desired, especial, esteemed, favored, finest, highly regarded, liked, main, number one, pet, pleasant, popular, precious, prime, prized, revered, select, top, treasured, wished-for" |
Here are some of the resources that are admired, best-loved, especial, popular... at our house:
Bible
Well there is the Bible that would be #1. LOL
Then we like the guides we are using this year. We also like Calvary Chapel's Free Bible Curriculum, you can't beat free. I used their curriculum a number of times over the years for my kids. They have two levels for each lesson for younger and older students. We have also used and like Kay Arthur's Discover 4 Yourself Inductive Bible Studies for Kids.
History
Landmark Books -
- Alphabetical order - helpful when shopping, I check off the ones we own so I know when I want to buy new ones.
- Chronological order - great for finding the book to go with the time period you are studying.
- Number order
Genevieve Foster history books
Christian Heroes biographies - Christian Heroes Then and Now (missionary biographies) and Heroes of History (American History biographies) books by YWAM
I could go on and on... and on but I won't. I will
Because I said I would.Historical Fiction
Henty Books -
- A handy list to print out for your use with Henty Books - so you know when to read each one - listed chronologically with the dates and place for each book
- Henty at Archive.org - download pdf's of most if not all the books
- Henty at Gutenberg - download as text files
- Another Henty site - chronological or alphabetical list - download zip file or read online
Louise A. Vernon books
A new favorite - Salem Ridge Press books
That is all you get...
I will stop.. I could go on. Science
Lyrical Life Science - we love these. These are especially good if you have kids that learn well through song. These songs take well known tunes and put science information to them... very memorable.
Creation Science Study Guides by Felice Gerwitz
Wonders of Creation books
We own and love a variety of Creation based books from D is for Dinosaur to Answers (which is now the New Answers book). Try Answers in Genesis and Institute for Creation Research
I could list a whole lot more... we love science almost as much as history.
Language Arts
IEW all the way!!!! just started this year but love, love love it... wish we had used this all the way through.
We also loved Movies as Literature. There is a great review on the student book page. Movies as Literature is a easy way to introduce literary analysis and also cover essay writing. You can read the book first if you want, then you watch a movie, then there are discussion questions for each movie and then several essay questions to choose from. We did not read the books first. We only watched the movies. My girls did this in a co-op setting and it was great. They struggled with the essay questions but it was good for them. They are better writers today then they were then because of this course. We completed it in a year.
Other writing stuff... mostly for the teachers or pages to hand out for writing prompts/ideas.
If You're Trying to Teach Kids How to Write...you've gotta have this book! by Marjorie Frank
Complete Writing Lessons for the Primary Grades and ... for the Middle Grades by Marjorie Frank
Teaching Writing With Picture Books as Models (Grades 4-8) by Rosanne Kurstedt and Maria
Koutras
The Art of Teaching Writing - new edition by Lucy McCormick Calkins
Writing Workshop Survival Kit by Gary Muschla (I have the first edition, so I am not sure what is new)
Spelling - we used a number of programs when the kids were little, mostly on the computer. One of my daughters struggled with spelling. Her brother 5 years younger than her, was always correcting her grammar and spelling. She did Apples spelling for secondary students... it did help some... now she relies on her spellchecker and on her brother to catch things she misses.
Grammar- we have always used Daily Grams for daily grammar review from 3rd-8th and then Easy Grammar Plus for High School years.
The kids also did some Megawords and Wordly Wise for vocab.
Math
We have always done Saxon. That is what was available and mostly used when my kids were young. We kept using it because we had the books. If I was starting out I would use either Math-U-See or Teaching Textbooks. We love the way Teaching Textbooks is set up and have been grateful to be able to borrow them from a homeschool friend.
One thing I highly recommend is Hands-On Equations. It is a must do before your child encounters algebra. It will give you and your child confidence that you can face what is ahead.
We did have some other fun books for math that the kids would use once in a while, but not often. I also had a book I used that gave you more hands on ways to teach math for when my girls were struggling.
Hands-On Math!: Ready-To-Use Games & Activities for Grades 4-8 Hands-On Algebra
We also play a lot of games. When the kids were younger we would do a whole day of school each month using only games... the kids loved those days. Maybe I will surprise my boys one day soon and that again.
I did a post in 2008 about using games in homeschooling. I should update that. Maybe I will do a series, Math games on one post, Language Arts games...etc. and do links for the games. I did not do links last time.I am also not going to go into all the things we teach that are extra. Maybe I will do a post or a series on that soon to. Boy this post has given me ideas for many more I could do. If only I did not have to homeschool these kids I would have time to do all this blogging I want to do!!
I hope you know I am just kidding! I would never do that. 
Besides if I wasn't homeschooling I would have nothing to blog about. 
I was also going to add some of my favorite how to homeschool books but that will have to wait as well. Come back often and check my blog. I will be covering those topics soon.
Click the following link to see what my fellow Crew mates are using for their children... Favorite Resources We have quite a variety of ages of kids on the crew so there should be something for everyone.
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I like the layout of your posts with the yellow smileys and yellow bars, etc. They really pop out. I also like the way you broke things down. Great post!
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