Grammar for the Well Trained Mind

We are DONE with Rod and Staff English, neither one of us could take it anymore and I was so glad to see that Susan Wise Bauer had come out with a new complete grammar program!  We have been doing the first book and it is great and we really enjoy the layout and ease it will be to go through 4 years of this.  Combined with writing, this grammar program counts as a full English or Language Arts credit for high school.

8th Grade Curriculum

I'm a little late in this post and that is because this has been a very different sort of year in our life and homeschooling.  We made a lot of changes with curriculum and are very happy with the new changes and we are actively setting the stage for - *gasp* - HIGH SCHOOL!  😲  I can't believe it is already upon us but it isn't as scary as I once thought.  With the Lord's help, we got this!


Bible - Memoria Press Christian Studies III

Math - Saxon Algebra 1/2 with Saxon Teacher CDs

Grammar/English - Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind 1

Writing - Writing With Skill Level 1

Vocabulary - Vocabulary from Classical Roots A & B

History - Overview of World History

Reading - Our Book List

Science - Botany in 8 lessons combined with Biology to make a High School biology credit

Logic & Latin - on hold till February


We put the brakes on logic and Latin but are picking those back up in February.  K also paused the Bible studies with Memoria Press Christian Studies and did her own for a year.  We are now back to doing Christian Studies III with the New Testament.  She does her own personal devotion time and then a Bible study with dad every night before bed.

We got rid of Rod and Staff English because we had had ENOUGH!  I couldn't bear it anymore and she definitely couldn't.  Then, Susan Wise Bauer put out her new grammar program: Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind.  Oh my, this is a God-send!  It is a complete grammar course in 4 books and will count, combined with our writing curriculum, as a full English credit for all 4 years of high school!  We are loving it and extremely pleased to have made the switch.

For writing, we went to Writing With Skill and we are going to follow the progression of doing books 1-3 through high school with the last 2 years being IEW.  Here is a handy chart for writing for the middle and high school years using WWS.  As I said above, this combined with grammar, will complete our English credits for all of high school.

With science, I decided since I'm in school for becoming an herbalist, I would have my daughter also study along with me and finish her life science high school credit.  We decided to go with Botany in 8 Lessons, that, along with me teaching herbology with hands-on "experiments" can count as a full credit but we are combining it with other biology she has done to complete the full high school biology credit.

I plan on writing a post of the subjects we already know what we are using for high school hopefully in the next post.

8th Grade Renaissance & Modern Book List

We will only be choosing about half of the books (poems) from this list for the year.  Also, I haven't screened all of the books either, so I won't have a final book list of what she read till the end of this school year.

Late Renaissance/ Early Modern 

1. Adventures of Don Quixote - Dover
2. The Complete Fairy Tales - Perrault
3. Robinson Crusoe - Defoe
4. Favorite Poems - Wordsworth
5. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Coleridge
6. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle - Irving
7. The Pied Piper of Hamelin - Browing
8. Grimm's Fairy Tales - Grimm
9. Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings
10. Goblin Market and Other Poems - Christina Rossetti
11. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Twain
12. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Verne
13. The Raven - Poe

Modern

1.  Kidnapped or Treasure Island - Stevenson
2. The Man Without a Country - Hale
3. Little Women - Alcott
4. Sherlock Holmes stories - Doyle
5. The Jungle Book - Kipling
6. The Time Machine or The War of the Worlds - Wells
7. The Call of the Wild - London
8. The Scarlet Pimpernel - Orczy
9. Short Stories - O. Henry
10. Anne of Green Gables - Montgomery
11. Murder on the Orient Express - Christie
12. Gone With the Wind - Mitchell
13. The Yearling - Rawlings
14. The Song of Hiawatha - Longfellow
15. The Road Not Taken - Frost
16. Collected Poems - Cummings
17. Poems 1919-1934 - de la Mare
18. The Dream Keeper and Other Poems - Hughes
19. Pygmalion - Shaw
20. The Hiding Place - Ten Boom

Logic Stage Outlining

Starting in the Logic Stage, which is grades 5-8, you will want to teach the child to outline.  The Well-Trained Mind explains why a slow progression of this is best as it prepares the child for high school.  Don't make it any more complicated than you should, it really is quite simple!

5th Grade - Begin to teach the child to outline once a week.  Explain that outlining is simply finding the main point (summary) in the paragraph.  You will want to choose a text from that week's history resources that the child read about the topic they found most interesting.  You will start using a text that contains 5-6 paragraphs, or one page.  Have the child take each paragraph, one at a time, and find the main point by answering the question, "What is the main thing or person and why is it or are they important?"

Example of one-level outline:

I.    Main point of 1st paragraph
II.   Main point of 2nd paragraph
III.  Main point of 3rd paragraph

6th Grade - Same as before but you add in subpoints under each main point, which are lettered A, B and so forth.  Use 2-4 subpoints under each main point it relates to.  Outline up to two pages.  To find the subpoints, simply write the additional information given that correlates with the main point.

Example of two-level outline:

I.    Main point of 1st paragraph
      A.  First supporting point
      B.  Second supporting point
II.  Main point of 2nd paragraph
      A.  First supporting point
      B.  Second supporting point
      C.  Third supporting point

7th Grade - Same as before and when the child has got down the two-level outline well, you can start adding in more supporting points.  These points are numbers (1, 2, etc.) that give details for the letters (A, B, etc.).  If the child isn't ready, they can hold off until the start of 8th grade.  Now the child outlines 2-3 pages.

Example of three-level outline:

I.    Main point of 1st paragraph
      A.  First supporting point
            1.  First subpoint
            2.  Second subpoint
      B.  Second supporting point
            1. First subpoint
            2. Second subpoint
II.  Main point of 2nd paragraph

8th Grade - Same as before but now outlining 3-4 pages and doing three-level outlines.

Example of three-level outline that sums it all up:

I.    Main point
      A.  Additional information about the main point.
            1.  Detail about that additional information

In The Well-Trained Mind, she states a simple question the child can ask themselves as they write the outline for supporting points - "What else is important to know in this paragraph?"  You can read the whole section on how to outline in the book on pages 297-301.