We have been very casual about homeschooling this year. I was sort of waiting for Trevor to come to me and say "Hey, mom, I really want to do more stuff...". I have left him to his own devices a lot. Or given him an assignment and reminded him about it, only to drop it if I started to feel like I was nagging him. So beyond keeping up with L/A and math, we weren't doing too much formally. Sure, we can always come up with stuff that is learning but, really, the kids would be watching Cosmos whether or not we were homeschooling. I know people do, but I don't feel comfortable saying "Oh, we watch Cosmos.. that was science this year!"
Trevor came to me this morning and said "Hey, mom, I really want to do more stuff...". YES. This is our version of finishing deschooling. And I know my son and knew deschooling would not result in us becoming unschoolers. So we went over our plans for next year and I explained to him why I had appeared so "hands off" these past few months. Luckily he has been covering "Being Proactive" in his book 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens (ok, so I assign that, too, in a casual way).
So Trevor had a hand in choosing his curriculum for next year and we have chosen:
K12 World Languages Chinese I
K12 Physical Science (I think K12 is usually too rigorous, but I really like their science program)
Oak Meadow Civics 8
Teaching Textbooks Pre algebra
We'll finish Oak Meadow L/A in about December, I'm guessing. So we'll move onto 9th Grade Oak Meadow L/A around January 2015.
He's recently moved the full size kb we have up into his room and has been tooling around mixing piano sounds to a background beat in Ableton. I'm sure that will continue to keep him busy next year. So I think Trevor is finding his groove for homeschooling. We were on the fence about 8th grade and I was keeping options open. But I think homeschooling will be our best choice for next year. It will allow him to continue to work on his math skills (I don't know if a tutor will be in our future) and will allow him to continue to work steadily on his L/A, which is moving above grade level right now. AND, the middle school doesn't offer Chinese, and this is the language he wants to learn (which seems awfully daunting to me. Maybe I'll learn with him).
