Fostering Independence in Your Middle Schooler at Heart and Soul

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The middle school years can be pretty tough, and it's partly because kids in this age group are starting to desperately want to be independent, but they still need a lot of help. It's a valuable time for preparing kids for that next level in their schoolwork, when high school credits matter and they are making decisions about college and careers. During middle school, most students can transition to learning quite independently, and are able to make more decisions about their schoolwork and how to manage their time.  Here are three areas where your homeschooled middle schooler can be developing independence:

Time Management  -  This is such a valuable skill for all of us, and getting some practice during middle school will really benefit your teen! Responsibility  - We all want our kids to be responsible, but the tricky part is gradually handing over that responsibility and letting them rise to the challenge. Making Decisions  - This may be the hardest for parents, because it involves stepping back from managing your kid's life so they can make more of their own decisions.

Gradually handing over responsibility for schoolwork to your teen can pave the way for handing over other responsibilities as they mature, and it may just be that the middle school years are actually joyful and rewarding!

Join me over at Heart and Soul for the rest of this article! And as always, you'll find lots of helpful articles there about all kinds of homeschool topics. 

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Middle School Monday - NYC Field Trip Photojournal

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Welcome to Middle School Monday! We're enjoying a bit of a break from schoolwork, and Kennady enjoyed an exciting trip to New York City this past week on her break. Last year her choir's performance at a festival earned high grades and an invitation for the choir to be a part of the National Children's Festival Chorus performing at Carnegie Hall. The chorus members that were travelling to New York for this performance put in many hours of extra practice time learning and rehearsing the music selections. (And they and their parents spent quite a bit of money on the trip too!) On Thursday, the NYC adventure began with a four-hour (give or take) bus trip. As soon as they arrived at their Manhattan hotel, the kids headed straight to their first joint rehearsal with the other participating choirs. Kennady says that first rehearsal was four hours long! They worked very hard to be prepared for their performance!

While the choirs did have to devote time to rehearsals on Friday and Saturday as well, they also had time to do some exploring in The Big Apple. On Friday, they spent some time at Central Park.

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

I love these shots - Kennady found a rose that had been left at the 'castle' in Central Park.

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

After dinner, they took in the Broadway show "Aladdin", which Kennady assured me was "amazing".

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

The kids were in groups of three to five assigned to a chaperone, and during the free time for sight-seeing, each chaperone group could decide what they wanted to do together. Kennady's group and another group stuck together and their choice for Saturday morning was to visit the Empire State Building.

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

One of the pictures Kennady tried to take from the top floor had an unexpected intruder, and her camera focused on this insect rather than the horizon or the city far below.

Photo credit: Kennady

And the city was definitely VERY far below!

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

I chose the least goofy of all the selfies she took from the top of Empire State Building to share here.

Selfie credit: Kennady

Of course, the "I'm squishing the building" pictures were popular too.

Photo credit: Kennady

Photo credit: Kennady

As they walked around Manhattan, they found several of these small Statue of Liberty photo ops, so it just made sense to get a photo with Lady Liberty.

Photo credit: Kennady's chaperone

After Saturday lunch, it was time for a final rehearsal, and then the kids had some time to get something to eat and get ready for the concert. Here's my favorite performer ready to go!

Selfie credit: Kennady

The hubster and I had traveled to NYC for the day along with two buses full of other proud chorus parents and family, but we didn't get to connect with Kennady until shortly before the concert. I was able to get this picture of Kennady in front of the concert poster.


As you might expect, taking photos during the performance is not allowed, but it was okay to get a picture of the performance hall as we were taking our seats.


And during the intermission, I was able to get one photo of the choir as they were filing off the risers. The quality isn't great, but at least it is focused enough to recognize Kennady, on the lower right. She's in a black gown between two girls in red.


NATIONAL CHILDREN'S FESTIVAL CHORUS
EMILY ELLSWORTH, Guest Conductor
BEN BAKER, Piano

TRADITIONAL HYMN   How Can I Keep From Singing?
arr. Walker                              

GEORGE FRIDIRIC HANDEL   "O Lovely Peace" from Judas Maccabaeus
arr. Kesselman                                          

FELIX MENDELSSOHN   "Lift Thine Eyes to the Mountains"
         from Elijah

Astor Piazzolla   Libertango                
ed. Escalada                                

TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG   Shenandoah                                    
arr. Basler                        

BEDRICH SMETANA   "Opening Chorus" from    
arr. Ellsworth     The Bartered Bride

Pretty fantastic trip to finish off her middle school years, don't you think so? By the way, I'll share the pictures from our day in NYC in a separate photojournal soon.

Each week I invite bloggers to share their posts about middle school here on Middle School Monday. The link is open through Friday, and I will do my best to visit, comment, and share your posts. Please grab the Middle School Monday button to add to your post or to your sidebar when you leave your link below, and please visit the other links and comment or share. I look forward to seeing what you and your middle schoolers are doing!

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An InLinkz Link-up

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Middle School Monday - Planning the High School Reading List

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Welcome to Middle School Monday! It may seem strange to talk about a high school reading list on a middle school post, but around here I am winding up the last couple weeks worth of middle school and making plans for Kennady's first year of high school. Literature studies will be very different for her than they were for the boys, because she actually likes to read.

See what I mean? She likes the smell of new books! That's my girl!

After some discussion, here's the tentative plan for Grade 9 Literature. She is interested in doing the Jane Austen literature study called Miniatures and Morals by Peter J. Leithart (you can read more about it in my review on my book blog,  Just A Second.), and the other strong possibility is a study from Lightning Lit and Comp - British Early-Mid 19th Century. We could actually do both, with a little modification. So the combined reading list for the two studies would look like this:

Selected poems by William Blake (Lightning Lit)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (in both studies)
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (Miniatures)
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (Lightning Lit)
"Essay on Scott" by Thomas Carlyle (Lightning Lit)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Miniatures)
Selected poems by Samuel Taylor Coleright, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Lightning Lit)
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Miniatures)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Lightning Lit)
Emma by Jane Austen (Miniatures)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Lightning Lit)
"Rebecca and Rowena" by William Makepeace Thackeray (Lightning Lit)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (Miniatures)

Probably a bit ambitious for a ninth grader, but she does like to read, and I really don't see anything on the list that I think she would dislike or be unable to handle! The Miniatures and Morals study would be reading and discussion, not necessarily writing assignments, so that makes it a little easier. I think it will make a pretty solid full credit in Brit Lit!

To complicate (?) matters a little, I also have my greedy homeschool momma eye on something new coming from Sharon Watson - Illuminating Literature. There's even a rumour that the Schoolhouse Review Crew will get to review that, and I am honing my begging and pleading skills for whatever Sharon Watson products might be available for the review!

Since I'm discussing high school reading for next year, here's what is on tap for Landon. He is not into reading, so we will pick and choose some of the books from the literature portion of the Notgrass study he will do next year, Exploring America. His reading list for next year will look something like this - still subject to change!

Narrative of the Life of David Crockett by David Crockett
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Company Aytch by Sam Watkins
Humorous Stories and Sketches by Mark Twain
Miracle in the Hills by Mary T. Martin Sloop and LeGette Blythe
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Then there's summer reading... Our library does great summer reading programs for teens, and my kids usually play along. They haven't signed up yet this year, but I'm pretty sure Kennady will.  My plan is to let her read whatever she wants this summer (so, I'm betting she'll read through The Hunger Games trilogy again) and if she wants to, she can get started on her High School Reading List whenever she is ready!

What's on your kids' reading list? Will they be reading just for fun this summer or taking on some more serious literature? Leave a comment and let me know!

Each week I invite bloggers to share their posts about middle school here on Middle School Monday. The link is open through Friday, and I will do my best to visit, comment, and share your posts. Please grab the Middle School Monday button to add to your post or to your sidebar when you leave your link below, and please visit the other links and comment or share. I look forward to seeing what you and your middle schoolers are doing!

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An InLinkz Link-up

Be sure to visit the High School Reading Lists Round-up at the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog (starting Wednesday, June 24th) for other Crew members' thoughts on High School Reading!

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 ©2006-2015 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/

Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal from Apologia (on Middle School Monday)

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Thanks to the Schoolhouse Review Crew, sometimes the products we get to try out are brand-new and we get a first look. We were definitely excited about being able to review the Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal, hot off the presses from Apologia Educational Ministries!

Apologia Educational Ministries is one of the premier publishers of Christian education materials, providing homeschooling curriculum and resources including Creation-based science, worldview curriculum, and books about homeschooling and parenting. It's a family-owned corporation, and having met some of that family and some of the Apologia staff, I can tell you that they are some of the most wonderful people with such a heart for homeschoolers.

The Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal is one of the newest resources offered by Apologia. This journal is a fun, colorful scrapbook-style journal for kids to record their adventures and experiences. It includes checklists, maps, a list of field trip ideas (and an exclusive link to tons more ideas and links on the Apologia website), and plenty of pages to take notes, add pictures, and record special memories about the places visited.

How did we use it?  I was delighted about being among the first to try out the Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal. But at the same time, I was a little worried - because I wasn't sure we'd have many actual field trips planned during the several weeks before sharing my review. Ironically, we have a great field trip planned for this week, right after the final bell for sharing these reviews! And then another trip planned for next week! Well... for those trips, Kennady is doing a little research so she has some idea what to expect. And now, after she's perused the website of the art museum we plan to visit later this week, I know what she most wants to see there - Piet Mondrian artwork, the Sculpture Garden, and some of the French artwork collection. I will do my best to make those things happen!

The other thing we could do right away was start listing some of the previous places we've explored. There are three two-page spreads for this near the beginning of the book - for places explored in your own state, for places explored in the rest of the USA, and for places explored around the world.

Here's what else we have done with it so far: Shortly after we received the journal, Kennady's choir was invited to sing at a CAF Red Tail Squadron event called RISE ABOVE at our small town airport. Landon's Civil Air Patrol Squadron was also there all day assisting with the event. We made sure that we did more than just show up and sing - we looked at all the exhibits of WWII artifacts, and we saw the movie about the Tuskegee Airmen. We watched the restored aircraft fly (Landon was one of the cadets moving the plane to the flight line!), and perhaps most importantly, Kennady got to meet two of the Tuskegee Airmen! And then, she recorded her experience in the Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal. For each trip, there is a two page spread like this, with spaces to record the date and time, list any books the student read related to the trip, draw or add a map of the trip location, and record what she saw and did. For this trip, we didn't really need a map, because it was just our little airport. We stuck in the brochures we picked up, and Kennady wrote a journal entry explaining her day.

It's covered by the one pamphlet, but the bottom third of the right-hand page has a section with the title, "Something I never want to forget", and that might be my favorite part of the journal, because you never know what will make that lasting impression. If I had been filling it out, I know that I would never want to forget the quiet courage of the two history-makers we had the privilege to meet and the sight of our kids shaking their hands and thanking them for their service. 

Another "field trip" that Kennady got to complete already was a camping trip to Assateague Island with friends. She started filling out her journal ahead of time. The journal has pages with checklists and suggestions for planning ahead, which we did use. And on the specific trip page, there's a place to record books read (I suggested that she read Misty of Chincoteague, so it's on the list, but she hasn't read it yet!); and there's a place for the student to write down what they hope to get out of the trip. So check it out - Kennady wanted to see horses. I mean, it's Assateague Island, so of course!

But sadly, even though they had a prime campsite right on the beach, the weather was less than wonderful (read: it rained the entire night, and was insanely windy) so they moved to a hotel the second night and only saw one or two horses. Not even very close up either. Boo. But Kennady had a great time anyway, especially the first day spent on the beach, and she wrote a great description of the fun they had doing other things. 

Other features of the Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal that we've looked at, but haven't been able to make use of (yet) include:

• a table of field trip ideas focused on different subject areas (Animals, Space/Aviation, History, Culture, etc) and ranging from places right in your local neighborhood to international trips. This page also includes an exclusive link to a collection of resources on Apologia's website.
• a set of pages in a section called "My Special Spot" which encourage a student to record details about a place they can visit during each of the four seasons.
• a set of pages titled "As I See It" designed for the student to use their creative side to record what they see and their impressions. 

What we liked best:

• beautiful, colorful, and high quality spiral bound book makes it a pleasure to journal about field trip adventures.
• space and encouragement to be creative and to keep a very personal record of what you saw and did.
• could easily be used as a joint effort by siblings to record their homeschool field trips.

What I need to mention:

• I would have liked the map area and the one spot for a drawing on the Specific Trip pages to be bigger. There is that "As I See It" section just for drawing pictures, but there's not much room right on the Specific Trip pages. 

Our bottom line: Once again, Apologia has delivered a winner! The Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal is fun and easy for kids to use, and is full of ideas for parents wanting to plan creative field trips for their homeschools. I'm looking forward to updating after Kennady has had a chance to fill out more journal pages after her upcoming trips!

Would you like to journal your family's field trips ? Here's what you need to know:

Visit the website: http://www.Apologia.com/

Pricing: Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal is available for $22.

You can follow Apologia on Facebook, on Twitter, on Pinterest, and on Google+.

Visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog for more information and to read other reviews. 

P.S. - Because I think this journal is great for middle school age kids, and because I'm sharing my review on a Monday, I'm adding this review to my Middle School Monday link-up for June.

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 ©2006-2015 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/

I have done my best to provide accurate pricing and links at the time this post originally appeared. Please be aware that these may change.

Middle School Monday - Reading List

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Welcome to Middle School Monday! The Schoolhouse Review Crew blog will be posting a round-up of Middle Grades Reading Lists this week, so it's a perfect time to update on our reading. A couple of months ago, I posted a summary of the books Kennady has worked on or has read for enjoyment during her middle grade years. I've chosen a few titles from that post to highlight again today.  I've narrowed down the entire reading list from the Lightning Lit curriculum we used and mentioned just her favorites, and listed a few other current favorites of hers.

Seventh Grade Lightning Lit (See our review of this course!)
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Eighth Grade Lightning Lit
(See my description of this course for the Virtual Curriculum Fair!)
A Crazy Tale by G.K. Chesterton
Treasure Island by Robert L Stevenson (also studied when we reviewed Progeny Press study guides)
A Day of Pleasure by Isaac B. Singer
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (also studied when we reviewed Moving Beyond the Page)
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

And Others...
A Cry From Egypt by Hope Auer (See our review of this book!)
A Stand at Sinai by Hope Auer
The Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins
The Mysterious Benedict Society (series) by Trenton Lee Stewart
The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis
... and classics like Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden series.

Right now, we're wrapping up our school year, and I told Kennady that when she finished the Gerald Durrell book unit, I'd like her to set her literature study aside and make sure she is finishing up her science and geography!

What's on her reading list for the summer? I honestly don't know. My bet is that she will re-read some of her favorites (the J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis books; and The Hunger Games). Yesterday she helped us move a bookcase worth of my books out of the living room, and as she pulled them from the shelves there were several times she asked if she could read any of those. Y'know where I had her store those books? In her room. And I told her that most of those books were titles that were appropriate for her, and many of them are titles that I would encourage her to read! So maybe she will get started on some of my Janette Oke collection, or the Wayne Thomas Batson pirate books, or maybe even some of the classics that I had in that shelf - things like Little Women, Around the World in Eighty Days, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.



I've just started gauging interest in a literature discussion group for high schoolers in our homeschool group, so I am starting to think ahead to high school reading lists. (That Crew Round-up will be coming along in a couple weeks!) So Kennady and I will be taking a look at the possibilities for her literature study as she begins high school next year, and if any of those titles catch her eye, I won't be at all opposed to her getting a head start!

What are your middle schooler's favorite books? What will they be reading this summer? Leave a comment and let me know!

Each week I invite bloggers to share their posts about middle school here on Middle School Monday. The link is open through the end of the month, and I will do my best to visit, comment, and share your posts. Please grab the Middle School Monday button to add to your post or to your sidebar when you leave your link below, and please visit the other links and comment or share. I look forward to seeing what you and your middle schoolers are doing!

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An InLinkz Link-up

Be sure to visit the Middle Grades Reading Lists Round-up at the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog (starting Wednesday, June 10th) for other Crew members' thoughts on Middle School Reading!

Don't miss a coffee break! Subscribe to Homeschool Coffee Break by Email!

 ©2006-2015 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/