Year 8

Background

Sean, who is just turned 14 and in the 8th grade, has always loved ancient history, starting in fourth grade when I gave him Famous Men of Greece. He devoured it in a couple of days and then started back at the beginning and read the whole thing again. Last year I gave him a lot of the Bethlehem ancient history books to read. He's also read many, many retellings of Greek and Roman history and legend. I will pull together a list sometime. The type of book he reads and rereads are the Redwall Series and the Prydain Chronicles, and he has also read and reread the Narnia Chronicles and things like John White's Archives of Anthropos. He will devour a Bethlehem historical novel in a couple of days but usually doesn't go back to it to reread. He also recently read "Seven Sleepers" by Gilbert Morris -- Christian science fiction.

Then this year he has been reading "Story of the Church" along with books chosen from "Reading Your Way through History" . So far: "Fabiola" (out of order chronologically but I wanted him to read it for Advent); then "Ides of April" "Beyond the Desert Gate" and "Between the Forest and the Hills".

So my future plans for Sean are springboarded mostly from Ambleside Year 7. I would like to use Mater Amabilis but his level has a study of 20th century history and we usually do 20th century in senior year of high school because of the maturity level of some of the material. Our 8th grade in the past has been a survey of post-Pentecost history up to the 20th century. When Liam did 8th grade we brought it right up to the future with some science fiction books, but if we do this with Sean it will have to go into next year.

I like Sonlight Curriculum's method of doing literature, where they have some more challenging selections along with easier ones. I read a book by Ruth Beechick a long time ago where she noted that children, as they progress into literacy, will tackle some challenging books and then seem to "regress" into easier books and simplistic series. She says lots of parents think the kids are backsliding and try to get them to read "up to their level" all the time, but in fact, the easier reading often serves a valuable purpose in consolidating skills and building confidence and getting a good sense of fiction patterns and devices. This has definitely been my experience both with my own childhood and in watching five readers so far grow into literacy. So I'm going to have Sean read some books just for fun and for context, along with a few of the steeper Ambleside books. The balance will depend on how he responds.

Wendi Capeheart write in an informal chat about Ambleside Year 7 :

I would say that some themes in year 8 would be a continuance of the government/authority discussion, and also freedom, responsibility, personal strength and courage, integrity and commitment.

This reminded me that in many of our best literature years we had a theme to focus on -- I am an English Lit major after all!; for example, the 20th century senior theme was about the value of fiction in depicting reality, and once we did a 6th grade theme on the role that the individual plays in history. I certainly don't hammer it home but it's fun to play with it as a connecting device between the literary works, and it keeps me motivated.

Next post: The booklist