Home School For Summer: Between Elementary and Middle School

My son, Random is going into middle school next year. We have several things planned for the transition, but more on that later. For the summer we had hoped summer school would be at the middle school he will be attending. Unfortunately, after our hopes were up, we were told that the location of summer school for the 5th going into 6th graders is not in his middle school. It is not even in our neighborhood. So rather that send him to summer school we will be attempting to home school again this summer. There is a lot less balking at the plan this year than there was last year. I have several books and programs we are going to work on during the summer months.

image via: http://www.staples.com/Typing-Instructor-for-Kids-Platinum-for-Windows-1-5-User-Download/product_954893

Firstly is a CD-ROM, Typing Island - Typing Instructor for Kids. It is also available as a download or as an app for the Mac. Random is going to have to boost his output for middle school and one way to do that is to use his computer to write up his papers. His handwriting is barely legible and he lost his OT handwriting help at his 9 year old reassessment.

image via: https://heartsathomestore.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=416_452

In order to address that lack of assistance at school I have also found the Getty Dubay Italic Handwriting series of books for teaching readable handwriting.
The school has done nothing to help him in this area since that reassessment and he still needs to work on letter formation, size and spacing.

image via: http://www.walmart.com/ip/1884933

The next item on our agenda is math review. He has really made improvements in math this year thanks to some adaptations and modifications to his math program. He is required to do only part of the problems on the homework worksheets and he gets homework help to review the day's lessons at the end of the school day. The combination of both has really made him more confident in his math skills. We have to keep the positive momentum going, so we are going to use Math Minutes.

image via: http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Curriculum-Basic-Skills-Grade/dp/1609963350

Last year we used a comprehensive curriculum book. This year we will be doing the same with the Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills for Sixth Grade. It has a nice overview of what to expect next year and some basic review pages too.

image via: http://www.dalebasler.com/2013/02/coding-to-learn-with-scratch/

The part I am most excited about is the Scratch programming book I found. Super Scratch Programming Adventure. The format of the book is comic book style but it has real programming instruction to make games in the Scratch programming environment.

image via: http://www.carsondellosa.com/cd2/Products/GuinnessWorldRecordsReading/ResourceBook/104422

Lastly, we have The Guinness World Records Reading Grade 5. I figure if we sail through this one we can get another of that type from Amazon or from the Lakeshore Learning store.

So, that is our plan. I am hoping that Sensi's Extended School Year goes well and I won't have to pull her again this year. If it goes well for her I can spend some quality time with Random reviewing and prepping him for his big transition.