The proper goal of education is to assist another’s development into a whole person healthy in body, mind, and spirit. The goal is not to impart skills in various distinct subject areas. Skills are certainly required but they are the means and not the ends. Think about skills at the middle-school level as abilities which are required to, a) hear from others, b) think through what has been heard, and then c) personally express emerging thoughts and ideas. To hear is reading; thinking, while much more than math and logic, is well developed by mathematics; and expression is writing and speaking. The skills required are reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. Nothing more extraordinary than that.
The wise teacher will put the best materials before the middle school student so that they are reading what is true, good, beautiful, and important. This also assists the student’s writing development as they personally encounter many examples of beautiful, thoughtful expression. As the student reads writing that is well done and is given ample challenges to write, their writing will eventually emulate that modelled in their reading. Reading should include a wide range of topics including history, theology, literature, science, and biographies.
Basic skills in math and language are essential, though these are not the purpose of education. These skills can be taught with a workbook style curriculum where the student learns by repetition. Many complete well-rounded curriculums are available and most will work just fine. I recommend you choose one that has been around a few years and that fits the learning style of your student. At the middle school level, we’ve had success with Saxon Math and Learning Language Arts Through Literature.
Our approach is to work consistently through the curriculum for the 2 skill subjects (math and language arts). For other subjects, variety is essential in the topic and style of the material studied. A long classic history work might be followed by a lighter fictional story then a graphically rich interactive workbook followed by a video. Field trips, symphony concerts, and museums further enrich and enliven these general subjects. We do group these materials and activities according to subject to ensure a measure of balance, preventing neglect of any major area of study. But there is great freedom in selection and in the pace at which the students works through these.
The key is to balance consistent, almost “mechanical”, work on the essential skills of math and language with a flexible approach to other subjects. This balance gives great confidence that the child is keeping pace on the essentials while being able to delight in other materials of a more general nature. The freedom of a flexible curriculum, while essential to the thriving of the student, can be difficult for a parent or teacher to provide. We’ll show you details on how we’ve approached this for an entire three years of 6th-8th grades. Daily lesson plans are provided for the first and sixth months of each grade as examples of how this is implemented each day. You may choose to follow our daily lessons, but they are given more as a guide. Be encouraged that teaching your child is really quite simple when you approach it as we have. If you enjoy learning yourself and can spend a couple hours each month planning the months lessons, you can implement the daily lesson with about 20 minutes of interaction with your child each day.