Homeschooling Curriulum and Tips for an 8th Grader

For the cliff note version of what worked for us curriculum-wise:

For the overall curriculum:  My Father's World.  (Great for history, geography! and gives you a daily schedule to go by, wonderful!)

Science:  Apologia.  Hard, but good.

Math:  Teaching Textbooks  (This program was AMAZING!)  Michael was behind in math (especially with his founding things like multiplication, fractions, etc) and this program was perfect!  I can't say enough about it, except that if you don't do it, you are really missing an amazing opportunity for learning!)

English:  We never really found one thing that I loved (and I'm an English teacher by trade).  I finally just went down and bought some grade appropriate GRAMMAR and WRITING books at Barnes and Nobles.  For English, always know that there are two main parts...Grammar (punctuation, sentences structure, etc) and Writing (Reports, writing stories).  Both parts are important!

Spanish:  Rosetta Stone

Flash Cards:  I did daily math flash cards with him (he thought it was ridiculous, because he was "Too Old" for flashcards...but the importance of knowing your Math facts instantly is something that is a life long need).  We would go through the deck once and if he took longer than 3 seconds on one, it would be added back to the deck.  This is quite boring, but Michael is soaring through his math class at the high school this year and I believe between that and the Teaching Textbooks...that gave him a huge jump.

He did a daily writing assignment, usually from the book "Writing Strands".

That was everything, I think!  It was a hard thing, more on me...because you (as the parent) will have no choice but to give up basically all social activities (ie...coffee with friends, spontaneous shopping trips, pedicures, etc...etc...) during the school time.  We started everyday around 8:00 am and would finish by 1;00...so that was a nice thing.

The last tip I would pass on...BE CONSISTENT WITH YOUR SCHEDULE AND SCHOOLWORK.  Don't get behind.  It's very easy to start sleeping in later and starting later...then saying, "We will just double up tomorrow, etc."  This is a VERY bad habit to begin and will be very hard to catch up.