Grades 6-8

What's The Deal?

Author(s): 
Rhoda Blumberg

National Geographic published some longer, generously illustrated non-fiction picture books, and this is one of them. A great aid to any homeschool's History curriculum. We have picked up several different titles from the library like this one. I, for one, learned a lot! From their site:

Behold and See 6

Book Cover
Author(s): 
RoseMary C. Johnson
Recently during our school hours the iPad told us of a new study on salmon behavior--a link to it was posted by a prolific Facebook friend. It was an "Aha moment"! We are using Behold and See 6 for Science and had read recently about the curious and amazing behavior of the salmon: it returns to the very place it was born to lay its eggs even after years in the open ocean.

A Doorway of Amethyst

Book Cover
Author(s): 
Mary Daly
Illustrator(s): 
Margy Jakos

Here is a geology text that assumes no conflict between Christianity and science and is faithful to Church teaching. This book covers basic topics in geology, including the Earth's age and composition, the dynamics of continental plate motion, classification of rocks and soil, effects of glaciers, radiometric dating, and more. The illustrations are lovely and hand-drawn – not what you would expect in a textbook. However, I prefer a few glossy photographs as well, but you can find these on the internet.

Galileo's Leaning Tower Experiment

Author(s): 
Wendy Macdonald
Illustrator(s): 
Paolo Rui

Science readers are to be found if you look around enough as this book demonstrates.  It is the fictional story of Massimo, a boy who regularly throws his uncle's lunch off a bridge to his boat as his uncle rows by below.  Galileo happens to see that the bread and the cheese land at the same time.  The story ends atop the leaning Tower of Pisa, as legend suggests Galileo did.

The Queen's Thief Series (The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings)

Author(s): 
Megan Whalen Turner
If you, like us, have voracious readers always eager for, sometimes demanding, new reading material, Margaret Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series is definitely worth a try. Set in a fictionalized version of Greece in something like the sixteenth century, the series continually reveals Mrs. Turner’s love for Greece, its landscape, mythology, learning and even politics. The stories are set in three small adjoining countries, Sounis, Eddis and Attolia.

First Start French

First Start French from Memoria Press
Author(s): 
Danielle L. Schultz
I learned to speak French YEARS ago. I was blessed to go to a bi-lingual Catholic grammar school where French was a large part of the day. I didn't take French in high school, college or graduate school; that said, I still remember songs and rhymes and simple vocabulary learned many years ago. First Start French is a wonderful, gentle start to teaching and learning this lovely language. The author, Danielle Schultz, wrote the 36 lessons for her daughter when she couldn't find a suitable language program.

Student Writing Intensive, Level B

Author(s): 
Andrew Pudewa
Occasionally, friends or readers ask my opinion about various writing programs. I never feel qualified to answer, because I have rarely used writing programs in our homeschool. I’ve mainly taught my girls about writing as we write. Initially, I taught them about things like rough drafts. I wanted them to know that they’re called “rough” for a reason, and that we should let our drafts be messy -- full of cross-outs, scribbles and insertions. The other thing I wanted my children to understand about writing was that there are radically different kinds, suited to different purposes.

Herodotus and the Road to History

Author(s): 
Jeanne Bendick
This is a brief, engaging and heavily illustrated biography of the world's first historian. Herodotus lived in the Greek city of Halicarnassus in the Persian empire during the 5th century BC. His situation and personality put him an ideal place to tell the fascinating stories of the Persian Wars (think Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis) and to travel extensively and collect stories from all over. His original writings are a fascinating read for upper high school or college. This is unique in that it shares the basic history of his own life, told in first person narrative.

Light to the Nations

Author(s): 
Catholic Schools Textbook Project
Most Catholic homeschoolers today are familiar with the high quality level of the Catholic Textbook Projects volumes, and this one, Light to the Nations is no exception. (Note that I write this review based on the CD format of the book). Attractive, user-friendly layout, beautiful reproductions and helpful maps are found throughout the chapters. Light to the Nations explores World History starting with the birth of Christ. So it is the history of our Christian, Western civilization.

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