Help! 8th or 9th grade?

[jacynamommy]

I will try to keep this brief! My daughter who recently turned 13 we have going in to 8th grade in the fall. She started HOD in K with Little Hearts, so she has done HOD for all her school years! Here is my current dilemma. She will be doing the World Geography guide in the fall, as she has done all the other guides. We combined her with her brother who is just 18 months older when she was little. She has always done everything in the guide with him, except for math and language arts (English and writing), which she has done in the guide below since she was younger (so this next year she would use the MTMM guide for math and language arts but do everything else in WG). She has also completed DITHOR through the 8th grade level. We recently moved her up to the high school youth group in our church because her emotional and spiritual maturity level is more with the high school aged students than the middle school. So this caused her to raise the question why she couldn't be in 9th grade if she's mostly doing 9th grade work. My quick response is that she's a year younger than her brother and I don't want her graduating the same year as him! But this got me thinking. If she continues on as we have been and she does the WG guide in 8th grade, what will she do her 12th grade year, as she would finish all the guides by 11th grade (except that year of math and language arts)? Also, I am wondering about her transcript...as I know the WG guide has instructions for writing a transcript and class credits. Is it a waste for her to go through the WG guide and not be able to claim high school credits for it because we have her only in 8th grade? I would be grateful for some advice here. Not sure if we should leave her in "8th grade" and she would have a different path for 12th grade because she would have finished the HOD guides already? Or if we should really count this as "9th grade" as she has truly finished all the guides from Little Hearts through MTMM and starting WG in the fall? Help! Please and thank you!!

[StephanieU]

First, I would talk to your son about his feelings about her being the same grade, graduating together, etc. He might not mind at all, and honestly that might be a great option for your family.
Second, if you do not want to graduate her early, you could spread out some of the high school guides (mainly the electives). Let her do the electives and interest led study her official senior year, along with possible college classes, internships, etc.

My oldest will graduate at 17 UNLESS she decides she wants to go to college in state (there are no Christian colleges here so, it would be public universities). In that case, she will do like a mentioned above and do dual credit, etc her senior year.

[Rice]

My son is in the same position as your DD: using WG for 8th. I WILL award him credit (and list his transcript by subject, not by grade/date). In fact, since his siblings are doing MTMM for 10th and 11th (with higher science and LA), I even am giving him MTMM's history, since he read all the Extensions (by choice)!

So, my 2 cents is to give her full high school credit (except possibly for LA and math).

You can then decide if she could do WG LA: if she's reading well, since it is reading-heavy, especially in the first half, IMO, then BJU should be fine, having had my older son complete it this year - even if you do it orally to modify the amount of writing required. Could she do WG's IEW, too? (Mine is doing fine, 7 units in with his siblings. It's not a huge writing load, and conceptually he's doing fine with it.) That would actually simplify things for you, too, if you could do those two with both, and give you extra time to spend with her on those things outside of instruction time.

(Math will be what it will be, and you can decide later if she'll need that last year of math to graduate or not. If she's motivated you might be able to get another one in, or maybe she doesn't need it, depending on her chosen field of study.) FWIW, my DS is in pre-Algebra. He switched this year to independently going through Life of Fred, so I actually have no idea what level he's at for math, but HE says he's "finally learning something", lol, so we'll keep with that for now.

We've just come to a unique situation as to what "grade" our DS is in: our province requires reporting for all 4 grades - 9-12 - in order for them to receive a letter saying they've completed our provincial requirements (Canada). Because of that, we'll be officially registering him as 9th grade (we are planning on him graduating after 11th). If it weren't for that technical detail, we would have kept him as 8th, given him the credits, then probably graduated at the end of 11th anyway, but our hand was forced. Thankfully, like your DD, he is ready, maturity wise for high school; what he will do about youth group depends more on the fact that one cousin will still be in Jr. Youth...

We have one less complicating factor for him: our DD is going into 10th, not 9th with him (even though she should be - we started her early, much to my chagrin now, as she is not ready academically. but that's another story ). So that is the one area that will need some careful thought, discussion with them both and prayer. Since your DD is doing the same level, it is fair for her to graduate, too, but that would be hard for my kids, though maybe necessary - how do you fill an entire year, and should you even try to, when they've already completed a (plenty rigorous) course of study!?

It's not an easy decision, but when they can complete it as written, I don't feel it's fair to hold them back just because of a sibling. What would you do if she was where she is now, but didn't have an older sibling to consider?

Let me know what you decide! It's actually kind of nice to have someone else in the same "predicament"!

[jacynamommy]

Rice,
Thank you for your reply, that was actually quite helpful as far as giving me some things to think on and consider. It's also nice to have someone else in a similar situation! I'm still uncertain what we will do at this point. She could definitely move on the the WG's Language Arts. She is a phenomenal writer, reader, and English lessons come easy to her. So that wouldn't be a problem, though the "ocd" or orderly person in me wonders what she might miss completely skipping over Rod & Staff 6, as she's done all their previous books. Math I'm unsure of. She is pretty good at math, though she doens't love it. She's gone through all the Singapore math books, and I know I have a lot of options as what to do next. So that wouldn't keep me from moving her to grade 9. I'm also glad you mentioned issuing credit for those WG courses by subject and not by grade/date. I didn't even realize that was a possibility, as I haven't dabbled much in transcript stuff yet, considering our oldest is just headed into 9th grade. I'm really not sure I'm okay with them graduating the same year. Plus I'm just realizing she would barely be 17 (as her birthday is in May) and graduating high school if we moved her on up...and that seems really young to me! Maybe I just answered my own question with that one.