It’s the end of the school year, and I’m writing about the Timberdoodle Eighth Grade Curriculum Kit for 2018! Read my unboxing post here, and my mom’s unboxing post here. We also wrote mid year reviews – check mine out here and my mom’s out here.
This book has a good range of all the different subjects to learn about, and I like how it has little lessons that at the bottom of the page tell you to stop there or keep on going to the next page. However, I wish that the subjects would be mixed all together instead of seperated – it would make it easier so that you could do like a few pages of each subject per week or something.
180 Daily Teaching Lessons Grade 8
I really like how there a lesson for each day, and I like how short the lessons are. However, this seemed a bit dry and after a while it got kind of tedious. The lessons are very similar.
This book is really cool. I’m not the most talented realistic artist (I can draw great stick figures) so this book was really hard for me – you have to draw buildings and sculptures and benches. Different pages had different facts, which I liked.
This is a really impressive language arts curriculum. You read a story, read a “Blueprint for Reading”, which tells you about the background of the story and tells you about the theme and author, then do some work pages on it.
This book is really hard at first, but once you get into it it is easier. It is pretty repetitive with the work pages, but it is fine because it is always different sentences and words. The only think that I don’t like about this book is that in review parts, there are these pages where you have to unscramble spelling words, and I don’t like doing those.
Writing with Skill Student Workbook Level 1
I really love the layout of this book, but the work is very repetitive and tedious.
I like the layout of this book. However, I felt like it was moving pretty slowly – which might be fine for some people, but for me instead it just felt like we were repeating things over and over that I had learned before. I really like how they have math manipulatives, because I feel like if I can see and touch what is happening in a math problem then it will be easier for me to understand.
Extreme Dot-to-Dot: Spectacular Places
I love dot to dots, and this book is really cool! I love how they have facts about each place on the page.
I enjoy graphic novels, and I really like how this was designed. However, I felt like the people looked a little creepy.
Building Thinking Skills Book 3 Figural
This book is not very fun, and I felt like it was designed towards a younger age group. However, I do not enjoy logic and that is also probably another reason I don’t enjoy this book. My little sister who is also homeschooled (age 9) loves logic and I gave it to her. She loves it!
I love this kit! I have made it before, and was happy to see that it was included in the curriculum kit – Timberdoodle often puts these in their curriculum kits. The thinking putty and kit is high quality. My only issue with this is that the tins are sometimes hard to open, and I would appreciate a larger container.
People, Places, and Principles of America Book 1
This book is very repetitive and dry. The lessons always have very similar questions which makes it very tedious. I also feel like it has been repeating the same things I learned in fourth and fifth grade – I don’t know if that happens in public school but it is a little strange.
Focus on Middle School Astronomy and Geology
Like the Thinking Skills book, I thought that this book was a little young for me. The experiments are also hard to do unless you spend a whole bunch of money on the materials.
This game is really fun! It is also a fun game that is easy to clean up and you could easily bring it with you when to travel to play in hotel rooms and the car or plane.
2018 Curriculum Handbook
I didn’t use this very much except for when I was writing these reviews :). Then it was useful because it lists all of the materials included in the curriculum kit and also has a sort of reading challenge thing.
Mechanics Lab Planes and Helicopters
This sounded cool – similar to Lego Technic. However, it was really hard to understand the instructions and the pieces were hard to put together. My mom tried it too and it was still too hard.
This had a lot of history, which is important, but I felt like it wasn’t taught very well. It also kept on talking about lifeskills, which are also important, but not what I need in an aviation course. I just started using the flight simulator. It is cool, but I felt like it could be updated to be easier to manage and easier to see what you are doing.
Leave a Reply