Age 7 to 9

Overview

Recognize differences in pitch and tone by creating your own instruments. Explore how technology has changed the world - from pyramids to skyscrapers. Watch a caterpillar move through each stage of its lifecycle - becoming a beautiful butterfly. Write a story about two friends learning to celebrate their differences.

The Age 7-9 level uses these and many more activities to thoroughly cover the state and national standards in science, social studies, and language arts. Add Right Start Math for a complete and comprehensive homeschool curriculum.

The Age 7-9 curriculum constitutes one year of academic instruction.

Using the 7-9 Curriculum

The Age 7-9 Level has a flexible design that allows you to tailor a program to meet your needs. You can use the curriculum in each of the following ways:

Comprehensive Curriculum
With Moving Beyond the Page science / social studies core, accompanying literature units, and Right Start Math, you will have everything you need for a full year of homeschooling that will engage and challenge your gifted child.
Complete Language Arts Curriculum
Purchase all 12 literature units and teach your child vocabulary, grammar, writing, spelling, story elements, and figurative language while developing a love of literature using books like The Whipping Boy, Sarah, Plain and Tall and Poppy.
Complete Science and Social Studies Curriculum
Purchase the four science and social Studies concepts and teach your child about weather, sound, life cycles, economics, governments, cultures and many other topics using hands on experiments and integrating quality literature. Social Studies covers geography, history, government, and culture.
Supplement Any Existing Curriculum
Pick a science or social studies topic that piques your child's interest or a book that she will enjoy reading and supplement your current homeschool curriculum. Everything in our program is available to purchase individually.

What's New and Different for Age 7-9

The Age 7-9 level provides you with more flexibility to meet the unique needs of your gifted learner. It is common for gifted learners to excel in one area and struggle in another. This is especially true in the area of math, and we want to encourage children who are ready to move forward the opportunity to do so. Moving Beyond the Page seeks to encourage and support each child to excel in their areas of strength, while improving in areas of weakness.

We are introducing literature units that can be bought independently from the core science and social studies curriculum. This provides you with the option of utilizing Moving Beyond the Page as a literature supplement or as a science / social studies supplement to any existing curriculum.

There are a total of 12 literature units that accompany the Age 7-9 level. They are each designed to accompany one of the 12 science / social studies units that make up the year-long curriculum package. All units are broken down into daily lesson plans. When you begin lesson 1 of a science / social studies unit, you will also begin the first day of the corresponding literature unit. Even though they are designed to complement each individual unit, they can also be implemented as a stand alone literature unit.

All literature units include:

activities related to the book,
vocabulary,
writing practice,
grammar activities, and
suggested spelling words to use each semester.

The outline for each concept is listed below and shows how each literature unit ties in with the primary concept of each unit.

Science and Social Studies Unit	Literature Unit
Concept 1: Environment
Unit 1: Amazing Weather	*Tornado* Enjoy a story about the special friendship between a boy and his dog. Experience the effects of weather on farm life.
Unit 2: The Land	*Sarah, Plain and Tall* Experience life on the Great Plains in the late 19th century. Learn how one family comes to appreciate the uniqueness of others and the environment.
Unit 3: Sound	*Who Was Helen Keller?* What would it be like to live in an environment with no sound or light? Learn how one girl struggles to overcome physical disabilities to improve her life and the lives of others.
Concept 2: Change
Unit 1: Environments Change	*Morning Girl* Experience life through the eyes of a brother and sister in the pre-Columbian Caribbean. Life on their island is dramatically changed when a hurricane blows through, but the biggest change is yet to come. . .
Unit 2: Communities Change Over Time	*Communities and Cultures* Follow the adventures of the Blinkerton kids as they travel back in time and learn what life was really like in Ancient Egypt and the Middle Ages.
Unit 3: People Change the World	*American Heroes* Read biographical sketches about the amazing people who have shaped our nation. Be inspired to make the world a better place.
Concept 3: Cycles
Unit 1: Lifecycles	*Poppy* Follow the adventures of a courageous field mouse as she stands up to the great horned owl - Mr. Ocax. See how she struggles to overcome the cycle of power that has gripped her family for generations.
Unit 2: The Water Cycle	*Charlotte's Web* Appreciate the bond of friendship between a humble pig and an ingenious spider. Journey through the seasons on a farm and discover the different lifecycles of various farm animals.
Unit 3: Economic Cycles	*The Family Under the Bridge* Experience the hardships that befall a family at the bottom of the economic cycle. See how the kindness of strangers makes a real difference in the lives of three children.
Concept 4: Relationships
Unit 1: The Rain Forest	*One Day in the Tropical Rainforest* Journey through the rain forest with Tepui on the most important day of his life as he searches for a butterfly that no one has ever seen. Learn how to outline plots, write and dramatize scripts, and how to be persuasive in writing and speech.
Unit 2: Government and the People	*The Whipping Boy* Follow the adventures of Jemmy and Prince Brat, two boys with absolutely nothing in common and no reason to like one another, as they find themselves taken hostage and learn what it means to be a true friend. Learn to use idioms, similes, and hyperbole to make writing more engaging and interesting.
Unit 3: Connected Cultures	*Iggie's House* Experience the struggles and conflict that Winnie goes through as she learns the difference between being a good neighbor and a good friend with the first black family that moves onto Grove Street. Practice writing with proper verb - tense agreement, subject - verb agreement, and contractions. Learn to analyze the personalities and motives of characters in a story.

With the Age 7-9 level, math is no longer integrated into the core curriculum units. This is being done to enable you to tailor your math program to the needs of your gifted child. We know that some 7 year-olds are working at grade level in math while others are more advanced.

We proudly offer Right Start Math as a part of our complete full-year curriculum package. You will be able choose the level that is most appropriate for your child.

With Moving Beyond the Page science / social studies core, accompanying literature units, and Right Start Math, you will have everything you need for a full year of homeschooling that will engage and challenge your gifted child.

In the Age 7-9 curriculum, your child will explore all subject areas using a hands-on and investigative approach. Oftentimes, homeschoolers are only taught reading, writing, and math during the early years, but a truly comprehensive curriculum will expose them to science and social studies as well. These subjects can be the most engaging and exciting for a young child. The curriculum is also filled with quality literature to enjoy with your child.

Because all lessons are based on state and national standards, your child will learn all of the necessary skills for his age. Your child will continue to be challenged to read and write at a higher level.

Summary of Skills

The four links below will take you to the Summary of Skills for each of the four concepts that make up the Age 7-9 of curriculum. The Summary of Skills is a list of the state and national standards that are covered within Moving Beyond the Page. This list can be useful for your own planning purposes, but it is also quite helpful when submitting required documentation to fulfill state and local reporting requirements.

Prerequisites

Able to read and comprehend simple chapter books on a 3rd or 4th grade reading level.
Able to write multiple sentences on a topic.

What Else Do I Need?

Moving Beyond the Page encourages character development - kindness, honesty, and respect for authority. Even though we are not a religious curriculum, it would be easy to supplement each unit with religious stories and lessons. For example, when studying communities, you can talk about how God wants you to show kindness to everyone in your community. If religious education is important, you may want to supplement with a religious curriculum.

The Age 7-9 Full Year Curriculum Package covers science, social studies, and language arts. When purchased with RightStart Math, you will have a comprehensive curriculum for your child.

Purchased together, these four concepts form a comprehensive year long curriculum. Individually they can supplement any existing curriculum.

Curriculum Samples

Age 7-9

Concept 1 - Environment

Unit 1 - Tornado [LA]