eighth grade

Welcome to the Jordon household of "Army Brats!" Jennifer is a spunky young girl of 16 years left in charge of eight military drilled younger brothers and sisters, while their father, General Jordon, is overseas on duty.

Robb White brings us an exciting historical fiction tale of life aboard a military submarine in the Pacific in World War II. Someone's been transmitting top-secret plans from the American base in Hawaii to Tokyo. The Americans have learned that transmissions are being sent from Hawaii to an island in the mid-Pacific and from there to Japan. They believe they've located the island where the transmissions are being passed along, but have been unable to break the special code being used there.

This book is sold as a 7th/8th grade history text, but with the addition of some outline maps and a little imagination it could easily serve as an introduction to world geography.

I came across this little gem of a story from the 19th century while visiting the Paidea Classics website. This is a website with resources for Eastern Orthodox home schooling families. If you are studying the time period of the early Church you will find a lot of primary sources and resources there.

Grisly Grisell begins with a bang, in fact, an explosion. Unfortunately, the result is more than a loud noise. Set in medieval England, during the War of the Roses (the reigns of Kings Henry V and Henry VI), the children of the castle are curiously investigating a keg when, to their horror, they discover that it contains gunpowder. The devastating result is a seriously wounded little girl, who is brutally scarred for life. How she, as well as others, deals with this devastating disfigurement affects much of the rest of the story.