I finally finished our plans for this school year and wanted to share our 7th grade curriculum choices with you! Each year, I make a grid with all the subjects we plan on covering for the next school year and then fill in what curriculum I think I want to use. (I explain more about this in A Simple Way to Plan Your Homeschool Curriculum.)
This year, I started back in March to take advantage of spring homeschool sales, but didn’t finalize our plans until late summer.
My oldest son is starting 7th grade this year. Throughout the subjects below, we are continuing to develop the following “soft skills”, which are super important to prepare him for high school and beyond:
Independence
Organization
Time Management
Note-taking
Research skills
Now for our curriculum choices…
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*Click the orange links to learn more about the curriculum!
7th Grade Homeschool Math
RightStart Math Levels F and G
This will be our third year using RightStart Math and it has worked well for Big Fish. As the parent, we introduce each lesson and spend a little time teaching and then he works through a short worksheet for most lessons. These are sometimes followed by a game that reinforces the learning. Sometimes, we save the games for our Fun Friday homeschool days.
Big Fish enjoys playing all the games to practice his math skills instead of doing endless worksheets or practice problems on a computer. Many games are set up where he has to get more creative and complex in his thinking if he wants to win. This appeals to his competitive nature! 🙂
And we love how RightStart Math teaches number sense and mental math skills. We will be finishing up Level F, which we started last year and then moving to Level G. We used this placement test when determining where to start him in this program.
7th Grade Homeschool Science
R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey-Biology Level 2
This is the third science curriculum we have used from Pandia Press and the first one of their Level Two series, which is for middle and high school. We started this curriculum in the spring after we finished their Physics curriculum, which the boys loved.
The biology curriculum is meant for 6th-10th grade, so it is a big jump up from their elementary curriculum. However, it still has plenty of hands on lab activities where we explore with a microscope or model a concept we are learning. Here are models we made of cells during one of the early chapters:
We are taking our time with this curriculum and making sure we really understand each unit so it will definitely take us the entire school year.
7th Grade Homeschool Writing
Big Fish has used Write Shop Junior for his writing curriculum for the last three years now. They have provided a great foundation for this child who used to hate writing. It is now one of his favorite subjects!
This year we are moving up to their curriculum written for 7th-12th grade. There are only two levels so we are going to take our time and spread the first level out over 7th and 8th grade.
I am still learning the pacing of it, but it has a similar flow to the Junior levels of the curriculum. Those levels led us through practice with a target skill, guided writing and then brainstorming and organizing the writing project for the unit. One feature I love already of this higher level are the Printable Word Lists!
7th Grade Homeschool History
History Odyssey Middle Ages Level 2
We used the History Odyssey Ancients Level 2 last year. I can’t say Big Fish loved it because it definitely required him to ‘produce’. He loves to ‘consume’ so he enjoyed all the historical literature he read with it. But, he did not love the outlining and the writing he was required to do. We found later in the school year that breaking the lessons up and doing half a lesson each day instead of three full lessons every other day helped.
Since I loved the curriculum so much I decided we were going to give it a try for another year and see if the pacing of shorter lessons and a year’s worth of maturity help Big Fish feel differently about it!
Note: There are a lot of books to buy separately that are used throughout the lessons. I was able to find all of them used on Amazon.
I am also going to read aloud once or twice a week from Howard Zinn’s A Young People’s History of the United States. We covered a lot of US History when the boys were younger, but it seems like a good time to review it and learn some more while having higher level discussions!
7th Grade Reading
We will mostly use the books from History Odyssey Middle Ages for our reading with a few others thrown in. Sometimes, we might just discuss them. Other times, I may have Big Fish pick a short assignment for each chapter using these choices I made last year. (Feel free to download for yourself!)
He is assigned reading each day to do as ‘homework’ so that he has some practice managing his time in the late afternoons/evenings.
When we don’t use physical books, Big Fish reads on his Kindle, which is great for him to look up words and expand his vocabulary! We love this Kindle for the boys because it is ONLY a reader. Nothing to distract them!
We also are using this Word of the Day app for vocabulary. I write the word and its definition on our whiteboard each day and then we discuss the different parts (prefixes, roots, and suffixes) and relate it to something in our lives.
7th Grade Homeschool Latin
Big Fish has been slowly working on his Latin for two years now and we are going to continue this year, even though he is also beginning Spanish.
It is providing a great foundation for vocabulary and grammar development.
The Latin for Children program has been a good fit for him. We are able to break it up into short lessons each day that target vocabulary and grammar in a variety of different ways. The novelty each day keeps him engaged.
7th Grade Homeschool Spanish
Big Fish started learning Spanish this summer with Rosetta Stone as they have been having a special on their Lifetime Unlimited Languages subscription. (Note: at the time of this writing their “Student” version is cheaper than the “Homeschool” version.)
He has enjoyed going through the lessons and following up with their review games. He even met another student through the chat in the games and that has motivated him to keep learning! Little Fish, our 4th grader, even came up to me recently and said how his brother was learning a lot of Spanish and he wanted to try learning it now, too!
7th Grade Schedule
Since Big Fish does best with short lessons and shorter days, we do math, history, and Latin each day. Spanish and writing alternate every other day with each other. And we do science about three days a week along with his brother.
His favorite way to start the day is with these Brain Puzzles from Grids for Kids.
Do you use any of this curriculum or have others you have loved for 7th grade? Comment below!
If you are interested in seeing our curriculum choices from last year and how they worked out, check out:
