How are we already in the middle school years?! When I first started thinking about planning for 7th grade, honestly, I was pretty overwhelmed. The idea of teaching middle school was intimidating, but only for a moment. Once I took a deep breath and dove head first into researching, planning and evaluating current skills and ability levels, I breathed a sigh of relief. Really, all I found was that I was somewhat taken back by an idea. Not my idea, but a momentarily self-imposed idea of what is required and/or necessary for the middle school years.

Teaching seventh grade is like teaching sixth grade is like teaching fifth grade, and so on. Each year I research and prepare. We engage and adjust if needed. That’s what we do as homeschooling moms. For me, really settling into my educational philosophy and teaching style and knowing what works (and what doesn’t) based on my son’s learning style has been a great help. Oh, and community too!

We school year-round and Tristan attends an enrichment program that follows the public school calendar so I’ve been in 7th grade prep mode since April when he signed up for his Fall classes. We are now just over a week from starting 7th grade, I’m finishing up our first quarter planning, and getting excited to get started. As with most things in life, lesson planning has been a bit of trial and error, but I have new system for planning and Tristan helped refine a template for weekly/daily lessons last year that has been successful so far. I’ll share more about how I plan from our year down to our days in another post.

This year will be continuing with mostly familiar curriculum as well as adding in a few supplemental materials, and Tristan will be going to an enrichment program 1 day a week. Here’s what our seventh grade home curriculum looks like:

Language Arts
The Good and the Beautiful level 6/7
Critical Thinking Vocabulary Virtuoso: Mastering Middle School Vocabulary

History
The Good and the Beautiful History Year 2

Student News Daily (current events)

Science
Nature Study: nature journaling, Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, herbalism studies (Wildcraft/LearningHerbs), The Lost of Art of Reading Nature’s Signs by Tristan Gooley
The Good and the Beautiful Chemistry
Great Science Adventures – The World of Light and Sound

Math
Teaching Textbooks – complete level 7; Pre-Algebra
Critical Thinking Mathematical Reasoning™ Middle School Supplement

Bible

Action Bible devotional

Foreign Language
Latin – complete level 1; level 2

Art and Music – enrichment programs

PE – local gym, rec sports and enrichment program

Field Trips
TBD, but we plan for 2-3 per semester (more if possible) that are related to what we are studying

So there you have it, the outlined version of our curriculum choices for 7th grade! I’ll go into more detail in additional posts about how and why we’ve selected this curriculum, how I add in unit studies and how I do my planning.