Are you structuring a home education for a twelve-year-old? Your twelve-year-old and MY twelve-year-old aren’t the same.
In fact, I’ve had three twelve-year-olds living in the same family and they aren’t the same either. So take my suggestions with a grain of salt, but gather ideas for your 7th grade homeschool.
You can’t teach the same way to each child. They’re different. Your goal is to tailor an education for each of your kids differently.
This 7th grade homeschool has a twelve-year-old who might have too many extracurricular activities.
Presently she’s in the choir, dance, youth group, piano, and drama classes x 2. But she has also studied violin, attended soccer camps, joined a baseball team, and gymnastics, sailing, and kayaking camps.
And then there are our family activities: traveling, canoeing, hiking, and cross-country skiing.
Oh, and there are studies.
Somewhere between mid-September to early May, we do formal studies.
Presently, she’s learning fractions and decimals.
She doesn’t struggle with math, but she doesn’t love it. Though I am available for consultation, she doesn’t need me to read directions and explain most things.
This 7th grade homeschool girl writes a lot.
She writes a blog about cooking, alongside her other writing activities, some writing prompts that are Pinterest-inspired, some personal letters, and using a program by Jump In (from Apologia Press). Once a week she completes a page of Editor in Chief, a grammar-intensive workbook.
She journals.
And this mama doesn’t peek. I’m not concerned with grammar and spelling or scanning her thoughts. Rather, my goal is that she comes to understand her own thoughts and her own self.
She does memory work.
Train that brain, baby. Any passage is useful: Bible verses, poems like Mother Teresa’s Anyway, EE Cummings, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Latin prayers.
This 7th grade homeschooler studies second languages.
Or I will be more specific: she’s exposed to languages. How does one learn a language unless they’re required to use it in every day?
Our homeschool family has studied Spanish and is presently using Ecoutez Parlez for French and Latina Christiana for Latin. Also, we learn English derivatives in Latin which increase English vocabulary and word recognition. We spent a month pursuing conversational Swahili, Mampruli, and Italian on our travels to Kenya, Italy, and Ghana. This was a more useful building block for proper language acquisition than any verb conjugating we could learn at home.
She reads and discusses early American history.
Today we looked at the ratification of the American Constitution. Once a week, she writes everything she remembers from her readings in her history notebook.
She studies science.
She started with a physics kit this year and filled in occasional afternoons with Apologia’s Swimming Creatures. The National Geographic chemistry and physics kits I found at a homeschool convention provide lots of exploration too.
In her spare time (and yes, she still has spare time), she plays piano, films her sister’s rainbow loom YouTube channel, creates music videos, writes stories, crafts, cooks, bakes, hangs with the neighbor dogs, and reads (her recent fav I Am Malala).
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together”
Vincent Van Gogh
Reimagine your Homeschool Workbook
Introducing the Reimagine Your Homeschool Workbook! Reflect on the past year, assess what worked and what didn’t, and build the homeschool you truly want. Evaluate curriculum, routine, philosophy, and plan for the future. Get renewed inspiration and fresh ideas.
People also ask:
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Teresa Wiedrick
I help overwhelmed homeschool mamas shed what’s not working in their homeschool & life, so they can show up authentically, purposefully, and confidently in their homeschool & life.
All I have to say is that your daughter is very lucky, and I loved your post, so keep it up! 🙂
Thanks kiddo. I’d say you’re pretty luck yourself travelling around the world. Wouldn’t it be neat if we could all live a thousand lives and experience it all?