My young seventh grader is highly motivated with exceptional language skills. He thrives on challenge and uses his ADHD firing-on-all-cylinders brain to explore a variety of subjects and interests. Last year, he tackled Latin, Greek, and Spanish completely of his own volition. He loves to code on Scratch, play guitar, build in woodshop, write novels, and read voraciously. Choosing his seventh grade homeschool curriculum is always fun because he always so enthusiastic.
Seventh Grade Homeschool Curriculum for Language Arts
Language is my son’s strength. He excels with words, which means I approach much of his learning with lots of writing instruction and writing assignments. Language Arts is woven into his history, his science, and many of his other subjects as well. While these are his specific language curriculum subjects, you’ll see a strong emphasis in writing throughout.
- Spelling and Vocabulary: Michael Clay Thompson’s Ceasar’s English I (part 2), and Ceasar’s English II
- Grammar and Essay Writing: MCT’s Grammar Voyage and Essay Voyage
- Literature and Comprehension: Drawn into the Heart of Reading book choices & Teaching the Classics approach and book choices
Seventh Grade Homeschool Curriculum for Math
For the first time this year, we are going to be trying something new for math. My son has loved Christian Light for years, and we may go back to that yet. But this year my son has the opportunity to try a year of Thinkwell Math, and we’re both excited about it. As he heads into the upper-level math, I’m feeling more and more out of my depth. I love that Thinkwell will be providing him an online video instructor as well as scripted lessons and worksheets. I’ve looked at this program for years, anticipating this switch. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll fall back on our tried and true Christian Light, but I’m hopeful that Thinkwell will be a great change of pace and challenge his mathematical thinking in new ways.
- Thinkwell Math, grade 7
Seventh Grade Homeschool Curriculum for History, Science, Bible, Music Study
My son is a young seventh grader, which means his maturity and tender-hearted naivety don’t always match what he is academically capable of. This creates a challenge for me to find material that challenges him academically without the content being too mature or dark for him to developmentally handle. That was one of the reasons that convinced me to leave our beloved Tapestry of Grace curriculum for something different. His reading skills placed him at a learning level that his maturity just wasn’t ready to handle; the assigned reading was often dark and bleak. And after several assignments of him in tears over the content, I knew we needed to try something different. Heart of Dakota has been a gift, offering tons of reading with optional extension packages that challenge him while grounding him in rich character and hopeful themes. We will be tip-toeing toward the “coming of age” themes that are appropriate for a seventh grader, but cautiously.
These subject areas are also where our Classical-Charlotte approach shines through. We approach history and science through reading living books and writing narrations. His narrations have progressed from picture-caption in the early years, to full length essays. This year his narrations will include some timed oral narrations as well as both summary narrations and essay narrations.
Heart of Dakota Revival to Revolution (colonial to pioneer), which includes plans for:
- Exploration Education science and inventor biographies
- Who is God? from Apologia
- Heroes of the Faith inductive Bible study
- The Story of Classical Music, and Composers Activity Pak (from Homeschool In the Woods)
- a number of living books and biographies for history, plus beautiful notebooking pages
Seventh Grade Homeschool Curriculum for Logic
In keeping with our classical approach to homeschool, we will be introducing Logic as a subject this year. While our core subjects are covered four days a week, logic will be one of those subjects scheduled for the fifth day.
- Fallacy Detective (and Thinking Toolbox, if we get that far), book and accompanying DVD
- Writing and Rhetoric, book 5 and 6 (He’ll be exploring Confirmation and Refutation as well as other logic and argumentation skills.)
Seventh Grade Extras
One other addition this year is the Young Writers Workshop, hosted by Brett Harris and Jaquelle Crowe. My son loves to write and has lots of writing aspirations, but not a lot of peers that share his passion. The Young Writers Workshop will teach him creative writing techniques to help him finish his novel that he’s been working on for several months, and give him a supportive community of other writers who share his goals and passions. He’s stoked about this aspect of his school this year, and I’m excited to see what he learns from the experience.
Homeschooling allows me to approach education from my children’s strengths. I love that. For my son, that strength is language—words. And his curriculum reflects that. For my other kids, their strengths are reflected in entirely different ways. The result is uniquely customized learning plans for each child that inspire and challenge them in all the right ways.
Check out the rest of our curriculum for this year:
For more on how we blend Classical and Charlotte Mason approaches:
