This homeschool year, I have two of my kids in middle school—6th grade and 8th grade. To say I was nervous about these transitions would be an understatement. Though I definitely miss the lower elementary years of crafts and messy projects, adventurous learning and cozy read-alouds, these years of growth and independence and deep conversations have been a blast as well. I actually love homeschooling my middle schoolers. And while settling on homeschool curriculum for middle school has been a little bit of trial and error, I’m pretty happy with how our year has wrapped up.
Middle School Homeschool Curriculum
Middle School Homeschool Curriculum for Math
For both of my kids, I’ve combined Life of Fred with CTCMath and have been really pleased with the results. The kids love Life of Fred, and I love the creative critical thinking he encourages. But sometimes, Fred’s instruction could be a little more straight forward; this is where CTCmath has provided the perfect balance. CTCMath also gives me a range of tools to diagnose which specific learning gap needs to be addressed.
For my sixth grader, she has alternated days each week between Life of Fred and CTCmath. It took us a little time to figure out exactly where to place her in Life of Fred, and I probably placed her earlier in the series than she needed (Honey). However, with CTC filling in our gaps, I wasn’t too worried about it. I was looking for a win that would help her to move past her learning anxieties and motivate her to learn math. We aimed for 30 minutes a day, which worked out to be a couple of lessons each day in either Life of Fred or CTC. She moved quickly through the Life of Fred series and is currently working on Decimals.
For my eighth grader, we’ve stayed pretty consistently with Life of Fred. He wrapped up the prealgebra series, and we casually transitioned to the Beginning Algebra book about mid-year. CTCmath comes in handy as a supplement when my son gets stuck. For instance, recently we worked through CTC’s section on coordinate graphs, an area that got a little confusing in Life of Fred. He’s doing well, and the balance of the two programs has been perfect for him to gain a rich understanding of the concepts and the practical application of the concepts. Best of all, it’s enjoyable!
Homeschool Resources for Language Arts
There are so many components to a language arts curriculum, and my two kids have vastly different skill sets in this particular area.
My sixth grader has persevered impressively through dyslexia struggles and overcome quite a bit. She is continuing to use A Reason for Spelling at her own pace, and it remains one of her favorite subjects in her school day. (She also memorizes the first five or so words in the Abeka 6th grade vocabulary book spelling lists each week.)
We tried Writing with Skill at a very reduced pace at the beginning of the year, but abandoned it before the first quarter was over. As much as I want to love the program, it made writing and grammar so much more complicated than it needed to be for both of my kids, and the lessons dragged on forever. In the end, I created my own program using a few different resources as well as Tapestry of Grace Writing Aids. On Mondays, she experiments with a writing prompt in her writing journal. On Tuesdays, she makes a list of interesting synonyms to replace a boring word. On Wednesdays through Fridays, she works on a writing assignment: drafts on Wednesdays, revision on Thursdays, publish (type and print) on Fridays. The writing assignments are from the Writing Aids supplement from Tapestry of Grace.
The grammar workbook I used with both kids was phenomenal; it did a great job of teaching the content in simple bite-size lessons that only took a few minutes each day. Both of them learned more from this book than any program I’ve tried so far, and it was quick and easy to use for all of us. My son finished the entire book, while my daughter worked through half the book this year (she’ll finish the book next year).
Resources for Sixth Grade Language Arts
- A Reason for Spelling E
- Abeka Vocabulary 6th Grade (5 words a week)
- Grammar Workbook for 6th-8th Grade
- Daily Grams 6
- Unjournaling
- Banish Boring Words
- Tapestry of Grace Writing Aids
- Tapestry of Grace Literature
- Reading Detective (app from Critical Thinking Co.)
Resources for Eighth Grade Language Arts
- Maria’s Words
- Grammar Workbook for 6th-8th Grade
- Tapestry of Grace Writing Aids
- Tapestry of Grace Literature
Middle School Homeschool Curriculum for History
For eight years now, we’ve used Tapestry of Grace for our humanities subjects (history, literature, writing, Bible and worldview). I love the whole-family learning approach, all of us studying the same time period together. And I love the depth of the discussions we have about the topics in history. And my kids love the variety of interesting books they get to read, rather than a dry textbook. This year, we are covering Modern History, which has been a very timely study, looking at the brave sacrifices of people through the 1918 flu epidemic, the world wars, and the Great Depression as well as the decisions and events that have brought us to the present.
The beauty of Tapestry of Grace is that I have the plans for all the levels (1st through 12th) and can place my kids anywhere within those plans based on their skills and maturity. Also, there is freedom within the plans for my kids to create learning projects that appeal to them in order to demonstrate what they have learned. Dioramas, speeches, PowerPoint presentations, historical fiction stories, crafts, recipes, and essays have all been an integral part of our learning journey.
For my eighth grader, I also added a Classical Conversations resource called Prescripts. We used this for our Primary Sources assignments. He copied excerpts from famous speeches in his best handwriting, researched the audience, context, and purpose of the speech, then memorized and presented a few of his favorites.
Homeschool Resources for Science
Because we enjoy the whole-family learning experience, I have us all studying earth and space science this year. But I had the worst time finding a curriculum I loved for everyone. I wish a Tapestry of Grace for science existed, but since it doesn’t, I was forced to create my own unit studies. It was a massive summer project, but well worth it. This has been such a fun year of science, even though my kids were skeptical about rocks and weather when we first started.
In the end, they’ve loved each study and gained an enthusiastic knowledge of the topics. We used a Charlotte Mason approach of reading and then writing narrations, combined with projects and experiment kits to demonstrate learning. For instance, at the end of our astronomy unit, my sixth grader built a robot model of the Mars Rover and wrote a report about both the robot and the planet it explored. My eighth grader brainstormed an imaginary planet and its conditions, using his knowledge of space and the challenges of exploration; he brainstormed what the specific challenges would be for his planet and then wrote a short sci-fi story based on his idea. Interestingly, a few months later an intern at NASA discovered a planet almost identical to the one he had imagined!
Astronomy
- Wonders of Creation Astronomy (eighth grader)
- Usborne Astronomy (6th grader)
- Space Exploration robotics kit (Thames and Kosmos)
Geology
- Wonders of Creation Geology (eighth grader)
- 1000+ Earth Facts (6th Grader)
- National Geographic Fossil Dig Kit
- National Geographic Crystal Growing Kit
- Rock kits (Homeschool Science Tools and borrowed from our local charter school)
- Playz Volcanic Eruption and Lava Lab
Weather
- Wonders of Creation Weather (eighth grader)
- Eric Sloane’s Weather book (eighth grader)
- Golden Field Guide Weather book (sixth grader)
- Weather Instrument kit (Homeschool Science Tools)
Ideas for Middles School Homeschool Extras
In addition to the core subjects, my oldest has continued his Latin studies with Visual Latin II and pursued his creative writing interests with the One Year Adventure Novel. For Bible, I have loved using the Simply Charlotte Mason Bible study resources. Specifically this year, my oldest completed the Foundations in Romans study. My daughter will most likely start these in the next year or two as well, but for now she worked through Exploring the Bible by David Murray.
My son also worked on his black belt in karate and played his guitar with our local middle school jazz band. My daughter is also a brown belt in karate and enjoys soccer. They are both regulars at the skatepark in our area, practicing tricks on their scooters with their friends.
While middle school has its challenges and can definitely prey upon a homeschool mom’s fears, this year has been a really rewarding one. The benefits of having independent learners who embrace their own journey of learning is such a fun stage of homeschooling. That’s not to say that everything always goes smoothly, that there hasn’t been a need for accountability or that my kids have never procrastinated, or complained (or that I’ve always been patient and calm about all of this). We have all the adjustments that come with parenting this age and stage, but all in all we’ve grown together and had deep conversations about life and learning that I treasure. And while I miss homeschooling little ones, I’m really looking forward to these upper years and the new adventures we’ll have together.
