Homeschool Middle School Curriculum – How to Make it Work
Homeschool Middle School Curriculum
The middle school years of child rearing bring a whole new set of emotional and academic challenges to any family.
Add in the pressure of looking for the best homeschool middle school curriculum for your family and it can be a very overwhelming time!
Through my own trial and error and much research I have put together a (hopefully!) helpful guide with tips to help make this transitional time much easier on you!
So grab a cup of coffee or tea or wine (no judgment here, it is middle school after all!) and get ready to put your mind at ease and learn how to enjoy this precious time with your kiddos!
Guidelines to Help With Starting Homeschool
If you’re not a new homeschooler, skip on down to the next section!
As I have mentioned in my other blog posts, How to Get Started Homeschooling and Homeschool Elementary Curriculum, making sure to know your state’s legal requirements for homeschooling is essential.
Make sure this is the first step as you are beginning to research and choose your homeschool middle school curriculum.
While choosing to homeschool is a legal decision in all 50 states, each state has its own requirements. You can view those requirements here: A2Z Homeschooling .
Another helpful site for legalities and support is Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).
Once you have this step figured out you can move on to planning what you want your child’s middle school experience to be like.
Homeschool Styles
If you are new to the homeschool world, there are a few different views or styles of homeschooling that most curriculum is centered around.
Choosing your child’s homeschool middle school curriculum may align with one or many of these styles, depending on what works for you.
I enjoy learning about all options available so I was very interested in reading more about the different approaches while researching homeschool. In my post on How to Get Started Homeschooling I give more info on 4 of the more popular styles and links to read even more about them.
More Independence
Aside from choosing what homeschool middle school curriculum works best for your child, your goal should be to encourage more independence with their work.
At this age/grade level, children are starting to gain more and more confidence with the basics, and have mastered many.
This makes it an ideal time to give your children more independence when it comes to their schoolwork. Obviously you are there for teaching and assisting when needed but for a large part of the work, they can be very independent.
As I wrote about in earlier posts, joining a local co-op or homeschool group can provide many opportunities for socializing. They can do the same for classes that your child takes from someone other than you.
Outsourcing some of your teaching may go against what you want your homeschool days to look like but it aligns with giving your middle school child some more independence.
Facebook or even just Googling to find local homeschool co-ops or classes will lead you to other homeschool families.
Online classes are another great way to encourage more independence for your middle schooler. These days there are plenty of online learning opportunities from Outschool an online platform with teachers offering math instruction and even fun electives like cooking classes.
Core Subjects
Homeschool middle school curriculum will still cover the core subjects you covered if you chose to homeschool elementary school, but they will be a bit different at this age.
Math will increase in difficulty, and algebra will most likely be introduced.
Language arts will still be prevalent but will eventually narrow down to learning how to research topics and write papers on those topics.
Vocabulary will probably take precedence over spelling lessons.
Keep in mind these are only suggestions and will definitely be different with every student and situation.
One thing that I believe should always remain in the forefront of homeschool, no matter the grade, is an emphasis on reading.
Reading quietly on their own for school and taking turns reading out loud as a family is a part of every school day for my crew.
In another post on the best homeschool reading curriculum, I wrote about the benefits to your homeschool and family from reading aloud.
It’s for sure one of my favorite parts of our homeschool day.
Electives
When planning your homeschool middle school curriculum, it’s a great time to include your child in selecting what electives she/he learns.
This is a wonderful age to add in some interest- led subjects or unit studies.
Exploring what your child is interested in and trying new things is another way to help establish some independence and help your child gain much- needed confidence at this age. Again this can be online, through a co-op or local class, or just with at- home studies.
Learning to bake and cook new recipes is a favorite in our household and can easily be tied into a lesson.
This year my kids started French lessons, so we took some time to learn how to bake French macarons (largely inspired by watching baking competition shows haha!) while playing French music. This was such a fun way to spend part of our day and we made such great memories.
The point is, find what your child is interested in and just go with it!
What Progress Means at These Age
I am a huge believer in progress not perfection in all aspects of life, but especially when it comes to homeschooling your kids.
I said it earlier but planning your homeschool middle school curriculum can be overwhelming.
If you have a vision of what it should look like and what your children will learn, great! But remember to not feel like you’re failing if that vision isn’t quite what it seemed it was in September, come January.
The best thing to remember when evaluating your child is that it’s not always important what is learned. Or by what point, but that there IS learning happening.
Small steps lead to bigger steps. The small steps tend to not be as recognized as much as the big steps. They are perhaps the most important.
Homeschool Middle School Curriculum Choices
Below are my tried and true favorites for some of our homeschool middle school curriculum choices. These are what have worked for my family, and are based on my own research and experience.
Check out Cathy Duffy Reviews for a very comprehensive site reviewing many different types of homeschool curriculum for more choices.
Reading
By middle school your child will (hopefully!) be a fluent, competent independent reader.
Learning how to decode words, decipher the meaning of text and basically be able to retell a story at this point are (remember every child is different with her/his abilities!) milestones that have probably been accomplished.
With that thought, a formal reading instruction has ended but the increase in checking for comprehension is now more important.
There are many simple, reading comprehension workbooks available to add into your homeschool middle school curriculum.
Another option is to assign a series of books for your child to read independently throughout the year. With some online research, or on your own, you can then ask your child to answer comprehension questions for each chapter, or write a more formal book report after they have finished the book.
I am a big fan of classic childhood literature being introduced at a young age, even prior to middle school.
By middle school, my kiddos are used to us reading aloud classic stories .They have also had the chance to read some on their own.
I really feel introducing your child to a wide range of writing styles, reading topics and different time periods is so important to help ensure a love of learning and reading.
I am planning a post on our favorite classic literature we have loved so far with our homeschool years. Once I have it published, I’ll add a link here!
Language Arts
The majority of the language arts books I wrote about in my homeschool elementary curriculum choices carry over into our homeschool middle school curriculum choices.
Most of the curriculum advances into high school even, making it an easy transition for us, since we have already used the curriculum and are familiar with it.
Grammar
Easy Grammar is a wonderful, simple yet effective way to master the basics of grammar. The books are numbered they are not specific to each grade level and can be added to any other grammar practice or stand up on their own.
Vocabulary
Wordly Wise vocabulary is such a great system to keep your child interested in vocabulary while they learn. It has a 5- day lesson plan for each week; the first day introduces the new words & various meanings each word can have.
Then, each day after is an activity focusing on identifying the meaning of the words, with a story & comprehension questions on the last day of the week. The books are very user friendly and the stories are really well written and on various interesting topics.
Spelling
Spelling You See has been a lot of fun for my kids and I really like the approach. The focus is on learning how to completely understand some of the aspects that make learning the English language (and then the spelling of the words in our language) so challenging.
At this age there will most likely not be a need for any more spelling lessons. But the importance of continuing practice of correct spelling is still there. Consistently practicing how to figure out the roots of words etc., and of course reading is one of the best ways to make sure they stay good spellers.
As I wrote in another post, repetition is a big part of how students learn with this program, which I love. Also, the stories they work on are great little history snippets or interesting facts that I enjoy too!
The program has various levels, and making sure you choose the correct one to start with is pretty important. They offer placement assistance which I would recommend in case you are new to the program.
Math
Horizons math continues to be our go to for math into middle school. The Horizons series runs through grade 6, followed by pre-algebra and algebra.
Horizons math program is ahead of what is typically taught at each age/grade level. The style the lessons are taught really sets your child up for success.
The spiral approach to learning ensures that through repetition and practice, a topic is mastered, and not just taught to pass a test.
One thing to note is that Horizons math is written for a Christian audience. There are references to the bible and church- related topics.
Even though we didn’t choose Horizons for it’s Christian content that pops up every now and then in the elementary aged lesson books, I really like the challenge the math lessons bring and my children have responded so well to the curriculum.
Logic
An add on to our math curriculum that starts in the middle school years is a logic workbook. My kids have really developed a love for logic puzzles & these workbooks have been an amazing fit into our days.
They do these workbooks alongside math or while I make lunch. They’re great for shaping strong thinking skills, and most importantly strengthening their…logic skills, you guessed it, ha!
Logic is such an important area to sharpen as your kids grow. It’s used it so many areas of life and especially helps with prep for high school testing like SATs & ACTs.
History
We are big fans of the Story of the World history series. We do continue to read through these texts at this age; however I also added in a separate U.S. history curriculum once middle school rolled around for my oldest.
All American History has been a nice addition for my kids. It’s easy to adapt to multiple grade levels.
I also add in a more thorough study of our U.S. presidents at this age level. Once or twice a week we study a different president and are really enjoying learning more “real life” aspects of those who have led our country.
Here are a few reference books that are really great at providing a look beyond just the typical facts we all learn about the presidents.
Science
As I wrote about in my post on elementary curriculum choices, for science we have really enjoyed The Good and the Beautiful science units.
The lessons are great to do as a family with suggestions given for different grade levels. I am currently researching more curriculum and will update this post when I choose what we are moving onto next.
We have also done many unit studies for science. Basically a deep dive into one aspect of science. Find something that interests your child. Check out many books from the library, watch documentaries, plan any related field trips that you can reasonably do. Google or look on Pinterest for project ideas to tie in too.
Immersive learning like this can be so memorable for both you and your kids.
Art, Music & all the Extras
We are a big art family! We try to do an art project a week. Sometimes this ties into another subject we are learning, sort of a unit study approach. YouTube is something we use often for learning a technique, say, wet on wet watercolor painting.
I also really like to do artist studies. I select an artist to study and check out as many books from the library as I can find on the artist. We will read all about him/her, have discussions, maybe write a paper. Then usually do an art project in their style. Or replicating a famous work of the artist’s.
I’m working on a post all about how I truly believe you can plan a whole art curriculum for free. I will link here when I am finished.
We listen to classical music daily and I plan to work with my kids on learning about the greatest composers. A great resource for this is the Opal Wheeler musician biographies. I have heard such a great things about these books and plan to start them with my kids.
Extras are all of the things that aren’t “required” in traditional schooling. Like most thing homeschooling-wise, these are a personal choice.
Like I mentioned, baking & cooking is big add in for us. Sewing lessons from my mom, field trips and nature studies are a few other extras we love these days.
Patience and Love
An obvious thing when planning your homeschool middle school curriculum, but hard to remember on difficult days is the importance for patience and love.
At this age our kids are growing in so many ways and emotions can be a big factor in determining how the day goes.
By keeping our emotions in check we can help provide a balanced, comfortable learning environment where our kids can thrive.
Don’t be hesitant to take a breather when needed.
TAKE A BREAK! Or two or three – whatever it takes to be in a better place. You will all be so much happier when you come back to work if you step away and get some fresh air or whatever refreshes your family best.
Remember – enjoy this time, it goes so fast and we can’t get it back!
