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OUR HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM CHOICES 5th + 7th GRADE

It’s that time of year again where we’re all picking out our homeschool curriculum. I’m going to share our homeschool curriculum choices 5th and 7th grade. (I’m saving my bookends: 11th + Kinder for another post.) I’ve tried not to be super boring, but after 10 years, I feel like I’ve found the things that work really well and have decided to stick with those tried and trues.

Since these two kids are so close in grades, I use a lot of the same curriculum with them. I also try to teach them both at once. It helps keep me sane!

So, here’s our homeschool curriculum choices 5th and 7th grade.It's that time of year when everyone wants to know what curriculum choices you've picked! Here's our homeschool curriculum choices 5th and 7th grades

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You can also listen to the homeschool plans on my podcast here: 

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Our Homeschool Curriculum Choices 5th + 7th Grade

I get so many questions from concerned moms that they are not doing enough. We are doing enough. If anything, I think a lot of us overload our kids with too many subjects. I’ve been guilty of this too. But at this point, I just want to do a few things really well with my kids. There’s no way we’ll ever do all the things well, but a few things? Yes, we can totally kick butt at a few things.

Take science, for example. I’ve shared many times that I’m not the best science mom. We rely on Curiosity Stream and Tinker Crate for those things. That’s it! That’s all we do!

And guess what?

Last year, my fourth grader scored an almost perfect score on the science portion of her standardized test. The 99th percentile!

I’m just sharing all that because to many, my curriculum list may seem short. We won’t do all of these things perfectly, but we will do them all well. Because by not overloading my kids, I’ve created the space to do the things we are doing really well.

Our Homeschool Curriculum Choices 5th + 7th Grade: Language Arts

A few years ago, our read alouds began to lead our language arts. This has been a brilliant way to make language arts and writing make sense to my kids!

Easy Grammar workbooks

Family Read Aloud Plan

I always like to make a list of the books I want to read with my kids aloud. We aim for one per month, but with the other books we read for history and just for fun, we don’t normally get to all of them. I’m fine with that though because I at least have a plan so if we finish a book for the month and are looking for another, it’s easy to decide on the next one.

The other thing I like to do is choose a book according to the season or the month we’re in. Sometimes I’ll choose a mystery for the month of October or something about the outdoors for May.

Here’s our list of read alouds for the year. We’ll read these as a family, usually right after breakfast or before bed, depending on the day.


Writing resources we use:

  • Nitty Gritty Grammar and MORE Nitty Gritty Grammar
  • Blank Books. My kids can create stories in these and they are so fun to look through later.
  • This year, I’d like to have my kids work on some family newsletters…maybe one per quarter or so; fall, winter (a Christmas one would be fun!), and spring. I’ve wanted to do this for several years. Maybe this is the year!?

Our Homeschool Curriculum Choices 5th + 7th Grade: Math

Math was a really easy decision this year. We’ve found a groove with Nicole the Math Lady and Saxon math.

Jack will be doing Saxon 8/7 and Sophia will be doing Saxon 7/6

Read why we love Nicole the Math Lady HERE.

Our Homeschool Curriculum Choices 5th + 7th Grade: History + More

Choosing what we were going to study in history this year was trickier that choosing the tools to study it with! We’ve gone away from the path of sequential history every year because things were feeling a little dry. We took a break in 2016 from our regular cycle to study American government more closely, which seemed to naturally lead into early 1900’s, the Industrial Revolution, and immigration in the spring of 2017.

Last year, we backed up a bit and studied colonial times and the American Revolution.

So this year, since we studied early 1900’s just in 2017, we’re going to skip a little up to the 1920’s and into WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII. We’ll use Story of the World for September to read the text from the Revolution to the 1920’s, just to fill in that gap of time. Then we’ll dive fully into a WWI study using Time Travelers: Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression. (We’ll just skim the parts of the study that we’ve done before.)

(We also studied the Industrial Revolution five years ago, and it was so fun!)

After Christmas, we’ll be heading into WWII time period and using Time Travelers: World War II. I just love these studies because they are thorough! They include a daily text, hands-on projects, recipes, writing projects, and more!

You can read about how I set up these studies HERE.

…and more.

  • Art has always been a big part of our homeschool, and this year won’t be different. We love using lessons from our Deep Space Sparkle membership.
  • Jack and Sophia will also participate in homeschool band again. I’m so thankful for this option that we have!
  • Nature classes at our local nature center are also on our schedule for the fall.
  • Morning Meeting is also a big part of our school day. During this time we go over our plan for the day, read a poem or an idiom, practice a mind bender and do some map work, depending on the day. You can read more about our Morning Meetings HERE and below are some of the books we use.

OTHER RESOURCES WE LOVE THAT WE’LL BE USING:

If you want to read more about our curriculum choices:

My Other Kids’ Curriculum Plans

It's that time of year when everyone wants to know what curriculum choices you've picked! Here's our homeschool curriculum choices 5th and 7th grades

4 Comments

  1. Thank you for this post and the reminder that doing a few things well is so much more important than worrying about getting it all done or worrying that we’re missing something.

    I also have to tell you that I have wanted to do a family newsletter for FOREVER! Even last year I remember telling my mom that I really wanted to get to it, but we didn’t (a move didn’t help). But let’s both get this done this year! I think it would give my kids such great learning experiences in writing, creating interesting and fun titles for articles, choosing pictures, and putting it all together (and typing) in a Word or Publisher program. I also want to print them and have the kids mail them out. And I just know they would be great keepsakes that I would treasure – and the kids, too!

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