Our 2024-2025 Homeschool Curriculum Choices For Middle School | Seventh Grade Homeschool Picks

hey everybody Welcome to the Wallock way I'm Jessica and today's video is our seventh grade homeschool choices so in today's video I'm going to be sharing kind of an overview of what I have picked to use with Emily for her seventh grade H school year the things that we're going to be using all year like our math our English that kind of stuff but I'm still going to be coming back on a quarterly basis to share with you guys more in depth about how things are going and specifically what we've chosen to do in that term because we tend to split our terms up in two quarters we will have a fall term a winter term well holiday and winter term kind of combined together um a spring and then a summer term and I like to do that because I don't plan more than two or three months ahead like I said I have a general idea of like this is the math I'd like us to get through this year those are the things I'd like to touch on for language arts these are the you know maybe the books I want to read whatever but I don't plan like our unit studies or our deep Dives until we are closer to that time period because maybe Emily's interest changed maybe our life has shifted and I need something a little less Hands-On For Me Maybe we're going on a field trip and I want to tie it into that so I don't plan that yet like I'm pretty sure I know what we're doing for the fall already but I'm still putting the final touches on that so once I've done that I will come back and share that with you in a few weeks with that being said I have not shared our one thing yet for this H school year because typically it's like this big thing that I have a lot of resources for and so it makes sense to be in its own video this year it is probably the biggest thing of all but I don't have a lot of resources for it so I thought I would just talk about it right now so in the year's past if you are new and you don't know what I'm talking about I've always Chosen One thing to really focus on in that home school year it helps us really nail that thing down as a habit make it a priority and then it kind of stays in our home school and we add something else the next year so in the past we've done read alouds we've done game schooling we've done nature study we've done critical thinking and logic we did field trips um and all of those things uh poetry tea time one year and all of those things kind of become like fundamental in our H School and then we just keep adding to them um this year I have decided to focus on something that is not tangible which is the first year I've actually done that normally there is something tangible something that I can like count like if it was read alouds we read aloud 100 books so yay it was a success um if it was field trips we went on I don't know 30 field trips so yay it was a success or you know nature study these are the things we learned about so yeah it was a success this year for our one thing I have chosen connection um I have realized that as Emily is getting older there is like this internal struggle for her and I both where like she wants to be more independent um I want her to be more independent I'm giving her boxes to check she's happy to check those boxes um and while we still I mean obviously we're homeschooling in only child connection's bound to happen but that meaningful like connection that was just so natural and easy when she was younger is not coming as natural and easy um I'm not saying that we're not connecting that's not what I mean I mean in our home school like before when she was younger she had to have me to play a game or she had to have me to read a book or um we were home all the time so I was filling the time and the space with books or games or watching documentaries together or whatever and now she's a tween and she is involved in a lot of extracurriculars and we are all kind of um doing some of our own things and it just feels like we're we're missing that like deep meaningful connection so that is my priority this year also I find that as we get um further into the homeschool years it's more of a struggle um for me as a homeschool mom because it's really easy to get wrapped up in the academics like the older they get you you mentally feel like they need more academics and they need more um rigor which which I mean maybe they do but it's just too easy to become like a checkbox mom like you need to do your math you need to do this you need to do this you need to do that and to let like those fun things that were how we connected fall off for example last year I noticed we did a lot less read alouds and we played a lot less games and those are two ways that have always been like huge for connection and like the fundamental of our home school and instead of saying like this was going to be the year of read louds or this was going to be the year of games which I debated like going back to those it really came down to it's not that we're not reading or not playing games or whatever we're not prioritizing connection which is kind of ironic because that's quite literally my H school mission statement um was to ignite a love of learning while prioritizing connection and and maintaining relationships like that's always been our hom school mission and so it felt very ironic that we had gotten so far away from that so that is what I am doing this year I'm trying to above all things make that our priority like make sure that connections and relationships are coming first and foremost I should do that every H school year but that's going to be our one thing because I want it to be at the Forefront of everything um so with that in mind some of my curriculum choices reflect that as well let's just get started the first thing that we will be using for logic will be the fallacy detective I grabbed this because I thought this would be a really great way for us to connect and talk about things together I mean technically she could do the lesson herself but I thought it would be fun for us to read the lesson and then discuss it um there are 38 lessons all of the lessons are about two to three pages of reading so you can see here like this is one page you would read this another page you would read and then there are what they call exercises um but I thought because conversations have become such a important part of our hom school and another way for us to connect out as she's older this would be a way for us to converse over that um so like for example like the exercise is what form of bad reasoning if any do you find in the following examples so instead of her just writing the answers I thought we would use this as a really great way to discuss Converse and maybe even dive deeper into you know why maybe her and I have difference of opinions or why people would think differently or why those were our answers okay we're just going to go ahead and dive right into math because I shared with you guys on social media that I had a really really bad week and I bought a bunch of curriculum some of it did end up staying some of it did not the one curriculum that has stayed that Emily has actually already started dabbling in um over the summer because she was actually excited when it came in and she loves it which is so surprising because when I watched um like the the trials and the samples I thought she's going to hate this um but so many people have recommended how great this is for older kids and I thought I'm going to try it with her and she just she loves it like we even went to lunch the other day with my mom and my mom's like so how's how's everything going and she's like nana I got a new math have you heard about Dennis and math which by the way is what we're using this year um Dennis in math I put her in the pre-algebra for those of you asking she um came out of teaching textbooks she completed math 6 I debated having her complete math 7 before we moved on to a pre-algebra but after like really digging into this there was enough review in the first couple of chapters in fact I think almost let's see it's like the first five chapters are just the Basics and then they get into the algebra like in the second 2/3 of the book probably so I felt very confident letting her go ahead and start this um if you have no clue what Dennison is it is it's beefy I'm not even going to lie but it's not overwhelming so Emily sits down for about 15 to 20 minutes each day she watches a video with Mr Dennison um he goes through and they do guided notes so like he does practice problems with them and she has to write along you know alongside him when he's done with the video she does an assignment there's about 20 to 25 questions on the assignment each day and then when she's done with the assignment there's a Solutions manual which is not the teacher manual it is the solution manual for the child themselves to go check their answers um and he's worked the problems out so that they can see where they possibly got something wrong and rework their answers and then at the end of each chapter there is a test um but it's not overwhelming I thought Emily would be overwhelmed by the whole idea of a test because of her anxiety she's not there's a pre-test then a test and then if she still doesn't get a you know a good enough grade I think it's a 90 is what their um recommendation is on the test then there's a second test for that chapter that they offer she's loves it she thinks that she thinks Mr Dennison's funny so I'm sold like if it continues to work I will be so thrilled um along the same math lines I also grabbed before personal finance um when I ordered this I went ahead and ordered the before and the Beyond so that I could compare them a little bit more like side by side in person I decided since Emily's 12 and the future use starts at 13 in this one um then we would go ahead and start here I love the the budget sections and like they give you even a um like a QR code that you can scan for like a plot twist like an everyday life plot twist so that you're not just making like these fictitious budgets that sound really good in in like fake life but in real life they would never work so I'm really excited to dive into this with her and have some Financial background um it discusses money budgeting smart spending generosity borrowing money governmental money Banks investing insurance so there's a lot of information in there and it's like each chapter that you do is for future use so like imagine you're 13 imagine you're 14 so you're growing up while you're doing it throughout the book and then because we are really focusing on connection one thing that I actually am in the process of creating that will be available in a few weeks is a math for everyday learning a real world math guide for learning for all ages um my goal with this was to have ways to do math with Emily in real world when she was younger it was easy you're in the kitchen you're baking so you just count the ingredients or you're you know outside you're in the garden you oh there's you know an array of vegetables do the multiplication but I have found it more difficult as she's gotten older to see those opportunities um the way I did when she was younger so unfortunately it means we're not doing them as much and because we're not doing them I'm not like oh let's get math today and bake instead which I want to do because I want that connection so I am actually in the process of writing a guide for me and for everybody else um that breaks down math in real world so like math in the kitchen math at the store um math on the go math and Technology math and the Arts and then it's going to break it down into each concept and subject and skill and all of the things so like if you're working with number sense here's some examples that you can use if you're working with fractions here's some real world examples you can use um and then even advanced concepts so that I have a way to be like oh I want to bake today let me flip through here and see what concepts I can work on with Emily while we're baking um and get that connection and still count it as math and then for language arts English whatever we're going to call it we are also trying something new Emily started a little bit she wanted to kind of dabble in it so far she's enjoying it we picked up fix it grammar um I let her pick the level she did Editor in Chief last year and she loved the editing portion of it like the red pin fixing the stuff so when I saw this I was like it's still kind of the same thing but it's a sentence at a time and she immediately was like I want to try it but only if I can get the Robin Hood level so I'm going to be honest I didn't even look at the other levels I looked at Robin Hood it looked doable for her so I just bought that one I have no clue if I placed her in the correct place I honestly don't really care because she's excited to do it because of Robin Hood and how that ties into archery and a lot of the sentences that she's done already talk about like him grabbing his bow or him being a great Archer and that excites her so if she's excited and interested in learning I'm all about it no matter what level she should be at that because I don't really believe in the whole behind the head thing so Robin Hood is what we're doing I have no idea if we will do this in the future if this is a onetime thing I will let you guys know and keep you updated so far she's done like maybe a week's worth we both kind of like it it's short it's simple we're literally done in less than 10 minutes um and it's working like she's remembering things so far and along the same lines we really want to stay with that connection I thought back to like what last year worked the best for us for language arts and one of the things that we enjoyed the most as a family was when we did our um Christmas Carol novel study together over the holidays so I decided that that's what we're going to continue to do so I'm in the process of letting Emily pick um a book like one every one or two probably every term um and I'm going to create novel studies for them for you for us but for you guys so the first two that she has picked um are Charlotte's Web because that was just one of her favorite books like when she was little and she wants to revisit it and then a friend suggested that she would really like the giver so after reading the synopsis of that that's the other book so I am writing those as we speak um much like the math they should be out in the next couple of weeks and then I will will just keep letting her pick like hey when I sit down like hey what do you think you would like to read the next quarter somewhere between the you know two to four books depending on what our life is like and how busy we are and how many she picks um and then I'll write novel studies for them and we will read them together as a family and do the novel study as part of our language arts because it will include um comprehension creative writing figurative language and then cross-curricular connections where we can enjoy some uh you know math social studies science and all that as it ties in to the study itself so a unit study based around the novel basically Emily is also taking book club with Mary Hannah Wilson she is only doing the 11 to 13 year old class this year um because she's aged out of the 8 to 10 and since we were adding novel studies I didn't feel like she could really handle that would have been like three books a month that's a lot plus her personal reading um so she is going to only do the 11 to 13 year old class she may may end up joining her graphic novel class at some point this year um she's still undecided at this time but the books that they're going to be reading this year are the first state of being Mercy Suarez changes gears masterminds the last mat maker good different The False Prince keepers of the lost city Mona Lisa Mona Lisa vanishes and the war that saved my life now one of the things I love about these book clubs is that Mary lets the kids discuss the books and so she's really getting that peer discussion but I also love that Mary picks like one literary element um to go with each of them books each month so like setting plot with Keeper of the Lost Cities they'll be talking about a cliffhanger so it's a book club where they're talking about uh the book and discussing it with peerce but also like because she was a h School mom she's like hey let's throw in this so like that's one thing that I know Emily's getting with her is even like an extra layer of Novel study and literature terms okay for everything else for the most part we are going to be doing unit studies which is no surprise um I have a general idea of what we will maybe do but I don't have it all completely mapped out that is one of the things I'll be coming back quarterly to talk to you guys about but some of the things that like I'm pretty sure that we're going to do will be traveling the states traveling the parks who was unit studies what was unit studies and the wear is unit studies and the reason I'm pretty sure we're going to be doing that is because those are things that have pretty much been Staples in our home school every year we do the state um and the park every time we travel so if we're going to do any traveling that whatever state we're going to whatever National Park we're visiting those are fluid and we do those as we're traveling and then the who the what and the where books anytime it ties in with a topic that we are doing um I always pull those many units to do with them so those will definitely happen they'll be fluid they'll be tied in wherever but then whatever other topic that Emily's interested in or that we're going to Deep dive in I will share more with you quarterly other extras will be Discovery decks I am not quite sure where these are fitting in to our homeschool day yet um last year Emily did them during breakfast so she would pull one and watch the show while she was doing breakfast that may still be what she does this year um I've also debated putting them in our morning basket which doesn't happen during the morning anymore um so that we could watch them together um so that it would give us the ability to discuss what she's watched so I'm not sure um where it's happening I know we also take them in the car with us on road trips too which that we will still do because it's a great way to be like oh hey let's watch a video about this real quick while we're driving um either way they have been invaluable in our H school there are I think over 20 different topics now with even more coming soon I think I have four new ones coming in the next couple of weeks that I've been working on um seriously become a bestseller you guys love them they work amazing in our home school so they're definitely not going anywhere they will fit in somewhere if not multiple different places games obviously we will be playing a ton of games like I literally wrote on a Post-It note Games Galore so I wouldn't forget to say that um and subscription boxes I'm going to have to tell you what subscription boxes that we have picked um on a quarterly basis I'm thinking because currently Emily and Kevin are still trying to decide she has aged out of a few she feels like and he feels like but we're not sure if she's old enough for some of the others we've looked at so we're still debating once we place an order and we make a decision I will share that with you and we will probably do whatever we do monthly so that if it's no longer working we're not tied in to like an annual subscription um but subscription boxes will definitely be happening part of what Kevin does with Emily on a weekly basis during their steam lessons and that's something that neither of them want to see go anywhere um and then for extracurricular Emily is still going to be doing 4 AG archery this year um actually printed the handbook so we could be a little more organized they do that practice weekly um they do tournaments monthly we will also still be doing um tournaments as a family outside of 4 so she will be getting in a ton of archers um she's sticking with karate which that happens twice a week uh so three times a week basically between karate and 4 we are out of the house which makes planning our homeschool days very interesting I was actually just telling Kevin the other day that it feels like um a puzzle like sitting down and trying to figure it out cuz like on Karate nights we can't get into a project cuz we're going to have to leave which means I need to start dinner early and it's like where do you know where do these things fit it's like sitting down and doing a puzzle every single night um or every single week getting ready for how the week is going to plan out and I'm not a huge planner like I would actually prefer to wing it but that doesn't work anymore now that our schedule is so busy because if I just wing it more than likely nothing is going to happen so anyway those are the things she'll be doing for extracurricular she may add more in as we see how like our schedule is going to be um but right now we're trying not to add too much in because we're actually planning for a pretty large trip this fall I'll share more about that later so those are our choices for our 7th grade H school year and now I would love to hear in the comments down below what you have chose to use in your home school for the upcoming year