Our Homeschool Curriculum Choices For Middle School

How do you choose a homeschool curriculum for the year? I get so excited about choosing new resources! There’s a lot to love.

It can be tough to know which curriculum to choose. It’s easy to get excited about all the cool new resources and forget to think about what works best for Emily. I’ve compiled a list of everything we use for middle school this year. 

As always, this list is what works for us and it’s a great place to begin planning your resources for the year. Make adjustments as needed and enjoy the excitement of planning another fun homeschool year!

How We Choose Our Homeschool Curriculum

There are so many fantastic books, games, and resources! I honestly love all the things, but I know what works and what doesn’t work for Emily. I do my best to choose our homeschool curriculum based on what will work best for our daughter. 

I like to choose many books we can use as resources whenever Emily has a question or I need a reference. Choosing great books to fill this role in our homeschool cuts down on the amount of time we spend on screens. We love to follow Emily’s interests throughout the year, so many of our curriculum resources won’t get used in their entirety. 

Instead, we pick and choose what works for us and take parts from different resources to form a curriculum that’s unique and perfect for our family. Ready to see our homeschool curriculum choices for middle school? Check out the resources I’m most excited about below. 

Our Homeschool Curriculum Choices For Middle School

Middle school is a whole new ball game! We are keeping some of our favorites and embracing lots of fun new homeschool curriculum choices for middle school too. Discover what we’re using for language arts, math, science, and more to get ideas for your middle schooler.

Language Arts

The main resource for our middle school language arts study this year is focused on a literature-based book club offered by Outschool. Emily loves these online classes! This year we are taking the 8-10 year old class and the 11-13 year old book club class too. 

My friend Mary Henna Wilson teaches the class and we’ve been taking it for several years. The classes meet once a month and the kids get to discuss the books. 

Plus, they focus on a different literary element each month. Some of the books we are doing this year include The Mouse and the Motorcycle, The Girl Who Stole an Elephant, and The Very Very Far North. To see more of the fun books we will be reading this year, check out our book list for ideas.

We will use Editor in Chief as a resource to help with writing in addition to continuing our journaling and Night Zookeeper. This book focuses on practicing grammar and critical thinking by correcting the articles and summaries included in the book. Emily is pretty excited about playing editor. We probably won’t do the whole book, but that’s ok!

Other resources we’re using for language arts this year include Mad Libs which we love, creative writing projects, and continuing to write letters to friends and family members during mail time together. 

Math

Math is probably the only subject where we follow the curriculum very closely. We tend to complete most of the math lessons in our curriculum and stick very closely to the lessons in order. However, I’ll skip over concepts Emily has already mastered and pull in extra practice in all kinds of fun ways.

Our favorite math curriculum is Teaching Textbooks. We’ve used this program for years and it’s definitely enough all by itself. We add lots of fun games and other activities to give Emily lots of real-world practice with math too. 

Some of our fun new math resources this year include Generation Genius math videos and subscription boxes as well as our MEL math boxes. Emily is also really loving the Prodigy math game on her tablet. It’s a fun interactive way for her to squeeze in a little extra math when we’re carschooling.

Science

We use lots of subscription boxes for science too. Emily and Kevin really enjoy doing MEL science kits and Kiwi Crate Eureka boxes together. They engage in all sorts of projects to learn about different scientific concepts and experiment together throughout the year.

Much of our science for middle school comes from our unit studies. This year, Emily is really curious about weather and natural disasters. We have an exciting weather unit study coming up that we’re excited to dive into!

This year, we’re taking in-person homeschool classes at a nearby zoo. These classes are a lot of fun and filled with lessons about biology. I’m pairing the classes with a My Zoo Box Subscription.

Crash Course Science and Generation Genius offer fun videos about a wide variety of scientific concepts. They’re great for watching during learning lunches or right before completing a Generation Genius subscription box. All these great science resources will be accompanied by our favorite science games, videos, and books too!

History & Geography

This year our social studies is going to focus heavily on the United States. We plan to travel to a few more national parks this year, so I’ll be using our Traveling the Parks unit study to learn along the way. Plus, we’ll use our Traveling the States unit study to dive deep into the 50 states.

In addition to our field trips in the parks, we will be using our new mini-unit studies to learn more about the historical events and key figures Emily is really curious about. The Who Was? Unit Studies are perfect for learning more about important historical figures and the What Was? Unit Studies cover key events in a way that’s engaging and easy to understand for middle schoolers.

We use lots of fun subscriptions to help as we learn about history and geography too. This year, we’re sticking with our tasty Universal Yums box and our History Unboxed subscription. Plus, we’ll use the History Timeline book for a quick daily lesson with fun facts and Crash Course History Videos to learn more about the things we’re really curious about this year.

Electives

There are lots of fun curriculum options for electives! We’ll continue our daily walks as a family for PE as well as participate in as many local 5K races as possible. Emily is really excited about a new elective this year: archery with a local 4H club.

Nature study is our “one thing” to focus on in our homeschool this year, so we will be engaging in lots of fun nature study activities. I plan to focus a lot on nature journaling. I also grabbed the No Sweat Nature Study book to give us more options for the days when we can’t get outdoors.

Art is Emily’s favorite elective and we will continue with some of our favorite curriculum resources for art including Chalk Pastel, Masterpiece Society, Yellow Spot Sun, Deep Space Sparkle, and Art for Kids Hub.  For music, we’re loving SQUILT classes.

Finally, we’re learning Spanish with the Duolingo app. Emily is excited about taking on this app since it gives her a chance to learn the language more independently. It’s a great place to begin and we can always add more resources later in the year.

Looking for more curriculum options?

I’ve just shared a lot of curriculum choices for middle school! Many of these resources won’t get used completely. Some will become favorites we use again next year and others will be references we consult occasionally. 

As always, we will focus heavily on fostering a strong connection, spending time together learning as a family through games and hands-on activities, and diving deep into Emily’s passions through interest-led unit studies.  If you’re looking for more curriculum options to use with your middle schooler this year, check out these other great unit studies and curriculum resources:

Do you have amazing curriculum resources for middle school this year? Share your favorite middle school curriculum choices in the comment section. I can’t wait to read them and explore a few of your favorites too!