Homeschooling Middle School | Tips
December 3, 2022 Adrienne Brown 0 Comments
Homeschooling Your Teen to Succeed
The first step to homeschooling your middle school student is teaching him responsibility for his own future success.
He becomes responsible by learning practical skills needed to function as a successful middle school student.
Let that young person wash his own clothes and cook his own breakfast. By now he needs to be fixing his own bed and monitoring his own school schedule.
When he sleeps in on school days, then he automatically chooses to work until the daily assignments are completed.
If he doesn’t do a lesson or complete a quiz, then he is responsible for doing it the next day. This includes completing his daily lessons for that day.
Oh, and again, please make sure that he makes his own bed every day.
Middle School Teens Need Future Skills
Make sure your middle school teen knows the things needed for his academics and future.
In our family, we start this process when our kids are very young, 8 & 9 even. Being sure to introduce every day responsibilities through assigning them practical jobs and duties in the home.
This may seem inappropriate training for an academic education, but it is very much related.
A middle schooler shouldn’t have mommy or daddy holding his hand through every task. Because he is headed for highschool and middle school is preparation for that time.
By the age of 13, middle school teens should be able to step up and do things on their own.
So, learning to take on menial task around the home teaches them personal responsibility. And it equips the teen with future skills as a self-motivated leader.
Similarly, Educate your middle schooler in people skills
After you have given him practical skills, Prepare your homeschooled teen with basic socialization skills.
Which means interacting with people on the outside world. Homeschooling parents really need to teach their homeschooled teens these skills while they are still at home.
Things like:
- Knowing how to communicate with others about their future goals
- Making phone calls to teachers when dual enrolled- in our middle school this meant band teachers, coaches, etc.…. We counseled our kids on how to talk with these teachers when necessary.
- Taking them to open their first bank account, and teaching them how to bank
- Teaching them to call a store or organization for information
- Teaching them to calculate their grades, so they can adjust study habits accordingly
Why do we do this? Because education is more than just academics.
Middle School Goes Fast, So Let’s Step it Up.
Teens need to understand, that they can only have academic success when they strive for overall success.
What does this mean? Well, we must nuture them to be well rounded in their thinking and abilities.
Subsequently, this gives them the confidence to do even more, and it doesn’t stop there.
Start equipping your middle schooler with the right academic tools as well.
This means, making sure he is up to standards in the core subjects, like math language, history and science. We have used Abeka curriculum for the last 20 years, which has everything needed for any given subject.
Going Hard on Academics
Now is the time that you will have to step it up along the lines of the core courses.
By now, you should have your child doing the right levels of math, language history, and science. Most importantly, get him lessons in writng. Writing is a skill that he will need in high school as well as college.
This is true even if you do not use a boxed curriculum like Abeka. Since any teen college oriented must be able to handle college level work, which requires lots of writing.
To sum it up, homeschool your middle school student for success by giving him a well-rounded education. Choose the right curriculum for your child, and remember the following:
Middle school kids who desire to go into the STEM majors must progress in math, language, and science. Please stress math and keep it linear.
To homeschool your middle schooler well teach him practical skills, basic skills, life skills and academic skills.
This path will help you to homeschool your middle schooler well!