Problems Consolidating Subjects & Too Many Subjects for 7th Grader?

I have a 8th grader and I think she would feel this was too much as well.  I would drop creative writing.  Try to narrow down the writing she’s doing.  IT seems like the speeches would require lots of writing and critical thinking for her. 

For Bible, we are using the Proverbs study and Table Talk magazine.  That’s been great!  I stopped having them prayer journal because I was seeing they were treating it as another assignment rather than truly expressing themselves to the Lord. 

She does Teaching Textbook Math

What do you use for history?  Can you just have her read through a good history spine and do a narration on it?  Or do history through a read aloud?

We do history together using Truth Quest history.  We read aloud and discuss each day.  She writes a small daily narration and illustrates it (comic book style).  She LOVES this.  I also assign books from our time period to read during the week.

For science she’s reading lots of nature books.  We are going through a book on Florida nature together.  We have TONS of Florida guide books and these are referenced daily.  She is responsible for one entry/week in her nature journal.  Next year I am looking to enroll her in an online science class with Abeka with online labs. I looked at Apologia General Science and saw that this would dominate my daughter’s day and she would NOT enjoy it.  It is heavy on labs which is fine once you get to high school, but is it really necessary right now?  In the past we used these science books that give a good overview of the subject without alot of busywork:  http://www.lamppostpublishing.com/exploring-series.htm

She’s doing a unit study on the Victorian time period (Where Brook and River Meet).  That’s okay.  We don’t do all the activities, but she does have a couple of topics to research and write about a couple times a week.

She is responsible for watching a lesson a week and doing the work for Latina Christiana.

We are working through Write With The Best for writing/grammar.  She also covers grammar in her unit study writings utilizing Writer’s Inc.

She’s reading lots of challenging books like an autobiography of George Meuller, Mere Christianity, Doctrine by RC Sproul, this is through her unit study.  I think that gives her critical thinking skills.

We are planning to add Spelling Wisdom.  Why not use that to address grammar? 

We do travel alot so we don’t participate in alot of extra activities outside of church.  Our fine arts day is Friday and we do our composer/artist study then.  Today! 

I would look at consolidating where you can.  It looks to me you are heavy in language arts.  Also, do each of these subjects really require a curriculum or textbook?  Ask your daughter what her least favorite things are.  Look for another way of learning the material.  Ask your husband for his input as well, they can see things from the outside better than we can. 7th grade is still young.  I would become more formal with some of these subjects in high school, not right now.

I did approach my children last month and told them I didn’t think they were doing enough.  I increased their reading and started requiring daily written narrations from them in reading and history.  We were able to ditch the language arts workbook and the handwriting workbook and just address grammar with the other things we are using, including their narrations.  This has freed them up to work on the things that have the most bang for their buck as far as learning.  Take a look at the curriculum guide here at SCM and Ambleside Online to get a feel for what they give a 7th grader.  Keep in mind that this doesn’t include speech which is very involved from what I’ve seen. 

I always have to do alot of tweaking to our workload every year.  I don’t think we will ever stop learning, growing, and changing things up to best fit us.

Hope this helps!

Betty