Sometimes moms who are homeschooling average middle schoolers feel pressure to “get the kids ready for high school”. Often that really means, “hurry up and do high school courses in middle school”.
Homeschooling Average Middle Schoolers: High School Can Wait!
Remember, Moms:
- Your average middle schooler is ABOVE average in God’s eyes.
- Your homeschooler doesn’t HAVE to run 2 years ahead in math, science, or vocabulary.
- Your average middle schooler needs to discover and develop the ABOVE average gifts that God created in him/her.
Here are some questions to ask well-meaning but pushy friends.
- If my average middle schooler struggles through algebra before high school, what math is he/she going to show on the homeschool transcript for junior and senior years? (An average academian is not going to need to show calculus or statistics, and in fact, probably shouldn’t bother with those maths.)
- If my average middle schooler spends his/her pre-adolescent years pounding ahead in a math or other subject that will take hours each day to complete, how will he/she have time to explore, develop, and steward the gifts that God gave?
Moms of average middle schoolers, you are homeschooling so that you can do what is best for YOUR kid. Pray about what is best, then rest in God’s guidance.
Perhaps what your average middle schooler needs to do this:
- help with home maintenance
- learn to bake and organize a house
- learn to build treehouses
- learn to quilt
- learn to plant a garden
- learn to sing
- learn to play piano
- learn to ride horses
- learn to play soccer
- learn to vacuum the church sanctuary
- learn to take a meal to an elderly person from church
- learn to raise money to support a Compassion child
- remember to love learning
Moms of average middle schoolers: Don’t give up your unit studies, field trips, notebooking, multisensory learning! Maybe you can add a LITTLE stretch if appropriate (such as 1 or 2 no-busywork literature guides to help ease in the idea of that kind of directed study) or a user-friendly, success- oriented textbook.
Click here for some cool sites for middle school students.
[…] Many eighth graders, however, have never given any real thought to a career. They are busy being kids. In my opinion, this is a wonderful thing. I feel like we Americans are too often rushing our kids through childhood. […]
Thank you. Thank you! I tend to struggle against the assumption that because we home-school my kids must be advanced. I have an average middle-school child who is not advanced in anything academic. Thanks for the affirmation today.
It’s a struggle for many of us, I think. Glad we could encourage you! God made ’em all unique, and we need to work WITH what He designed.