How to Homeschool a 13 Year Old

What Should a 13 Year Old Be Learning?

Homeschooling a 13 year old should entail an in-depth focus on subjects such as language arts, math, science, with a choice between life, earth or physical science, and social studies with a choice between ancient history, world history, U.S. history or civics.

Some additional concepts that your child should be learning include:

• Applying the Pythagorean theorem in three dimensions.
• Writing equations in slope-intercept form.
• Using the reading comprehension process skills of summarizing, predicting, visualizing, questioning.
• Applying writing skills on activities such as composing cover letters, poems, biography, position papers and more.
• Understanding social reform at the turn of the century.
• Describing the cultural and economic challenges facing new immigrants.
• Creating and conducting a scientific investigation.
• Demonstrating an understanding of waves, including sound and light.

How to Start Homeschooling a 13 Year Old

Now that your child is a teenager, your role should gradually change from full-time teacher to school manager. Once your student understands what their assignments are, let them do their job with minimal interference. This empowers your students and gives them the independence they enjoy. And like any good manager, you will provide guidance, stability and praise for a job well done.

For further advice on how to homeschool a 13 year old, review the following steps.

• Step 1: Check your state laws for compulsory attendance and other requirements. States vary on how many days per year that you must homeschool your child.
• Step 2: Select a new homeschool curriculum or curricula. If you have one already, review it with an open mind because homeschooling a 13 year old is new territory.
• Step 3: Create a first draft of your goals and objectives. You’ll probably edit these objectives a few times during the year.
• Step 4: Build a flexible homeschooling schedule for a 13 year old with your child’s input. Keep your family’s needs in mind and also block off the necessary time to meet your objectives.
• Step 5: Provide time for social events. Join a homeschool group or a chorus or intramural team. Social time is important for you and your child.
• Step 6: Include technology in your homeschooling. Most teenagers love fiddling on their computers or smartphones. It improves their dexterity and tech skills.

Homeschooling Planner

Start planning out your homeschooling days with this free easy to use daily planner.

Get Started With This Daily Planner

What Should a Curriculum for a 13 Year Old Look Like?

Curriculum or curricula packages vary depending on your students learning styles, your family dynamic and your budget. But there are certain tools, resources and benefits that should be included in an ideal product. For example, learning activities for 13 year olds should be interactive and diverse. Teenagers become easily disinterested, which makes your job as the school manager more difficult.

You can solve that problem by choosing a curriculum product that includes perks such as:

• A mixture of interactive, web-based lessons, printable worksheets, video instruction, and offline projects, that keep your student’s day engaging and stimulating.
• A detailed 8th grade scope and sequence that allows you to prepare for a more demanding academic schedule.
• An affordable monthly payment that allows you to start, stop, or pause membership at any time.
• The flexibility and function to  work well with different homeschooling styles.
• A tech-centric program that integrates STEM activities into your daily lessons.
• An automated system that grades lessons, tracks progress and keeps reports for homeschool portfolio usage.
• Lessons in the core subjects of language arts, math, science, and social studies plus exciting electives.

How Time4Learning Helps You Homeschool Your 13 Year Old

For many parents, Time4Learning becomes an integral part of their homeschooling team. It offers interactive lessons that encourage independent learning, an automated grading system, learning activities that lay the groundwork for high school and a format that improves your students organizational, decision-making, and critical thinking skills.

It also gives you the flexibility to properly manage your child’s education by providing benefits such as:

• Over 200+ chapters and 4300+ activities in math, language arts, science, and social studies.
• Activity planners and curriculum calculators that help keep your kids organized and working independently.
• Multiple activity types that help instill skill mastery, including animated lessons, printable worksheets, instructional videos, non-scored activities, and muliti-media presentations.
• A dynamic curriculum that encourages students with  different learning styles to engage in the program.
• An automated grading and recordkeeping system that saves parents time and helps them easily keep track of their students progress.
• An affordable membership backed by a 14-day money-back guarantee, that allows you to start, stop, or pause your membership at any time without penalty.
• The freedom to choose from an assortment of electives including economics, contemporary health and more.

Time4Learning isn’t the only online curriculum on the market for homeschooling a 13 year old.  That’s why we provided this information, so you can compare Time4Learning to other popular online curricula. If you can’t make up your mind about one certain option, you can always choose to mix the best parts of more than one curriculum (called an eclectic approach) to suit the needs of your student and your family dynamic.

Tips for Homeschooling a 13 Year Old

Kids like cool. And when you’re homeschooling a 13 year old, injecting some “cool” into their day never hurts. But what’s cool to a 13 year old? That’s the magic question that must be answered. You could simply hold a meeting with your student and ask them. That sounds like a start. Here are some other homeschooling tips that may help you and your students stay cool.

• Have your children discuss their favorite bands. Talk about the lyrics to the songs and their meanings. Ask them to take a favorite line from a song and write a few paragraphs about it.
• If your child has a hobby, block off time for it in your  weekly homeschooling schedule. Many hobbies encourage using math, science, language arts, critical thinking and more.
• Include STEM activities (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) in your homeschooling. This will give you a headstart on the more challenging courses that await in high school.
• Visit a local business, especially one that may interest your child such as a bakery, automobile repair shop or even a supermarket. They can  learn about managing people, accounting, physical labor, and other reality-based tasks that employees do every day.
• As manager of your school, email weekly memos, or distribute them by hand, that state each child’s “action items.” They could be fun items, school work reminders or anything you choose. This is a real-world practice that can be deemed as cool, depending on how it’s done.
• If your kids have a favorite sports player, writer, musician or whatever,  have them write a comprehensive paper on their background — the time before they became famous.
• Adjust your schedule as the year progresses. Homeschooling is flexible, so you can modify, blow up or make a simple tweak to your schedule at any time.
• Play interactive board games like Ultimate Vampire or Century Spice Road. Investigate educational apps such as Instructables and Sketchbook Pro. They’re cool and educational.