How I Built My 7th Grade Curriculum Plan

This is a look at my process that will hopefully give others some ideas. I lean toward a unit study approach where just about everything ties into what we are doing in history. I think that doing it this way leads to a deeper understanding of the time period and a better absorption of knowledge. It's also much more efficient because everything is tied together and streamlined. For example, he only needs to write one essay at a time, because it is all relevant to history. I don't require a separate essay for history, a report for literature, and an essay for science all at the same time; which did happen to us once in charter school. This is my own personal style and may not fit with everyone's ideas. 

The first thing I do is look at what I should be covering by looking at scope and sequence lists and then base some of my decisions off of that. I also like to reread The Well-Trained Mind book and  look at Core Knowledge for ideas and guidelines and a local private school's curriculum goals. This gives me a solid foundation for what I should be covering. According to the WTM, I should be on a 4-year history cycle. Well, it took me a year to cover ancient history up to, but not including Greece and Rome. I decided these were worthy of their own dedicated year. There is so much to cover there. Therefore, 7th grade will have one semester for Greece and one for Rome. These are still somewhat a work in progress, but this is what I have so far.


History
Greece
Connect the Thoughts Greece  CTT is a critical thinking based curriculum that asks open-ended questions and requires a 50 word written response. It has vocabulary and maps built in and is designed to have the students consider and explain concepts. It covers history, (of course) philosophy, politics, science, religion, art and literature of ancient Greece. I'm hoping this will drastically reduce the amount of piecing together all of the above subjects I had to do this last year. 
Rome
To Be A Roman and A Roman Map Workbook - bought as a bundle through Homeschool Buyers Co-op
CTT Rome, however, if I don't like how CTT Greece went, then I'll use Early Times: The Story of Ancient Rome.


Science
While history covers science in ancient Greece, it's definitely not a complete curriculum. I plan to rotate science again this year.
Computer Science - he enjoys making Scratch games. I thought I would let him continue that and try out some new programs I found for the National STEM Video Game Challenge.
Astronomy - I overdid it on the Astronomy curriculum, but they each have their use. I already have Intellego Astronomy and Great Courses Understanding the Universe videos, so I plan to fit these in as supplements. I was tempted to do a standard textbook, workbook and lab book like RS4K or CPO, but I found Holt Science & Technology: Astronomy: Short Course J, which was just the size I was looking for. 


I plan to do science every day, so breaking it up I want 2 days of Computer Science which leaves me 3 days for Astronomy.  One day can be devoted to reading a section and doing an interactive from Intellego or exploring the universe through Slooh, Microsoft Worldwide Telescope or Universe Sandbox for fun interest-led learning. One of my goals is to do more hands-on experiments, which means I'll use one of those days for that. Day three can be used for Great Courses videos or Netflix videos. I also plan to to have at least 3 studies of famous Greek and Roman scientists/mathematicians. 
 
As you can see, I'm aiming for a science heavy year without it feeling like it. Incorporating lots of  hands-on activities and experiments without a ton of reading and writing in workbooks should provide enough learning to keep the interest alive and possibly make him want to go deeper on his own. At least, that's my plan. ;)

Update: After scheduling the entire school year, I realized this wasn't going to work for me or my son. It was too much and I knew it wouldn't work out. Homeschool Buyers Co-op had a sale on Science Fusion and I decided to go with that. It is an inquiry-based science program that has a lot of interactive features, some challenging critical thinking problems and virtual labs as well as regular labs. To view a 27 minute video that will give you an overview of the program, click on the Science Fusion link above and scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Why ScienceFusion?


Math
I signed up for a free Pre-Algebra course for the summer with yourteacher.com through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op. It ends on August 31 and I hope to be mostly through Pre-Algebra by then. After that, I plan to sign up for a year subscription to Kinetic Books for Algebra or Pre-Algebra depending on how solid he is on it by the end of summer. I also bought Life of Fred Pre-Algebra books for fun really. He reads through those pretty quickly.


Writing
Writing with Skill - Complete Writer Level 1
While history has a lot of writing, he needs a more formal writing curriculum. Writing with Skill is a straightforward writing program that prepares him for the rhetoric stage. I considered Classical Writing which follows progymnasmata (before rhetoric) through high school. I wanted to use WWS because it includes more modern writing versus classical writing which is more formal and less applicable to today's forms of writing.


The Creative Writer - Level 1
This writing program will be scheduled on Fridays. It's a systematic approach to the parts that are needed for great creative writing. My son loved the writing prompts I gave him last year using 5-Minute Daily Writing Practice. My plan is to have him writing his own novel sometime in the next few years, so I'm giving him the building blocks for doing just that.