Contests for Teen Homeschoolers

By Angelica Laurio

Homeschool teens are able to participate in some AWESOME national contests. Here is a list of contests for teen homeschoolers to enter as of June 2016:

Adventures of Rush Revere – The award winning author of this book series, Rush Limbaugh along with his wife Kathy, offer their own “challenges” for all homeschoolers every 4-6 months. Read the books (historical fiction), enter the challenges, win amazing prizes! There are patriotic contests on this website as well for all age homeschoolers.

Rush Revere Homeschool Depot – Website just posted April/May 2016 offers homeschool scholarship opportunities throughout the summer. How cool is that? The authors are a husband and wife team, conservative patriots Rush & Kathryn Limbaugh. They are always giving stuff away to homeschoolers, no matter what your political party is – these people love our country and love the homeschool community.

Student Ideas for A Better America – The list offered here gets the kids thinking and actually have a scientific process that goes with the invention application. I printed it and let my son look it over. There are also several links to look through on the site as well.

Spark Lab Inventor’s Challenge – This website is very interactive with videos. My kids were 10 and 13 when they participated in these. I had great help via email when I had questions.  Although they didn’t win they did receive nice certificates for participating that I keep in their portfolios.

The Paradigm Challenge – This one is super creative, the challenge for spring 2016 was to come up with an idea, invention, poster for fire safety or a way to prevent fires. They are giving away $100,000 to different age groups. Homeschoolers are welcome to participate and I figure, if they are giving away $ to kids across America….why not our homeschool teens? So we gave it a try.  If you type “paradigm challenge entry 2016” in the search bar of Youtube you will find several high school entries that were truly inspiring to my homeschool teens.

The following are lists of competitions for a variety of “disciplines” but I will let you know that some of the writing competitions are not “conservative”:

Academic Competitions Educational Opportunity Guide – This website hasn’t been updated for a while, and who takes the time to notify the website, not me… lol. But it clearly shows on the front page the grade levels that can apply, most of them thru 12th.

Davidson Institute for Talent Development – Heads up gifted and talented middle school and high schoolers! Yes a lot of these are for homechoolers but you will have to do your research. I looked through several and they are intense! Many are team oriented. Definitely a great website to look through with lots of tabs.

All of these have awards and various prizes, even college tuition bonds that mature upon graduation of high school!  As I develop this blog I will begin to weed out the few competitions that homeschoolers are not able to participate in.

My 12-year-old participated in the Rubber Band Contest featured in the Student Ideas for A Better America and won $350 for being a finalist! He also entered into a contest for the Adventures of Rush Revere and won gift cards and a Bose speaker!

I hope this list helps you as much as it helps me and my homeschool teens.

Angelica Laurio is a homeschool parent living in Onslow County North Carolina. She has two boys (12 & 15 years old) that she’s been homeschooling for three years, enjoying the adventure of having young men to teach. She previously homeschooled her daughter (now 21 and graduated college) from 7th-12th grade.

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