approach to learning songs

A few things.

1. Welcome to Chordie.

2. Seven songs at once is probably not too many.  However, if you're brand new at this, determine whether you are learning to play songs or learning to play guitar.  Neither way is right or wrong in my opinion, but it makes a difference in how you practice.

2a. Learning songs: You get the chord structure down, you learn a few riffs maybe, you learn the lyrics, and you strum it out when you want to.  This is what I do most of the time.

2b. Learning guitar: You learn not only the chords and structures, but why they go together.  You don't learn just the riff, but you learn the scale upon which the riff is based so that when you need to you can adapt it to other songs or adjust riffs to suit your mood rather than the mood of the composer.  You don't just sing the words of the song, you learn the melody and how it fits and be able to pick out the melody on the guitar and make your guitar sing.  This is a lot harder, but I am told more satisfying. 

These styles, 2a and 2b, are not hard and fast.  You can do both at the same time.  But you can't do both in the same practice session.  They are radically different approaches to practice. 

My suggestion to you is to split your practice session up.  In the first part of your practice session, have particular goals.  Run scales that relate to your style of music (major pentatonic for country song, pentatonic blues scale for blues and rock, etc.).  Learn arpeggios and inversions (which are different ways of playing chords note for note instead of all together).  Practice some theory.  Learn how it sounds to use a relative minor, and what a relative minor is.  That's the first half.  In the second half, bang out some songs. 

Over time, the 'banging out some songs' portion will expand.  You still need to practice the basic structures of music on your particular instrument, but instead of practicing it individually you'll be applying it to songs and making the songs sound like you are playing them rather than some tribute band reproducing an original artists rendition note for note.  Even the original artists get bored with doing that. 

- Zurf

Thankyou for your comments. I guess its hard to know if  i'm on the right track with teaching myself without the guidence of a teacher. I have bought the guitar method series of books,eg scales & modes,rhythm and theory. I keep it up and try toget to see a teagher once a month for some direction.

                             thanks again johnno

Thanks Zurf,

                 i'll check these sites out

Lots of good advice on these replies. Just thought I'd throw in one small thing.
When I first learned guitar, after getting down fingering on some starter chords, I had some trouble with timing when trying to play a song, meaning being able to strum or pick the rhythm correctly.
I met a person who really helped to enlighten me on this.

This may sound over simplified but try it before you disregard it.
Most songs are in what's called 4/4 time, while some are in 3/4 time(also called waltz time)

When you are first learning this, for 4/4, play the bass(lowest) note of the chord only, and then strum the chord once (repeat this). This is also called beat/stroke  beat/stroke
After getting used to this, you will start to hear that "beat/stroke" in your head, almost like a drumbeat and can use that like a mental metronome while starting to alter your strumming. But it will keep you in proper timing.
The 3/4 is pretty much the same, but done as a beat/stroke stroke   beat/stroke stroke

I found this to be a revelation when I was first learning, as timing is one of the difficult things about the learning process, and this really helped me.

Hope you get some use out of this.
Best of luck to you
And remember, we're all still learning.