This year I’m homeschooling 4th grade, 2nd grade, and K5. Here’s a look at what’s been working for us and the curriculums we’re loving.
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It’s been awhile since I’ve shared a more personal post, but today I wanted to share a little about what we’ve been doing for homeschool this year with Caleb in 4th grade, Sofia in 2nd, and Lucas in K5.
Back at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year I shared a post detailing what a typical homeschool day looks like for us. Not much has changed since writing that post, so if you’re curious about our daily routines you can read that post.
In today’s post I thought it would be fun to share more specifically about some of the curriculum that we’re using this year and what’s been working well for us.
There are a TON of different homeschool curriculum options out there now days so it can be overwhelming knowing what to choose. We’ve gone with a sort of eclectic approach, picking and choosing from a variety of sources instead of being married to just one curriculum.
I reevaluate every year, so just because this is what we’re doing now doesn’t mean we’ll choose these same curriculums every year moving forward, but for now I’m pleased with everything we’re using.
What we’re doing for K5 homeschool
I hold to the philosophy that you don’t need a ton of schooling in K5. The biggest goal for this age in my opinion is to learn how to read.
Reading
I started out at the beginning of the school year working through some of the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with Lucas. I’ve started each of my kids off learning to read with this book and have been very pleased with it.
However, I do not go through all 100 lessons – we usually switch to something else a little more interesting for the kids after lesson 60 or so. I also find that the book starts moving pretty quickly towards the end and can be discouraging if a child is struggling.
I really like using Pathway Readers next with the kids. I learned to read with them when I was a kid and I still think they’re an excellent resource. No, they’re not flashy or colorful or super exciting looking (but sometimes that can be distracting anyway) and I LOVE how much they repeat words a bunch at the beginning as it really helps to boost the confidence of young readers.
(For example, the first reader has simple paragraphs like this: “Come Rachel, come. Come and see. Come and see Bess!”)
Note: One of my children did struggle more with learning to read and for that child I used All About Reading (level 2) next after Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. The All About Reading curriculum was a little pricier and took a little more time and effort as a parent but it was just what that child needed. There were a lot of hands on activities which my child loved. I highly recommend it if you have a child who struggles with reading!
See All About Reading Level 2 here.Math and English
Along with learning to read, I like to use BJU’s K5 Math Worktext and Focus on Fives Worktext (Language Arts). See BJU’s k5 curriculum here.
Along with his reading, math, and English, Lucas also learns along with the older kids in our group learning time which we’ll talk about in a bit.
What we’re doing for 2nd grade homeschool
Math and English
For second grade Math and English I also like to use BJU press. Like with K5 I’ve seen the need for purchasing the teachers manual – I just buy Math and English worktexts. Sofia has done great with them this year and typically doesn’t need much help in completing her daily work.
See BJU’s second grade curriculum here.Spelling
For Sofia’s spelling I just assign her a spelling list for the week (I’ve been using these second grade lists) and she writes her words out a few times every day and then I give her a spelling test at the end of the week. It’s super simple but she does well with it so I don’t see a need to do anything more complicated.
Reading
Sofi is a great reader so I don’t have a specific curriculum for her for reading, she just needs to read for a bit every day. These were her first real chapter books and she still loves them! I’ll share a separate post soon with lots more of the kids’ favorite chapter books.
We do History and Science together during our group learning time and I’ll cover that below after we discuss 4th grade.
What we’re doing for 4th grade homeschool
Math
This year for Caleb we decided to make a switch from BJU to The Good and the Beautiful for math.
What really sold me on TGATB is that starting with 4th grade there are instructional videos for each lesson. For 4th grade they’re usually about 10 minutes long. This has been so helpful and Caleb has enjoyed having a “teacher” to listen to besides just me.
TGATB math book is really beautiful and has lots of fun assignments that keep things interesting. There is always a page of work related to that particular day’s lesson and then another page of review work. It does take longer for Caleb to complete than BJU math did last year but I feel like he is understanding the concepts better.
Language Arts
For language arts this year for Caleb I chose to take a break from BJU English and focus just on spelling and writing. Doing spelling lists like Sofia is doing doesn’t work for Caleb, so I’ve tried a couple things with him.
We started out with a Horizons Spelling and Vocabulary, but after a couple months I realized we needed a different approach for Caleb and I decided to try Spelling You See after reading this review. We started with book 2 of Level B which felt like a move backwards but it’s been good and I think their approach is helpful for Caleb.
I’ve also supplemented Spelling You See with having Caleb manually spell out the words on the fridge as well as practice them with spelling games on the computer (which he loves.) All in all I’ve come to realize that I just need to be more hands and creative in how I help him with his spelling than I previously was.
Along with spelling I also assign Caleb various writing projects, but I’m not using a curriculum for that. Sometimes it’s copy work, sometimes it’s writing a paragraph on his own, and sometimes it’s him dictating a few paragraphs to me for a book review, etc.
Reading
Like Sofi, Caleb isn’t using a specific reader, he is just required to read some every day. Honestly, he eats through books that he enjoys like crazy and gets a lot more reading time in than the 20 minutes I was planning to require so I’m very pleased with that. I can’t wait to share another post soon with a lot of the books the kids have enjoyed reading!
Now on to what we do for group learning time!
Group Learning
Our group learning time (we used to refer to it as circle time as well) is when we do our history and (some days) our science. Some of our for-fun read alouds happen during this time as well.
History
This year we are using the Notgrass curriculum called Our Star-Spangled Story for history. The lessons are the perfect length for reading aloud to all of the kids and we use the workbooks for the two oldest kids.
We love that there are project ideas each week and the kids have really enjoyed the ones we’ve completed (though we’ve definitely not done all of them!)
See the Notgrass History curriculum here.Science
We’re not using a specific science curriculum this year but we’ve read / looked through parts of The Human Body Book as we’ve been talking about various body systems. (Note: there are a few pictures in the book that I don’t feel are appropriate for the kids at this age so be aware of that.)
We’ve also utilized YouTube for all sorts of learning related videos. We love the Hopscotch channel and the kids have memorized all the body systems, the planets and the continents, as well as the parts of speech from those songs.
Now that both Caleb and Sofia are reading so well I plan to assign them some independent Science reading in the future. If you have a science curriculum that you love for elementary I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Thanks for reading! 🙂