Curious what homeschooling looks like for a family of five kids? Here’s a look at what we’re planning to do for our 2024-2025 homeschool year!
It’s August and we’re just four weeks or so from starting another school year. While I’m a little sad for summer to be ending, there’s always a part of me that’s excited to get back on a daily schedule.
Today I thought it would be fun to share what we’re planning to do this year for my three kids who are old enough for school. We’ll have one in 5th grade, one in 3rd grade, and one in 1st grade. (Alex is three so he’ll probably do a few learning things here and there but nothing formal.)
I don’t share a ton of homeschool content here on the blog but here’s what we did for homeschool last year.
The curriculum we’re using this year
There are so many homeschool curriculums out there that it can be hard to choose. I was happy with what we did last year so I’m using some of the same ones this year.
Math
5th grade – This will be Caleb’s second year using The Good and The Beautiful Math curriculum. I love that starting in 4th grade this curriculum includes a 10-ish minute instructional video for every single lesson. This was super helpful last year and is a big reason that we’re continuing to use TGATB curriculum again this year.
3rd grade – We’ll be using BJU math one more year for Sofia and then next year we’ll switch her over the TGATB as well. I used BJU Press for a lot of my homeschool when I was a kid so it’s really familiar to me and I don’t bother buying the teacher’s manual, just the worktext.
1st grade – Lucas will be doing BJU math as well this year.
Language Arts
5th grade
I decided that we would try out The Good and The Beautiful’s language arts curriculum this year for Caleb. Their curriculum combines grammar, spelling, vocabulary, literature, and writing. Just looking through it I’m really impressed!
I purchased the 4th grade curriculum because even though Caleb’s technically 5th grade, TGATB language arts curriculum seems to be a little more intense than what we’ve used in the past so I think the 4th grade level will be right fit for him for this year. (And that’s the beauty of homeschooling!)
3rd grade
We’ll be using BJU’s English 3 (just the worktext) for Sofia again this year. Along with that she’ll also be using this Horizon’s workbook for spelling.
1st grade
Lucas will also be doing BJU English this year again. He’ll also continue to work on reading using the Pathway readers. For spelling we won’t be using a formal curriculum, just writing out lists of simple words in his notebook and testing on them at the end of the week.
Science
We’ll be doing science all together during our group learning time. I initially looked into one of the Apologia Science curriculums but decided against it for this year at least, mainly because I want something a little less heavy on writing for science right now.
Instead, for the first half of the school year we’re going to be studying the human body. We’re going to trace each of the kids on big sheets of craft paper and we’ll use copies from this book for the kids to glue different body parts on their person as we learn about them.
We’ll use this higher-level Human Body Book to go into depth with the older kids about the different body systems.
By the way, this catchy song is a super easy way to teach your kids about all the basic body systems. Nothing like a fun song to make it all stick in your head!
I’m not 100% decided what we’re going to do for science during the second semester but I’m leaning towards allowing the kids to choose some areas of interest and using that as a springboard for what we learn.
Social Studies
We’ll also be doing social studies altogether just like science. Last year we studied American History. This year we’ll be using the same company (Notgrass) but using their brand new World Geography curriculum.
I appreciate how the Notgrass curriculums are designed specifically for homeschoolers. With three lessons per week they are very doable. I think my kids are going to enjoy the geography this year and hopefully we’ll be doing a good many of the suggested projects and activities together.
Electives
I wasn’t quite sure what to title this section but I think electives is correct haha.
- Music – Caleb and Sofia both started piano with me this summer and will be continuing that. The three oldest kids also all participate in our church’s little children’s choir that practices every Sunday.
- Typing – We’re using TypingClub.com for Caleb and Sofia to learn typing this year. I purchased it for a year so that the annoying ads wouldn’t constantly pop up.
- Extracurricular – Once again this year both of the big kids will be involved in AWANA at a local church. Caleb will also be playing soccer again and Sofia will be doing her third year of ballet.
Our daily homeschool routine
It feels a bit premature to be sharing about our routine since we haven’t started the school year yet and I’ll need time to iron out the kinks. However, here’s sort of what I’m thinking it will look like.
- 7 am – Breakfast, Bible, morning chores
- 8 am – Math (I’ll be bouncing around between being with the little kids and helping the big kids)
- 9 am – Group learning time (geography, science, misc. read alouds)
- 10 am – Snack, PE
- 10:30 am – Language Arts
- 11 :30 am – Wrap things up, possibly piano practice
- 12 pm – Lunch break
- 1 pm – Piano, typing, reading and/or AWANA work for the big kids (little ones down for naps)
- 2 pm – Done for the day!
Like I said, it will take some time to iron things out and see what actually works in real life with my real kids haha, but that’s the plan for now. 🙂
If you homeschool, does your homeschool day look similar or a lot different? Let me know in the comments!