Our Family’s Curriculum Specifics
Since the pandemic started, I can’t count how many friends have reached out to me, asking what exactly our family does for school. They know my kids are happy, articulate, and well-educated, while I seem relatively sane, so they just want to know what works for us. So here’s our exhaustive list of curriculum used by our family. Remember, no one is going to do it just like me. Use what works for your kids! As a general intro, I am a big proponent of lots of memory work in the early years (when the kids are little sponges–in classical education, we call this “grammar stage”) and limited written work. Though I’m listing a lot of subjects, we don’t do every subject everyday (many of the minor subjects are once a week or a unit study for a couple weeks once a semester), and a lot of our subjects take 5 minutes to do. In general, I spend an hour on schoolwork per grade, per day. So my Kindergartners will have maybe 30 minutes of sit-down time in a morning, my second grader will spend about two hours on schoolwork, and my fourth grader will be spending about four hours per day. Listening to or reading books doesn’t count toward that time, nor do extracurriculars like art class or ballet. Once my kids hit middle school and online classes, their school day does get longer. For PE, the kids have done swimming lessons, play soccer, and run around and ride bikes with the neighbors, or go on family hikes on the weekends.
When all my kids were in grade school, we would do a four day week since we spent our fifth day doing community Bible study, homeschool co-op, or weekly field trips, depending on where we’re living and what my kids are involved in. By the time we get home from those activities, we’re too tired to do much formal school, so I didn’t plan much. We truly got so much done in four solid in-home and one out-of-the-house day! (Once my older kids got into junior high and high school, they did have to do school five days a week, and I cut out weekly morning commitments, but we still try to keep our Friday afternoons free for nature hikes, field trips, and other activities.) We do a 36 week school year and take the summer off. We do history, Bible, science, and fine arts all together. For clarity, I’ll put down what we did with our oldest for each of those areas, as the younger ones just came along and do whatever he is doing in those joint subjects. We’ll rotate back around in another couple years and repeat it all so that the little ones get it again.
Every year, I’ve used this really basic daily planner to plot out our school year, one for each kid. For subjects like history or science where we want to do specific things in specific weeks, I write that down at the beginning of the year for the whole school year. For subjects like spelling or math where we just do the next lesson each day, we wait and jot down what page we did. The kids and I like checking off boxes when we finish subjects, and a quick glance at the kids’ planners can help me determine when we’re done for the day. Thanks to my planners, I can look back and tell you what we did on any given day in our homeschool (or if we took the day off or went on a field trip). I’m always intending to keep track of what books we read in a given day or week or school year, but we read too many.
Preschool (only when the little ones are asking to “do school” with the big kids, I just mainly keep these on hand to occupy them during our school time)
Bible: My ABC Bible verses
Social Studies: geography map puzzles
Language Arts: Target dollar spot handwriting books to trace letters, alphabet puzzles
Math: legos and duplos, Tangoes Jr., puzzles
Read millions of quality books aloud.
Encourage lots of open-ended imaginative play with dress-up clothes, play kitchen, wooden blocks, etc.
Kindergarten (Ideally, only 3 days a week)
Bible: gospel of Mark (1 and 2)
Social Studies: memorized order of US Presidents using flashcards from the Target dollar spot, memorized States and Capitals using the Geography songs CDs
Language Arts: Ordinary Parents’ Guide to Teaching Reading, Zaner-Bloser handwriting
Math: Saxon 1 (at half speed if, like for our second child, the concepts don’t click right away)
Read millions of quality books aloud. Play and move around as much as possible.
First Grade
Bible: gospel of Mark (3 and 4), CBS Study
Social Studies: we spent a month at a time reading books about and making notebooks about the countries where we have friends living
Language Arts: Writing With Ease 1, First Language Lessons 1, All About Spelling 1, finish Ordinary Parents’ Guide to Teaching Reading (we didn’t start spelling until we finished phonics, as they’re essentially approaching the same subject from opposite directions)
Math: Saxon 2
Science: Anatomy using My Body book (reproducible pages of various organs sized to put on a kids’ outline) and Bill Nye videos on various body parts
French: French for Little Boys/French for Little Girls coloring books, Little Pim French videos
Music: read about the orchestra and studied Peter and the Wolf, The Seasons, and Pictures at an Exhibition
Art History: Discovering Great Artists and artist biography videos
Second Grade
Bible: gospel of Mark (5 and 6), CBS study on Mark
History: Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia using Veritas Press’ Old Testament and Ancient Egypt and Story of the World 1: Ancient Times
Language Arts: Writing With Ease 2, First Language Lessons 2, All About Spelling 2, Classically Cursive
Math: Saxon 3
Latin: Song School Latin, Getting Started With Latin
Science: Physics using The Way Things Work tv series and simple machine experiments.
French: DuoLingo, Little Pim French videos, (pretty babyish, but they were free streaming on amazon prime), First Thousand Words in French book with mom
Music: Intro to Mozart, Chopin, Purcell, and Debussy using biographies, CDs, and attending a concert!
Art History: Studied the Impressionists and visited several of the LA art museums to see their paintings in person.
Typing: BBC Dance Mat typing online
Geography: Evan-Moor daily geography pages, once a week
Third Grade
Bible: gospel of Mark (7 and 8), CBS study on the minor prophets
History: Greece and Rome using Veritas Press’ New Testament, Greece and Rome and Story of the World Vol 1: Ancient Times
Geography: maps of the areas we’re studying using Story of the World’s activity guides
Language Arts: Writing With Ease 3, All About Spelling 3, First Language Lessons 3
Math: Saxon 5/4, Beast Academy 3
Science: Astronomy using Real Science 4 Kids Astronomy, various books and documentaries on astronomy, and Dover coloring books
French: DuoLingo and Mango French on the computer, watching classic French movies like The Red Balloon and White Mane.
Music: studied Handel, Schumann, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms using First Discovery Kids Music (only so-so), The Story of _____ in Words and Music series (excellent), and Opal Wheeler biographies
Typing: BBC Dance Mat Typing online
Fourth Grade
Bible: continuing to memorize the gospel of Mark (chapters 8 and 9), CBS study on Daniel and Revelation
History: Middle Ages and Renaissance using Veritas Press’ Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, Story of the World Vol 2: The Middle Ages, and tons of historical fiction, biographies, and Dover coloring books
Language Arts: All About Spelling 4, First Language Lessons 4, Writing and Rhetoric: Fable, Sentence Composition for Elementary School
Math: Saxon 6/5, Beast Academy 4
Science: Oceans theme using a Magic School Bus Oceans activity guide, a membership to the Aquarium of the Pacific, several ocean life documentaries, and Dover ocean life coloring books. We’ll also be reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
French: my old junior high textbook (Dis Moi!), DuoLingo, and Mango French, as well as watching Jacques Tati movies in French, and when my girls were that age, they took French classes from a wonderful local French woman.
Music: We spent the fall semester studying about medieval music and musicians, using materials from a neighbor who is a music professor.
Art: weekly art class where they were working in pastels and watercolors.
Art History: We spent the spring semester studying Leonardo Da Vinci and visiting all of the art museums in LA that have Renaissance art on display
Geography: an old geography workbook (a hand me down from our babysitter’s family), probably just a page once a week
Fifth Grade
Bible: memorizing Mark, How to Study Your Bible for Kids inductive Bible study
History: American history using Story of the World Vol 3: Early Modern Times with Veritas timeline cards, California state history package from Beautiful Feet
Language Arts: All About Spelling 5, Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind purple book, Writing and Rhetoric: Narrative 1 and 2
Math: Saxon 7/6, Beast Academy 5
Science: Botany using Botany in a Day and lots of gardening kits, nature hikes, and coloring books
French: French classes with a local native French speaker
Music: piano lessons and Dr. Mozart music theory
Art: Sketching in our nature journals
Geography: Evan Moor Daily Geoggraphy workbook
Sixth Grade
Bible: memorizing Mark, Jesus in the Spotlight inductive Bible study
History: modern history using Story of the World Vol 4 with Veritas timeline cards
Language Arts: Expository Writing 1 at Well-Trained Mind Academy online, using Writing With Skill 1, Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind red book, Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization
Math: Art of Problem Solving Pre-Algebra through Well-Trained Mind Academy online for my kids gifted in math (less math-y kids still do Saxon)
Science: Zoology using the Burgess Animal Book, Burgess Bird Book, nature documentaries, zoo and aquarium and nature center memberships
French: French classes with a local native French speaker
Music: piano lessons, Dr. Mozart music theory
Art: Sketching in our nature journals, art history classes at our local homeschool co-op
Geography: Evan Moor Daily Geography
Seventh Grade
Bible: memorizing Mark, Miracles by C. S. Lewis
History: we started over our history cycle, going back to Ancient Egypt
Language Arts: Expository Writing 2 at Well-Trained Mind Academy online, using Writing With Skill 2, continuing Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind red book, Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization
Math: Art of Problem Solving Algebra through Well-Trained Mind Academy online (Saxon math for the less math-y kids)
Science: human anatomy using Ellen McHenry human body curricula, dissection kits, documentaries, and library books
French: French classes with native French speaker, Talkbox.mom French
Music: piano lessons, homeschool choir, Dr. Mozart music theory
Art: Let’s Make Art watercolor tutorials
Geography: Mapping the World with Art
In eighth and up, our choices have really depended on where we lived and what resources were available. In Iowa, three of my children were able to do a homeschool orchestra program, and when we moved to Indiana, we found a local college that invites high school players to join their orchestra for free! Here in Indiana, dear friends direct a homeschool choir, and this year, all five of my kids are participating. My oldest started Greek and dropped Latin earlier than planned when a homeschool dad from church was offering a high school class; when we moved to a new state, I found a retired seminary professor to tutor him, and now they’re doing exegesis of New Testament books together. My middle kids were stuck doing French with me when we moved away from our awesome native speaker teacher in SoCal, but my sophomore just got back into a high school French class at co-op. We’ve used Ancient Languages Institute Latin classes for a gentler approach and Lukeion Latin classes for a rigorous approach; we adore Jonathan Roger’s The Habit creative writing community; and nothing compares in high school to the Great Books online tutorial series from Escondido Tutorials.
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