Yahoo, y’all!

It is that time of the year again and I’m super excited to share our homeschool curriculum with you this year. I hope you find some new things to explore and some tools and tips to help your homeschool thrive this year. If you’ve found some new gems, don’t be shy! Please share them in the comments. We all love finding the right homeschool curriculum and learning tools.

This year we have a 3rd grader and a 1st grader, at least according to their ages. When dealing with gifted and twice-exceptional learners it’s acceptable to follow a grade level with “ish”. You know, he’s 3rd grade-ish (what I say because we are on a 2nd grade level for writing, almost to 3rd grade level on reading {Thank you, MindPlay Virtual Reading Coach for dyslexia}, doing history and science at middle school level, and feeding a reading comprehension level of 10th grade).

Homeschool Curriculum for 1st and 3rd Grades

We’ve separated the boys on more subjects this year which required some serious planning for morning time to keep as many subject together as we can. Finding challenging homeschool curriculum and curriculum that will accommodate special needs definitely stretched my planning muscles this year!

I came up with a new and improved system for our morning time from last year. And then the idea just kept on growing and I’m delighted to introduce to you The Homeschool Garden – a Charlotte Mason-inspired morning time membership for busy homeschool moms.

With The Homeschool Garden I get to knock out art study, composer study, poetry, copywork, hymn and folksong learning, nature study, handicrafts, art lessons, and tea time all in a schedule designed to fit my busy, working homeschool mom schedule. This way I get in all the beautiful things but on a more realistic schedule for our family.  I’d be delighted if you joined us!

Of course, I’ve been using my Charlotte Mason Complete Homeschool Planner to help sort through our schedule and curriculum changes this year. I learned a new trick! If you reinforce the sides of pages that will be moved often with washi tape on both sides before you punch the holes, the pages are a lot less likely to tear. This may not be news to you, but I was thrilled to learn about this Happy Planner hack!

How to Get Homeschooled Boys to Listen

We have too many read alouds to list. But these get put back into rotation as soon as they are finished. While we often incorporate chapters into our Morning Time, they also get read in the afternoon, at tea times, and even as bedtime stories. The Burgess Bird Book for Children, Mother West Wind “When” Stories, The Burgess Animal Book for Children, and Bear Grylls Survival Skills Handbook are all fun for the boys even if one of them is not quite like the others.

We tend to stick with many adventure-filled read alouds as well. You can see some of our favorite Christian adventure series here. These books build both the moral imagination and the habit of  attentiveness in young listeners.

Purchasing Homeschool Curriculum for Interest-based Learning

We have a new homeschool resource I learned of through some homeschool mom friends on Instagram. Carolina Biological has made the hands on learning part of our insect science study much easier for me. These are lab grade specimens and the rotting log life kit was by far Mr. F’s favorite present from his 6th birthday.

The Cabbage White butterflies are almost ready to hatch from their chrysalids. We have been thrilled with the quality of the products and I know we will return to them for more because they carry things for chemistry, distance learning, medical studies, all manner of living specimens, etc. If you have science loving children, you need to check out their site.

As for the other pieces of our insect study, we are using Arthropods from The Good and The Beautiful, the delightful book Bug Hotel alongside our actual bug hotel, and Bug Bingo. Mr. F is an entomologist in training and while I am not a huge fan of having bugs in the house on purpose I do prefer that to having bugs in the house that we don’t want there. At least his are enclosed 😉

Part of the beauty of homeschooling is that we can indulge those interests and provide the learning environment for our children to develop their interests into passions. 

 

As a note, we are also using The Good and The Beautiful Typing I for Mr. T, but I forgot to get a picture. I will most likely do a full review later since we’re teaching him on a real typewriter and the typing curriculum is quite lovely! Because writing is difficult for him due to dysgraphia, he asked to be taught to type and I just didn’t love any of the online programs we looked at so we are using amore traditional method and lucked out that we had an electric typewriter still in the family.

Top Rated Homeschool Programs for Writing and Poetry Study

We are big fans of IEW. I love soaking up the wisdom shared through their seminars that you can purchase on their site and the free webinars they have throughout the year. I purchased Teaching Writing: Structure and Style from a friend who was cleaning out her stash of homeschool goodies. We are currently working through the student course with both Mr. F and Mr. T. They really enjoy watching Mr. Pudewa via video instruction.

We are also using IEW Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization and Bible Heroes writing curriculum (no picture since that’s later in the year and stored with our not-in-use things to keep clutter to a minimum). I cannot recommend the Poetry set enough. It has been a beautiful addition to our homeschool and you can learn more about it in our post here.

The Number One Homeschool Curriculum for Science and Worldview

Not only do huge numbers of homeschoolers and Cathy Duffy Reviews love Apologia, but we do too! We have supplemented other science curriculum for interest based studies, but our main science has always been Apologia. We are exploring Swimming Creatures this year after our insect study is completed and I’m very excited! The Junior Notebook Journal is a fantastic addition. We are also going to add in the MP3 audiobook for Mr. T. Having audios really helps combat the slow processing challenges of dyslexia.

The Apologia What We Believe series is such a beautiful and well done worldview series. We are working through Who is God? this year with the text, the junior journal for Mr. T, and the coloring book for Mr. F. You can get the MP3 download from Apologia, or download it through Audible if you love that app as much as we do!

Our plan is to do 2-3 lessons per week with Wednesdays being our Write the Word Wednesday celebration with our Fruit of the Spirit Scripture Journal. This weekly tradition of a Wednesday Scripture celebration is inspired by my friend Lara over at Cultivate What Matters. Spending this time together with my children just soaking in Scripture is something I am very excited about!

The Ultimate Homeschool Curriculum for Art Lessons

We’ve told you about The Masterpiece Society before. We are still in love with it! It is, quite simply, the most thorough and beautifully crafted online art curriculum we have found in all our searching. With many Art 101 lessons including watercolors now, it’s the perfect fit for a Charlotte Mason or art-inclined homeschool.

While we are discussing beautiful things, here are some of my Homeschool Curriculum for Mom picks for this year. The Life Giving Parent and The Life Giving Parent Experience are remarkable. Sally and Clay Clarkson have crafted a hope-filled message for parents to help them create the loving, God-centered home that will point their children toward God in every way.

The Read Aloud Family is one that I’ve been waiting to dig into so that I would have time to truly soak it in. I’ll be starting it next week in case you don’t hear from me for a few days!

My new Write the Word Joy journal. I’m finishing up Write the Word Faith and this was the one I was most drawn to for my next WTW journey. These are such simple but powerful journals. Have you tried them yet?

American History Homeschool Curriculum for Elementary

American history has become a favorite subject here so we decided to interrupt our beloved Mystery of History cycle in favor of exploring All American History Volume 1 from Bright Ideas Press. This volume covers The Explorers to the Jacksonians. We are excited for several fun field trips as we study this year!

I only just finalized this selection. I was hard pressed to change my “master plan” of finishing a full 4 year cycle of The Mystery of History, but I decided that allowing the boys interest in American history, and the opportunity we have specifically for related field trips over the next year, to guide some of our studies would not really affect the long term as we’d have been studying American history in another year or two anyway. It just adjusted our trajectory. And that’s okay. Homeschool gives us that glorious flexibility if we will but use it.

All American History is actually a middle grades curriculum, so while the boys will be fine comprehension wise, we are going to use the All American History Jr option for the work. The Junior option makes the curriculum perfect for younger ages and includes lesson plans with:

• Smaller amounts of lesson material for your student to read
• Additional elementary-friendly hands-on activities
• Challenge Cards “ ready for you to print out
• Simplified Folderbooks “- 5 total for the year
• Maps
• Puzzles
• Pictures
• Notebooking Pages
• Coloring Pages
• And 5 Literature study guides for books that will complement your studies

I can’t wait! We are going to have so much fun and I know they are going to be so excited for this!

Online Homeschool Options

I mentioned on Instagram not long ago that when we began homeschooling, I said we’d “never” use online programs. Well, never say never. Here’s an overview of what we’re using online programs for this year.

* Teaching Textbooks 3.0 for Mr. T for math
* MindPlay Virtual Reading Coach for dyslexia
* Smartick Math for Mr. F

* Reading Eggs for Mr. F

* Hoffman Academy piano for Mr. F
* Guitar for Mr. T
* Audible – they love listening to awesome books while they play.

And that’s it (for now) for our homeschool curriculum picks for this year. What are you using?