We are over halfway through our homeschool year with a 4th grader, 1st grader, preschooler, and newborn baby. I have a lot of thoughts on everything we are using and actually already decided what we will use next year (I am changing a lot – I’ll share some of why in this post and what we are switching to in a future post) but I find these blog posts so helpful when researching curricula so I wanted to make sure to share my own!
(I also have a video breaking down all of this you can watch below if you are more of a video person!)
FAMILY SUBJECTS
We try to do as many subjects family-style as possible, so most of our subjects fall into this category. We also aim to stick as closely as possible to Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy, so keep that in mind with our choices.
MAIN SPINE - KIND KINGDOM BY PEACEFUL PRESS
For many of our subjects - history, geography, science, literature, etc. - we used The Kind Kingdom by Peaceful Press which is based around the Chronicles of Narnia series and European history. Admittedly, we are not following this super closely. I created my own curriculum called Daily Riches we started using for bible study and all the riches (more on that next) and so we aren’t using a lot of this. I also decided to include some Ambleside Online picks as I thought we would be switching to that the next year (spoiler alert: we aren’t) so we added in Our Island Story readings 1-2 times a week for history (they were just sprinkled into the Kind Kingdom curriculum and not read chronologically) and Storybook of Science once a week with a video as well for the science. I’m also creating a new science we will start this spring and continue into the summer.
We loved the literature portion and all the living books. My girls thoroughly enjoyed the Grimm's Fairytales and the Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare in addition to the Narnia read alouds.
While I love Peaceful Press and think it’s an amazing resource for families who want more of an open-and-go family-style Charlotte Mason-esque curriculum, I just decided I wanted something different moving forward. It is very gentle and I really wanted more now that my oldest is going into 5th grade. She can handle more readings on her own and I wanted a little more for science/history/geography.
We did LOVE the Draw Europe book and enjoyed learning geography that way but I just wanted more. That being said, I would still definitely recommend this curriculum especially to families with elementary-aged children and those who want a little more guidance as they go into a Charlotte Mason education for the first time.
MORNING MENUS
I created my own Morning Menus for this school year, and we have loved using them every day. We do the calendar, weather, feelings, moon phase, and season as a family. My oldest will practice writing out the date and my 1st grader will circle the day of the week/month/year/and date. Then a couple days a week I will have my oldest practice spelling the days of the week and months, my 1st grader practices our phone numbers and address, and my youngest practices her letter sounds, shapes, and writing the letters. We have loved this and will continue next year, adapting to their needs.
DAILY RICHES
I created Daily Riches last summer to fit in all the subjects I wanted to be fitting in but was often skipping. This includes Bible study, scripture memory, poetry, folk songs, hymns, picture study, composer study, virtue readings, handicraft, and copy work. Volume 2 will be available later this year! We have absolutely LOVED this! It’s one of our favorite parts of our homeschool day! I really like how it is divided up so nothing takes too much time but so many riches are added to each week
My girls love the virtue readings, hymns, and folk songs most of all, but they also have enjoyed learning about Cezanne and Rembrandt so far and Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. They like the picture books and learning about their lives. It’s been so fun to see them make connections to what we are learning in other subjects or just things in our everyday lives. We also have really enjoyed going very slowly through the bible and diving deeply into the first couple books of the old testament. I’ve found this has really helped my daughters understand the importance of God’s covenants, the significance of so many of the early events in the bible, and how they can apply to us. We will be using volume 2 next year and cannot wait!
WRITTEN/ILLUSTRATED NARRATION
We have been doing one weekly written narration (my 4th grader writes her own and my 1st grader dictates to me and I write for her but will be having her copy it down moving forward). It's a great way to have them try narrating in a different way and it's wonderful for my 4th grade to get more writing practice in. It also makes a great keepsake! We plan to do more of this next year with our next curriculum as well!
NATURE STUDY
Admittedly, with a hard pregnancy and now a newborn, we haven’t been doing as much hiking or being outside as we usually are as a family and I haven’t stayed on top of nature journaling and study as I would like. I plan to build it into our schedule better next year and do some to make up for this over the summer. I really want to try observing a few different plans and draw them during all four seasons - a tree, a bush, a flower, etc.
ART
We decided to add a more formal art study this year and have used Living Art Lessons. Every lesson, we learn about a different element of art and will often do an art project. We were really good about sticking to this for the first few months but with the baby coming and now here, we haven’t been fitting this in as much. We are doing a watercolor at our co-op so I’m not too sad about it but would like to get back to it soon. Overall, we really have loved it and I like how easy the lessons are and how the projects are all using things we already have on hand but help them understand the art element we are learning about that week. I think the teacher guide is extremely well done and it's a wonderful foundation for the earlier years about what the foundations of art are and how artists incorporate them into their artwork. We may continue this into next year to finish it.
INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTS
HANDWRITING
Although my daughters are doing copywork twice a week with their Daily Riches curriculum and one illustrated narration each week, I want them to have better handwriting than me, so about 4 days a week they do a page (or half depending on how much work one page is that day) in a handwriting workbook. My first grade is practicing her print with Manuscript Handwriting and my 4th grader is practicing cursive with Cursive Handwriting. These were both inexpensive and get the job done. I'm not sure yet if we will continue next year, but if I feel they aren't getting enough handwriting practice in, we will likely continue.
EXPLODE THE CODE
For phonics this year, my first grader continued with Explode the Code that she started last year. It's been going SO well for her! The lessons are very short, we can do as many or as few pages as we want, and she's practicing reading and spelling often at the same time which is wonderful. It's definitely starting to click and we plan to continue this next year! She also reads a couple readers at her level each day to practice as well.
LEARNING LANGUAGE ARTS THROUGH LITERATURE
We switched from The Good and the Beautiful to Learning Language Arts Through Literature from last year to this year for my fourth grader. While this is definitely much more in line with a Charlotte Mason method of education, it was not my favorite. I liked that she learned a lot of different parts of Language Arts - reading comprehension, parts of speech, editing sentences, other grammar topics, researching, dictation, spelling, etc. - but I also felt like there was some "fluff" in there where she was supposed to write down answers when she could just say them to me. This is probably a "me" thing, but I don't like when there are large parts of a curriculum I'm doing differently than how it is intended. For example, we may be discussing parts of speech and the question would say "Why do we use a comma in this sentence?" and there would be a line for her to write her answer. To me, that is unnecessary when she could just tell me the answer. Especially for a more reluctant writer, having her write way more than makes sense turns her off to writing and to me feels like busy work. We just end up having her read those parts aloud but I don't like leaving a bunch blank. Again, it's more a "me" thing than the curriculum's fault but just something I thought I would share! We will not be using this next year, but will use something similar but more in line with Charlotte Mason's teachings.
MATH
Both my school-age daughters have used The Good and the Beautiful for math their entire school career. We used it again this year and have once again enjoyed it. My first grader is in Math 1 and my fourth grader is doing Math 4. My first grader has really caught on to all of the math principles taught and is flying through her lessons. I feel like this math program (and maybe most math programs do this - I just have only used this one) makes math fun and helps kids gain confidence in the early years so they have positive feelings toward math when it starts to get more difficult and complicated. I love that the earlier years use manipulatives in their math boxes and that they offer free versions of each math book so I can just print my younger daughters' curriculum and use the math box I already bought for my older daughter when she was in first grade and this curriculum for her is free!
My older daughter, while she is now at the point where math becomes a little more challenging when learning long division, area of shapes, order of operations, etc., I still think this program does an amazing job of making math very visual, using real-life problems to show how we might use this math, and also implementing videos this time around to help do some of the teaching, which I really appreciate. We plan to use the next levels of this program again next year.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, this has been a very crazy year having a baby in the middle of the school year right after Christmas. Ends of pregnancies are rarely easy and having a new baby is always a transition, so while it's gone overall very well, it still meant we had to make more adjustments to our homeschool than we normally do. I appreciate having the option to be flexible, take time off, and make adjustments!
I'm very excited to share our curriculum choices for next year (they have all been arriving!!!) in a couple weeks!