We’re ready for another year of homeschooling! In fact, it’s our fourth year of homeschooling and we’ve found our groove. We’re continuing with most of the curriculum choices from last year, just changing the level. This year Arthur will be in 4th grade and Quentin will be in 1st grade. My big challenge this year is to make less work for me while giving each child individual time.
As a reminder, we are a pretty eclectic household with a strong literature base. My criteria when looking for curriculum:
secular
rigorous
wide world perspective
not necessarily all-in-one
at least some physical items, not all online
cheap (not necessarily the cheapest, but not expensive)
Let’s take a look at what I have for curriculum for next year!
Primarily Quentin will be using Blossom & Root’s Grade 1 Language Arts curriculum and Build Your Library Level 1. BYL 1 is a dive into Ancient History. Hopefully by combining these two curriculums, we will get to the amount of reading the we accomplish normally.
Language Arts
Blossom and Root and Build Your Library has some basic language lessons and activities, but my kids both seem to love workbook style for grammar lessons and such. We use these as supplemental material. I create little weekly packets that I help the kids work through. Quentin is not good at working independently yet, but we will get there.
Highlights First Grade Activity Book
Summer Bridge 1-2
Summer Fit 1-2
BrainQuest Grade 1
Second Grade
Mad Libs Grade 1 Reading
More language arts books and some fun activity books.
How to Draw Cars and Trucks
Big stack of Highlights mgazaines
Cricket: Click magazine
Evan Moor Smart Start Read and Write G1
Literature
Quentin will have a variety of picture books and chapter books plus poetry of course!
This will be Quentin’s first year where we are going to try to read longer chapter books. I curated this collection from the Build Your Library and Blossom & Root curriculums and oTalur own bookshelves.
This picture includes more of our literature this year. These are some of the picture book style choices for the year.
Social Studies
Social studies is coming straight from the Build Your Library Level 1 curriculum. As such, we will be exploring the ancient world. We will be using History Quest has our main spine, but we have a variety of other reference texts to add.
Science
Primarily we will be using RSO Life as our spine, but we have a variety of animal related references to add.
Stack of Nat Geo Kids magazines
Target Animals of the World workbook
And we have a ton of nature science related books for supplements.
Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring by Kenard Pak (actually the whole series)
Cricket: Click magazines
Even more nature related reference books and human anatomy books.
Cricket: Click magazines
Human Body Activity Book
Julia Rothman Collection: Farm Anatomy, Food Anatomy, and Nature Anatomy
Math
Math is definitely an issue in this house as both boys are at least one grade advanced in math. I am always trying to scramble to find the best choices for them. Quentin is going to be finishing the Grade 1 books before moving on to Grade 2. We will also be adding in some math board games.
Money and Time Workbook
Singapore Math 1B (not pictured)
Art
This is actually all the art books for Quentin and Arthur. I took just one picture. Each one of their Build Your Library levels has a related art book to dip in and out of. We are just going to pick a variety of composers and artists to study over the course of the year.
