After spending the last few weeks trying to squeeze every last drop out of the end of summer, our family has officially started the new school year!
The transition from summer break to school was a tough one this year. The kids were mostly ready to start back, but with Covid restricting some of our normal summertime activities, I really felt like we hadn’t fully ‘done’ summer yet.
What helped me was reading and rereading my favorite resource for homeschool planning and just planning out the first half of our school year. After that, the kids and I were excited about the new things we would work on for the year, which made it a little easier to jump into the school year.
I’ve noticed a huge uptick in families choosing to homeschool this year. Here in Texas, there have been a lot of issues in the first few weeks back due to Covid and school district disagreements on mask mandates, virtual learning issues, and a massive spike in cases.
It makes me glad I’m a homeschooler right now! And it looks like a lot of other people are pulling their kids out of that mess until things calm down a bit.
Because of everything going on, there are so many new homeschoolers out there.
I’ve noticed that my most visited post over the past several weeks has been about our curriculum must-haves from last year, so I thought I would talk about how I planned for this school year and what I’m using to teach my kids in 6th, 4th, 1st, and pre-K.
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The Ultimate Homeschool Planning Book
If you’re new to homeschooling and you’re feeling lost, never fear! The first year is always a little bit of trial and error. Even if you’ve already started but you aren’t happy with how things are going, you can always change things around.
Flexibility is one of the absolute best things about homeschooling!
I highly recommend getting The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise.
Even if you’re not following the Classical method of homeschooling, the book is a gold mine of information and really lays out everything you need to plan your homeschool year with many curriculum suggestions and a ton of really great advice.
What We’re Using this Year
If you’ve read my post about curriculum must-haves, you’ll see that not much has changed between last year and this year except for a few tweaks. I’ll do a quick list here of our tried and true curriculum choices. Unless otherwise noted, these are being used for all four kids.
Math: Singapore Primary Math curriculum (we use the Standards edition) + Math Prodigy online game and Mathseeds as a supplement to their written work. Adding online games is a great way to get kids to do WAY more practice than they would otherwise. Both of these programs also keep track of their progress and things they need to work on.
Spelling: All About Spelling curriculum (for everyone but my Pre-K kid) + All About Homophones (for my older two)
Handwriting: Handwriting Without Tears (print for the younger two, cursive for the older two)
Reading: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (for my youngest two) and Reading Eggs online program (for all four kids- it goes all the way up to middle school)
Grade Level Workbooks: Brain Quest Workbooks
Subjects I Teach Without a Curriculum
Where’s the science and social studies?! We don’t use a curriculum for those, instead opting for the use of living books and projects to help us learn.
The Well-Trained Mind is great because it explains how to structure science and social studies units, how to teach these subjects, and offers an excellent list of book recommendations.
Writing and grammar are also taught without a curriculum. We work these things into every subject, since the kids have to do independent reading on various subjects and write down what they’ve learned.
Obviously, this is adjusted to be appropriate for each grade level. My older two will be continuing to learn how to write essays and my 1st grader only has to write a few sentences.
We also do family read alouds (right now we’re on the Black Stallion Returns), and the kids are free to pick out any books they want for independent reading.
Other Subjects
Since we’re easing our way back into the school year, we’re sticking with the basics for a few weeks. After everyone has gotten back into the swing of things, we’ll add some more subjects as we go.
Some of those will be coding for the older kids (using Khan Academy– it’s great!) and French and a more formal art study.
You’ve Got This!
I highly recommend giving The Well-Trained Mind a look, since it really helps you break down each subject and grade level and takes away some of the stress that comes with the feeling of doing it alone.
If you’re new to homeschooling and still feel lost, overwhelmed, or frazzled, you’re not alone! Homeschooling can make even seasoned homeschoolers feel this way sometimes- I definitely did before we started this year!
Hopefully you’ve found some of these recommendations to be helpful. Feel free to drop me a line in the comments or by email if you want any more information about anything I’ve talked about.