Our Homeschool Curriculum for 5th Grade, 2nd Grade, 1st Grade, and Tot

Hi everyone! Today is a wonderful day, because it’s the start of my favorite time of year – homeschool planning season!

After briefly experimenting with public school last year, I’m thrilled to be resuming our homeschool life this fall and I’ve had a great time choosing our curriculum for the 2015-16 school year!

Today I’m sharing our homeschool curriculum for 5th grade, 2nd grade, 1st grade, and Totschool!

Image: Africa Studio / Dollar Photo Club

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 5th Grade

I honestly cannot believe that Tigger is entering fifth grade. It seems like it was only yesterday that I planned her preschool curriculum. Amazing how fast time flies.

The book What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know will serve as our curriculum spine for this year. I always appreciate the Core Knowledge books, because they give me a framework to use for designing my lesson plans.

I’m not a classical homeschooler, but I love the classical approach to history. So we follow the history method outlined in The Well-Trained Mind – a chronological approach with a four-year rotation of the same time periods.

This year, the bulk of our history lessons will come from The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History.

One thing I actually liked about public school was that it introduced Tigger to the rigors of Common Core Math. I am actually a fan of the Common Core curriculum, though not necessarily the instructional method. (I’ll share more about why I use Common Core Math in our homeschool in an upcoming post.)

This year, we’ll be using enVision Math Common Core Grade 5 by Scott-Foresman Addison-Wesley.

To supplement our math lessons and to accommodate Tigger’s ADHD, we’ll be using a few other math resources, including the Math Mini Office Lapbook from A Journey Through Learning. (See our review here.)

Our science curriculum will be based on Harcourt School Science for Grade 5. I’ve been able to find this book (and other school books like it) for just a couple of dollars on Amazon. Win!

We’ve been using the Homeschool Fitness Package from Family Time Fitness for years and we’re sticking with it this year too! It’s an easy and fun way to get everyone moving, which is absolutely critical for kids with ADHD.

We have a Lifetime Membership to Notebooking Pages and we’ll be putting it to good use this year! There are pages for all kinds of topics, including history, nature study, geography, and more!

For geography, this year we’ll be learning about the continent of Europe. And we’ll be using the wonderful notebooking pack Discover Europe to explore each country!

Both Tigger and Pooh will be using the program Keyboard Classroom to practice their typing skills. I think Pooh, in particular, will love it because he hates to write things by hand.

Our art program this year will be the Art for All Ages from Southern Hodgepodge. We got to use the Shark Chalk Pastel ebook last year and my kids loved it so much that we’ll be sticking with chalk pastels this year as well.

For music this year, we’ll be using SQUILT Volume 1: Baroque Composers by Homegrown Learners. This will be our first time studying classical music as a family, so I’m excited to get started! (If you’re interested in SQUILT, you can save 25 percent on any volume through July 17th!)

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 2nd Grade

For second grade, we’ll be using the book What Your Second Grader Needs to Know as our curriculum spine.

Our math curriculum for second grade will consist of Khan Academy, which Pooh loves, and a continuing study using the Life of Fred: Apples and Life of Fred: Butterflies.

This year, we’ll be using several resources from the EHM Members Only Website for Pooh. Some of our picks include:

• The 2nd Grade Daily Math Activities Book
• It Just Makes Cents Money Book
• Geoboard Activity Pack
• Foam Dart Physics
• Landforms Around the World
• and the US State Study Packs

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 1st Grade

Roo and Pooh have a lot of their lessons together, but I still like to make sure that he masters his concepts. His first grade curriculum will be centered on the book What Your First Grader Needs to Know.

Like Pooh, he’ll also be using Khan Academy and Life of Fred for math. And he’ll be using some of the resources from the EHM Members Only site as well, such as:

• All About My Community Pack
• Days of the Week Activity Pack
• My Plant Journal
• and the Children of the World Pack

Since he also has ADHD, we’ll have to break out the Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks to help him burn off a little activity in between lessons.

Our Homeschool Curriculum for Totschool

For Totschool, I’m keeping things simple with little Piglet this year. We’re going to be using the oldie-but-goodie Teach Me Mommy by Jill Dunford.

I’ve had this book since Tigger was a toddler and I love it so much. It’s a wonderful introduction to preschool themes but it has all of the book suggestions, activities, and crafts laid out for you each week.

Since Piglet will be three in December, we’ll begin using this then and probably continue with it until she reaches PreK. And I guess this is the last child I’ll use it with! *sniff*

We use a lot of unit studies with our kids, so I’ll also be including some of the themed Tot Packs from 3 Dinosaurs and 1+1+1=1. That way, Piglet can get in on learning about the same things as her older siblings!

Before we begin officially Totschooling this winter, we’ll be using the book Learn with Play from the Kid Blogger Network to help her get involved in making things and having sensory fun while learning. I suspect the older kids will want to get in on the fun too. 😉

Those are our choices for homeschool curriculum for 5th grade, 2nd grade, 1st grade, and Totschool! I’d love to hear what you’re using this year, so tell us your choices in the comments!

This post is part of the 2015 Not Back to School Curriculum Week Hop from iHomeschool Network! Click over to read even more great posts from our fellow bloggers!